A rendering of the proposed Red Bank train station redevelopment by the developer Denholtz. (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)
By BRIAN DONOHUE
From the window of the NJ Transit trains pulling into stations from Dover to Rahway to Matawan, the view – if you can see through those notoriously cloudy windows – has changed dramatically in recent years.
In town after town, a decades-long effort by the agency to build dense housing near its stations has converted what had been mixes of sprawling asphalt parking lots and low-rise buildings into dense “transit-oriented developments” or TOD’s for short.
What stands out to the longtime observer is how similar these places all look now: dominated by large, wide buildings, three to six stories tall, filling in an entire block, with retail or offices on the ground floor and apartments above.
“Boxy” buildings, they’re called, mostly by detractors. Or “podium” buildings for the concrete base floors that hold up the wood or metal framed upper floors. Or “Texas donuts” for the hollow core where a parking garage usually sits.
Now, the developer Denholtz is proposing a pair of deep, parking garage-core buildings with up to 400 apartments for the Red Bank train station redevelopment project.
Which prompted us to ask “Why do these buildings all look like that? Is Red Bank’s massive project destined to look like them too? If so, why? Were there other, better, options?
A podium building in Dover, built by the developer Meridia as part of the NJ Transit Transit Village concept. (Photo by Amanda Steuernagel)
Given the number of factors architects need to consider with a project like this, not really, says the man whose company is drawing up the plans for the Red Bank project.
In 2021, Rob Goodill, principal of urban design and architecture at Sk+I Architecture, the company hired by developer Denholtz, wrote a blog post entitled ‘In praise of boxy buildings.”
The post includes a long list of places Sk+I has built them, including Virginia, Atlanta, and Washington DC, to create “demonstrably successful urban environments.”
When it comes to increasing housing density, adhering to building codes, ensuring the economics work, and maintaining quality of life in the community, the box is often the only thing that fits, he argues.
“Sometimes you just have to recognize and admire a good thing,” Goodill writes. “They check all the boxes: density, human scale, mixed-use, affordable, and easily replicable. They can make good walls of urban streets and spaces. We need more of them.”
Across North America, Goodill’s wish is coming true.
Architect and author Michael Eliason says New Jersey is far from unique, with what he calls “massive banal boxes that all look the same” becoming one of the most dominant forms of architecture amid a move to create more dense towns and cities.
“We have them here in Seattle,” he said during a recent phone call with redbankgrreen.
Eliason holds particular scorn for the “Texas Donut” which he calls in his book “Building for the People – Designing Livable Affordable Low Carbon Communities) an “urban planning abomination.”
Eliason has written and spoken extensively in favor of what he calls more livable and healthy types of development he sees in places like Asia and Germany: communities built with a mix of building types, sizes, and uses. And, also, less space set aside – or wasted, in his view – for car storage. In those places, he notes, there’s usually a courtyard or a garden where Americans would put their parking garage.
“Why does American Transit Oriented Development look nothing like European TOD?” he asks in his book.
Eliason writes that in Germany, for example, even large-scale development projects are often broken up into a series of lots with smaller separate buildings.
The long corridor-type buildings we see dominating redevelopment in New Jersey – and proposed for Red Bank – he writes, “is almost nonexistent in European countries, with exceptions for assisted living facilities and student dormitories.”
“We’re kind of compressing everything down really low, we’re just going to get these massive banal boxes that all look the same,’’ he told redbankgreen.
He has become a leading proponent of changes to construction codes, including “single stair reform” that would eliminate the uniquely North American rules requiring two staircases for any building over three stories high.
7-story ‘zweispaenner’ point access block with 1-2 units per floor in Italy, by giovanni vaccarini 100% illegal everywhere in the US. every unit has daylight on at least 3 sides. divisare.com/projects/525…
— Mike Eliason (@holz-bau.bsky.social) February 26, 2025 at 11:57 AM
[image or embed]
Those changes might allow builders the physical and financial wiggle room to create a wider variety of buildings for a place like Red Bank. (A bill in the New Jersey legislature would allow single-stair buildings up to six stories.)
In the meantime, though, even Eliason has written of the virtues of the box in certain situations. In 2018, he wrote a blog post with a similar headline to Goodill’s entitled “In praise of dumb boxes.”
“The sad reality is we don’t have enough dumb boxes today,’’ he wrote.
As for those developments in Asia and Europe Eliason points to as a model?
At least for now, Goodill seems to say they are not likely to fly in Red Bank, where architects had to meld three sometimes competing sets of interests, including:
- a developer seeking to ensure the economic success of the project
- the transit agency, in this case NJ Transit seeking to boost ridership and bring vibrancy to underutilized land while also needing to maintain parking.
- the municipality and community, whose interests include maintaining the quality of life, creating affordable housing, and boosting tax revenue, while limiting building heights (In Red Bank’s case a six-story limit was suggested in the 2023 Master Plan.)
Of those factors, both Eliason and Goodill repeatedly came back in our conversations to the issue of parking.
“These projects are always about parking,” Goodill wrote in his email. “How little is it possible to get away with?”
Goodill said NJ Transit gave the developer a figure for the number of required spaces based on their parking studies.
RED BANK TRAIN STATION REDEVELOPMENT: HOW THE PROCESS WORKS
The five and six-story buildings in the Red Bank proposal are essentially apartments wrapped around parking garages, or “Texas doughnuts.’ The proposed 900 parking spaces in the current proposal, he said, is the “minimal number we thought practicable.”
There’s a danger of over simplifying all this. Goodill also listed a host of other factors unique to the train station area that dictated design choices, including overhead wires, the diagonal path of the train tracks through the area and Oakland Street cutting straight into the footprint of the northern building.
Those factors, perhaps as much as anti-dumb box sentiment, have made the serpentine (we thought of Rubik’s Snake) buildings in his company’s renderings a bit, well, less boxy than some of what you see up and down the NJ Transit tracks in 2025.
“This is a carefully crafted site plan with buildings that support the framing of the streets and open spaces,” he said.
The Planning Board is expected to begin public hearings in March on a proposed redevelopment plan being drawn up by the Borough Planners BFJ Planning.
“Of course I believe its a good solution,” Goodill said. “We will see if folks can come to agree.”
redbankgreen editor Brian Donohue may be reached via email at [email protected] or by calling or texting 848-331-8331 or yelling his name loudly as he walks by. Do you value the news coverage provided by redbankgreen? Please become a financial supporter if you haven’t already. Click here to set your own level of monthly or annual contribution.
