The Jackson Township Zoning Board has ruled that the residential portion of the proposed Adventure Crossing expansion exceeds the density allowed under the township’s Highway Commercial Mixed-Use zone, forcing the developer to either slash roughly 300 apartments from the plan or seek a use-density variance to keep the project intact.

The decision, handed down after a string of hearings and extensive legal argument, targets the applicant’s bid to build 641 residential apartments as part of the larger mixed-use Adventure Crossing complex along Route 537. The board concluded that the developer cannot count acreage that was previously stripped out of the project’s General Development Plan when calculating how many units the site is permitted to accommodate.

Under Jackson’s HCMU ordinance, residential development is capped at four units per gross acre. Board professionals and objectors argued during the hearings that the 641-unit proposal far exceeds that limit when measured against the tract currently before the board and the approvals presently in force. By the board’s math, compliance with the ordinance would require the apartment count to be cut by roughly 300 units, absent variance relief.

To keep the full plan, the applicant would now have to file a d(5) density variance under the New Jersey Municipal Land Use Law, a category of relief that requires heightened statutory proofs and additional rounds of board review.

At the heart of the ruling is the legal status of parcels that were removed from the original General Development Plan as part of a prior settlement agreement. The board reviewed the project’s full approval history, including approvals granted between 2017 and 2022 and the subsequent litigation that culminated in the settlement carving out multiple lots from the GDP. Those removed parcels, the board found, cannot now be folded back into the math used to justify higher residential density on the remaining tract.

The applicant, developer Vito Cardinale, has argued through counsel Sal Alfieri that the original project should be treated as a single integrated development for density purposes, citing shared roadways and utilities that continue to tie the phases together. Board attorney Jean Cipriani countered that once parcels were removed from the GDP, they ceased to be part of the development scheme for zoning math.

The ruling extends a string of setbacks for the Adventure Crossing residential push. The township council, led by Council President Jennifer Kuhn, adopted an ordinance in December 2024 designed to close what officials described as a loophole that would have allowed developers to use the project’s full footprint, including sports fields, warehouses and undeveloped land, to inflate residential density calculations. The zoning board’s May ruling reinforces that framework as applied to the current application.

Adventure Crossing was originally pitched as a regional entertainment and tourism destination, with hotels, a convention center, restaurants, a sports stadium and roughly 400 housing units. Much of that vision has not materialized. The built portion of the site is dominated by warehouses, a sports field complex and an indoor golf facility, with the residential ambitions growing significantly in scope through successive applications.

The project has become a flashpoint in Jackson’s broader political fight over overdevelopment. The township council, which has pledged to push back against high-density growth, has reshaped the zoning board in recent years by replacing members previously appointed under Mayor Michael Reina, a close associate of the developer, with appointees aligned with the council’s land-use priorities. That realignment has produced a more skeptical board on questions of density math at Adventure Crossing.

The applicant must now decide whether to redraw the project to bring the residential component into compliance or pursue the d(5) variance route. Additional hearings before the zoning board are expected as the application process continues.