2023 Smart Growth Award Winners

Read about the 2023 Smart Growth Award winners, representing the best in smart growth and sustainable development projects around the state. Find links to their full profiles below.

• Barclay Street Apartments

  Barclay Street Apartments is the first affordable housing project completed under a new program that pairs developers with local health care providers, acknowledging that shelter is a primary detriment of health and wellness.

• Clinton Hill Early Learning Center

  The Clinton Hill Early Learning Center has transformed a long-vacant urban site in Newark into a thriving and vibrant destination for its youngest community members through the thoughtful design and construction of a welcoming learning center.

• Gant-Gilbert Arts Collective

  Newark, NJ has a world renowned and long-established contribution to the arts. The Gant-Gilbert Arts Collective leverages this steep history of arts appreciation into new opportunities for rising artists by redeveloping an abandoned bank building into a mixed-use, community-oriented, artist-focused rental housing project in Clinton Hill.

• Hinchliffe Stadium

  Once a bustling community centerpiece, Hinchliffe Stadium has been left vacant for more than two decades. Redevelopment plans have restored this National Historic Landmark to its former glory, and serve to spur economic growth for residents and small business owners.

• Lord & Taylor/Train Station Redevelopment Plan

  At the heart of downtown Westfield, NJ, a shuttered Lord & Taylor sits at the center of a 14-acre redevelopment plan for the town center that transforms it from an auto-centric shopping center into a vibrant, mixed-use development with pedestrian-oriented design and an exciting reuse of the former department store.

• One Thompson Avenue

  It’s imperative that our municipalities reevaluate their public assets, especially underutilized parking lots. This is all the more crucial in smaller towns that lack the wealth of major urban centers, creating a pressure to be particularly thoughtful in redeveloping the municipality to improve economic conditions while serving existing communities.

• Somerset County Preservation Plan

  Somerset County may be the “greenest” county in the Garden State. Long admired for its rural farmlands, the county has fought to balance the pressures of development and preservation.

• Barbara George Johnson

  As executive director of the John S. Watson Institute for Urban Policy and Research, Barbara George Johnson has leveraged her deep knowledge of public health and broad understanding of urban issues to serve as a uniquely effective leader in advancing policy formation and legislative change in New Jersey.

• Nicole Miller

  Nicole Miller is no stranger to New Jersey Future or Jersey Water Works audiences. Miller is incredibly generous with her time, which she balances across local and state advocacy efforts to improve the lives of her neighbors in Newark, as well as address environmental justice issues that impact all New Jerseyans.

• George Vallone

  In naming our inaugural Redevelopment Trailblazer, New Jersey Future was in search of an individual who demonstrated throughout their career the positive impact they’ve made through redevelopment projects that don’t shy away from challenges, instead embracing them, in turn leaving behind an inspirational example for others to follow.