Deptford weighs 726 units
on the Tanyard Road side.

Two housing applications are scheduled for the Deptford Township Planning Board on Wednesday, September 2, and between them they propose 726 residential units in the Tanyard Road area. Both are D.R. Horton projects and the board is reviewing them together. The meeting starts at 6:00 p.m. at the Township Municipal Building, 1011 Cooper Street.

The larger of the two is Lakes at Bankbridge, 654 units on nearly 100 acres immediately south of the Deptford Soccer Complex, with its main road connection from Bankbridge Road near the Tanyard Road intersection and Deptford Middle School. The property would be divided into 306 lots, 292 residential and 14 open space. The unit mix on the application is 288 garden home and mid-rise units, 282 townhouses, and 84 stacked townhouse affordable flats. Clement Oaks is the smaller one, 72 market-rate townhomes on nearly 10 acres farther north on Tanyard Road, closer to Cattell Road, with three open-space areas.

The two are tied together by their affordable housing. According to the public notice, the 18 affordable units associated with Clement Oaks would be built inside Lakes at Bankbridge rather than on the Clement Oaks site. The developer is also asking for 20 years of vesting protection on the proposed General Development Plan. In plain terms, a project this size takes years to finish, and that protection would generally let it keep building under the zoning and development framework the board approves now, even if the township changes its rules later.

This is not new ground for that part of the township. Deptford Walk, 278 townhomes including 42 affordable units at Tanyard and Cattell roads, has roads and curbing in place and a building going up that appears to be the community clubhouse. Magnolia Place, 66 single-family homes on Tanyard Road, has its entrance and signage finished and several houses well along, with about seven enclosed. Counting all four, more than 1,000 residential units are planned or under construction in this section of Deptford.

Nothing here has been decided. These are applications on an agenda, and an application can be carried, revised, withdrawn, or heard and denied. Unit counts and layouts also move between a public notice and a vote, which is one reason the September 2 meeting is the one to watch rather than the notice itself.

These are applications on a planning board agenda, not decisions. The board had not heard them when this was written, and unit counts and layouts can change between a public notice and a vote. Reported by 42Freeway. This is a summary in our own words; the full report is theirs.