Burlington County, NJ

Burlington County used to be called Bridlington. It once contained Burlington City, the capitol of West Jersey, which is how they styled the southern half of the colony which belonged to William Penn. In colonial times, the developed part of New Jersey was a strip extending from Perth Amboy, the capital of East Jersey, to Burlington. To the north of the fertile strip extended the hills and wilderness mountains, to the south extended the Pine Barrens loamy wilderness. The strip was predominantly Tory in sentiment, while the remaining 90% of the colony consisted of backwoods Dutch farmers to the north, and hard-scrabble "Pineys" to the south, except for the developments farmed by Quakers. The Quakers had ambiguous sentiments during the Revolution, while the real fighting went on between the Episcopalian Tories and the Presbyterian rebels. It was bitter, with the Tories determined to hang the rebels, and the rebels determined to evict or inflict genocide on the loyalists. When the two parts were consolidated into New Jersey in 1708, the main reason was the ungovernability of the area, with animosities which endure to the present time in submerged form. Benjamin Franklin's son William was appointed Governor through his father's manipulation, but when he turned into a rebel-hanging Tory, his father extended his bitterness into a hatred of all Tories. The effect of this was felt at the Treaty of Paris, where Ben Franklin would not hear of leniency for loyalists, striking out any hint of reparations for their property losses. In a peculiar way, the factionalism resurfaced at the time of the Civil War, where the slave-owning Dutch in the North came into conflict with the slave-hating Quakers in the South. The problem would have been much worse if the slave holders had been contiguous with the Confederacy, but it was bad enough to perpetuate the sectionalism. A few decades ago, it was actually on the ballot that Southern Jersey wanted permission to secede.

Under the circumstances, when James F. Wujcik wanted to work for progress in his native area, he abandoned all ambition to enter State politics, and concentrated his efforts at the county level. He is now a member of the Board of Chosen Freeholders of Burlington County, along with four other vigorous local citizens. Most notable among them is William Haines, the largest landholder by far in the area. Membership on the Board of Freeholders is a part-time job, so Mr. Wujcik is also president of the Sovereign Bank. We are indebted to him for a fine talk to the Right Angle Club, avoiding with obvious discomfort much mention of state politics or sociology.

Burlington is the only county which stretches from the Delaware River to the Atlantic Ocean, including the Pine Barrens with 80% of the land mass in the center; fishing and resorts dominate near the ocean, and former industrial areas along the river. Much of the area has been converted to agriculture for the Garden State, but about 10% is included in a National Preserve. The population has doubled in the past fifty years, so urbanization is replacing agriculture, which earlier displaced wilderness. The county includes Fort Dix and Maguire Air Force Base, strenuously promoted for decades by now retiring Congressman James Saxton.

Somewhere in the past few decades, Burlington became quite activist. Although we tend to associate real estate planning with urban planning, this largely rural county went in for planning in a big way, deciding what it was and what it wanted to be. Generally speaking, its decision was to replace urban sprawl with cluster promotion. The farmers didn't like invasion by McMansions or industries, while the towns lost their vigor by tax avoidance behavior by the residents. Overall, the decision was to push urban development along the river in clusters surrounding the towns, and to push exurban development closer to logical commuting centers, leaving the open spaces to farmers. Incentives were preferred to compulsion, with a determination never to use eminent domain except for matters of public safety. So, two referenda were passed with 70% majorities to create special taxes for a development fund, which bought the development rights from the farmers and -- with political magic -- clustered them around the river towns. The farmers loved it, the environmentalists loved it, and the towns began to thrive.

They thought big. The central project was to push through the legislature a billion-dollar project to restore the Riverline light rail to the river towns, along the tracks of the formerly pre-eminent Camden and Amboy Rail Road. It was an unexpected success. During the first six months of operation, ridership achieved a level twice as large as was projected as a ten-year goal. Along this strip of the Route 206 corridor, the old Roebling Steel Works are becoming the Roebling Superfund Site, now trying to attract developers. The Haines Industrial Site, originally envisioned as a food distribution center, was sold to private developers who have created 5000 jobs in the area. Commerce Park beside the Burlington Bristol Bridge is coming along, as are the Shoppes of Riverton and the growth of Old York Village in Chesterfield Township. As Waste Management cleans up the site of the old Morrisville Steel plant acrpss the Delaware River, the whole development project is becoming an interstate regional one.

No doubt there will be bumps in these roads; the decline of real estate prices nationally is a threat on the horizon. And anyone who knows anything about all state legislatures will be cautious about their cooperation in a state as tumultuous as New Jersey. The Pennsylvania Railroad destroyed the promise of this state once; something else could do it again. Right now, however, Burlington County looks like a real winner.

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