The Riverline Fair Haven development will replace the long-vacant Sunoco Gas Station at 626 River Road. Emily Shopfer
By Emily Schopfer
FAIR HAVEN – Construction is now underway at the former Sunoco Gas Station site at the corner of River Road and Cedar Avenue in Fair Haven. The site, which operated as a gas station for two decades before closing in 2011, will be replaced with a single mixed-use building with a first-floor commercial space and two upper floors of residential units.
Property owner Jake Lebowitz acquired the project, which he named “Riverline Fair Haven” in late 2025, early 2026. Lebowitz expects the entire project to be completed by spring 2027, likely in March or April.
The first floor of Riverline Fair Haven will consist of 4,200 square feet of commercial space, occupied mainly by local coffee roaster Offshore Coffee Co, which recently signed a lease with Riverline, Lebowitz said Aug. 17. Eat Clean Bro, a meal-prep service centered around fitness and natural meals, will also operate a small grab-and-go in the space, he said.
“I like to sort of curate what goes in a place like this,” Lebowitz said. “When you’re talking more of a highline apartment, you want to make sure the residents have something that benefits them.” He said he feels Offshore Coffee benefits the Fair Haven community because the town has only Booskerdoo Coffee & Baking Co. and a Dunkin’ Donuts, both also on River Road. Riverline’s second and third floors will house 14 largely two-bedroom units: 12 market-rate apartments and two set aside for affordable housing. For New Jersey’s third round of affordable housing (1999-2025), Fair Haven had a Realistic Development Potential (RDP) obligation of just four units. Fair Haven’s RDP for the fourth round (2025-2035) is zero, according to the Fourth Round Housing Element and Fair Share Plan published by the borough in June 2025.
Lebowitz confirmed the project has no PILOT (Payment In Lieu of Taxes) agreement at this time.
Even though the project is not expected to be complete until spring 2027, Lebowitz said he has already received soft inquiries for the remaining 12 market-rate units. He predicts the dozen units will “probably be mostly pre-leased prior to being done.”
“There will never be another chance for people to rent like this in Fair Haven,” Lebowitz said. The residential element of Riverline Fair Haven will grant people “the opportunity to live in a really nice place in Fair Haven,” he said, without the financial burdens that come with property ownership.
The average home in Fair Haven is assessed slightly above $1.6 million as of July 2026, according to Zillow. This assessment is up 8.8% since 2025. According to the borough website, in 2025, the total tax levy was $1.427 per $100 of assessed value, which would equate to over $22,800 in property taxes annually on a $1.6 million home. A 20% down payment to purchase the same home would be $320,000.
Lebowitz believes rental units will offer a more affordable option, allowing more people to experience this riverfront community.
Lebowitz, who is also the owner and developer of the now-shuttered Freehold Raceway off Route 9, said he had been interested in developing in Fair Haven for some time, but the space and opportunities were limited. When this project was brought to his attention, he immediately began working on it, making only minor revisions to the existing plans, he said.
The Sunoco Gas Station closed in 2011 and the site has been vacant for close to a decade. Following the closure, there were discussions between the borough and the property owner, Sunoco, about the borough purchas- ing the property and using the site for a new borough hall and municipal building. In October 2018, the Fair Haven Borough Council, under former Mayor Benjamin Lucarelli, attempted to use eminent domain to acquire the property. The borough’s purchase never came to fruition, as the lot was purchased by the Piscataway development firm M&M Realty Partners at Fair Haven LLC for $1.3 million in early 2019.
In late 2021, M&M Realty Partners proposed the original development plan to Fair Haven’s planning board. The original project included a “three-story building containing 4,250 square feet of commercial space on ground floor, 14 residential units on second and third floors,” according to the Nov. 16, 2021, Fair Haven Planning Board minutes. The planning board approved the preliminary and final site plans provided by M&M in 2022.
Following the approval, the project went stagnant for another few years before the property was purchased by Lebowitz in 2025. In early 2026, a contract worth over $10 million was awarded to G William Group LLC, a construction company based in Edison.
Lebowitz wanted to focus on providing Fair Haven with a “really nice product, something you normally wouldn’t see in a rental,” he said. He also wanted to focus on supporting local businesses during the building process. Amboy Bank is providing construction financing for the project.
During a planning board public hearing in January 2022, several members of the public expressed concerns about the project, but the issues largely pertained to infringement on property lines and the land potentially being a brownfield site.
A brownfield site is defined under New Jersey state law as “any former or current commercial or industrial site that is currently vacant or underutilized and on which there has been, or there is suspected to have been, a discharge of a contaminant,” according to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
On Jan. 18, 2022, Ron Aulenbach, director of Planning and Engineering for the applicant M&M Realty Partners, said the site is not considered a brownfield site, has been cleaned up, and will be continuously monitored by the NJDEP.
Under Sunoco, the responsible party at the time, between 2014 and 2016 the site underwent remediation (the process of cleaning hazardous materials, chemicals, or pollutants from soil, groundwater, etc.) through EnviroTrac Environmental Services, according to an “Environmental Impact Assessment” provided by ACT Engineers for M&M Realty in July 2021. As of 2021, all site remediation was complete, according to the assessment.
Concerns, however, resurfaced when news of the project’s construction was posted last month to the public Facebook group “Fair Haven, NJ,” which has over 12,800 members. In a July 31 post, commenters were divided between opposition to and support for the project. While some expressed concern that the development would endanger the town’s aesthetic and quaintness, others wrote that they welcomed more active and walkable retail spaces in downtown Fair Haven.
This article originally appeared in the August 20-27, 2026 print edition of The Two River Times.
