New Jersey’s Five-Year Plan

March 6th, 2006 by Tim Evans

Governor Jon Corzine’s economic development team is seeking input into a five-year strategic business plan, intended to improve the state’s business climate and encourage economic growth.

A first draft of the plan is expected at the end of March.

New Jersey already has a long-term business plan designed to guide growth and investment: the State Development and Redevelopment Plan.

Using the State Plan as the foundation for the five-year plan honors decades of citizen input into how New Jersey should grow, and ensures that quality of life in New Jersey will prosper along with the economy.

REACHING FOR GENUINE PROSPERITY

After a long and slow entry into the laws and regulations that govern growth and preservation, New Jersey’s State Plan appears poised to assume the ultimate role for which it was created: as a blueprint to guide state and local investment in achieving genuine, long-term prosperity.

Using the State Plan as the foundation for economic growth ensures that state and local investment will favor the rebuilding of New Jersey’s urban areas and inner-ring suburbs, restoring these communities as vital and prosperous places to live and work. It would end decades of disinvestment in the older places where most New Jerseyans live, maximize investments already made in infrastructure and transit, and curb duplicative and wasteful investment in sprawling development.

Using the State Plan to guide economic growth would make it easier and less costly to do redevelopment – and so restore choices in housing and for moving around that aren’t available in newer, auto-dependent developments. Redevelopment offers the best way to link employers to large groups of employees and to transit options that can unclog our roads and strengthen our economy. And redevelopment should protect the open lands we have left inside and outside of our communities, for the health and enjoyment of all New Jerseyans.

During his campaign, Governor Corzine told New Jersey Future that “I support making all state capital investments, including open space and farmland programs, consistent with the State Plan. In order to spur redevelopment of our urban and older suburbs, we must make these areas attractive places to live and identify properties where development can move forward.”

By using the State Plan as the foundation for his five-year business plan, the Governor can demonstrate that support in a way that sets New Jersey on the course for genuine prosperity.

For questions about this issue of Future Facts, contact Tim Evans, research director.