Millburn, NJ was ordered to build affordable housing and didn't. It's back in court.

A contentious effort by one of New Jersey’s richest towns to block an affordable housing development in its downtown is returning to court this week.

Millburn Township’s three-year resistance to a 100% affordable, 75-unit housing development on its Main Street has only intensified in the last few months. In August, Essex County Superior Court Judge Cynthia Santomauro ruled against the town, ordering leaders to go forward with the project. But since that order, the project has not moved forward.

The protracted fight stands as an example of how some New Jersey towns are resisting affordable housing developments in their communities. The state has committed to an ambitious plan to generate more than 150,000 new units of affordable housing over the next decade.

Millburn Township has joined more than 20 other municipalities in a lawsuit seeking to overturn a state affordable housing law that Gov. Phil Murphy signed in March.

On Friday, attorneys for the township will ask Santomauro for a second time to recuse herself from the case. They say the judge showed bias against Millburn when she ordered the township to go forward with the original development plan for the property. At the same time, Fair Share Housing Center, a nonprofit that negotiates affordable housing agreements with towns, asked the judge to order Millburn to cover all remaining development costs for the project, saying the township has delayed it in “bad faith.”

Millburn’s township committee members and their attorneys did not respond to a request for comment.

In the latest request for Santomauro to recuse herself in the matter, Millburn’s attorneys argue that the judge improperly made contact with the state’s Appellate Division after the township appealed her August order that it move forward with the project. Last month, the appeals court ruled that the township failed to show that moving forward with the project would cause it any hardship.

A Milburn attorney said in court filings that Santomauro’s admitted interaction with the Appellate Division was “highly irregular.”

It seems unlikely that Millburn will be successful in its attempt to get Santomauro off the case. The judge has not said anything publicly on the matter, but earlier this year she declined a different request from the township to remove herself.

In responses to the court, developer RPM said Millburn was “clearly recycling old stall tactics to prevent the development of affordable housing within its borders.”

Josh Bauers, an attorney with the Fair Share Housing Center, told Gothamist that Millburn’s latest motion asking the judge to recuse herself is “abusive.”

“It’s really indicative of the lengths to which wealthy exclusionary towns like Millburn will take in order to get out of building the affordable housing that they agreed to build three years ago,” he said.

Earlier this month, the developer asked the court to order the township to allow it to conduct soil testing at the Main Street site to prepare it for construction. The site is currently being used as a town recycling center.

The Fair Share Housing Center has also asked the judge to force the township to pay for the remainder of the cost of the project. In its motion, the nonprofit is asking that the judge appoint a monitor to see to it that the township covers construction costs with either existing municipal funds or a bond.

“It is now time for Milburn to pay for the construction cost of this development. They are the ones who have delayed this development for three years,” Bauers told Gothamist.