Stephen M. Flatow, Esq.
E-mail sflatow@vested.com
"The trappings of small-town life are evident in working-class Ridgefield Park, one of four official villages in New Jersey. Front porches and fluttering flags abound on cozy, tree-canopied streets, many one-way. The elaborate Fourth of July parade, first staged in 1894, is the state’s oldest. The supermarket, with four aisles and a painted tin ceiling punctuated by spinning fans, is more like the grocery where Aunt Bee shopped.
Even Ridgefield Park’s most famous native — strait-laced Ozzie Nelson, from another black-and-white TV classic, “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” — underscores the suburb’s old-fashioned, unhip, Starbucks-free image.
“It’s like living in the ’50s here,” said Karen Purpura, a
69-year-old flutist who moved to Ridgefield Park with her partner, Tom Olcott,
from nearby Englewood last year after inheriting a house from a friend. “People
look out for each other; the neighbors even snow-blow our property. It’s a
family town. You feel grounded.”
The couple’s rambling 1908 colonial, with its wraparound
porch, is representative of the housing stock, 60 percent of which is at least
a century old. Ms. Purpura said she and Mr. Olcott, a 66-year-old musicians’
union official, put more than $100,000 into repairs and upgrades.
“We retained the integrity of the house, restoring it back
to the original wood floors,” she said. “We’re not looking to live any other
place. This is our home, where the grandkids come. We love the house and we
love the neighborhood.”
Beyond ambience, home buyers have pragmatic reasons for
choosing Ridgefield Park, which has 13,000 residents in less than two square
miles. Located at the nexus of highways, the village offers a short commute to
New York, just five miles from the George Washington Bridge and 11 miles from
the Lincoln Tunnel. And home prices are markedly lower than in other Bergen
County towns like Ridgewood, with which Ridgefield Park shares village status
and an inventory of turn-of-the-century houses.
Ayse and Firat Okcu paid $400,000 for a three-bedroom,
one-and-a-half-bath colonial in Ridgefield Park in 2016 after considering two
towns farther north in Bergen County, Emerson and Oradell, for their strong
school systems. But accessibility won over the couple, parents of a 1-year-old.
Mr. Okcu, 41, has a 35-minute early-morning bus ride to Manhattan, where he
works at a Times Square hotel, and Ms. Okcu, 37, has a reasonable drive to the
Weehawken hotel where she works.
“Plus, the type of house we bought would have cost $50,000
to $100,000 more” in the other towns, said Ms. Okcu, who described Ridgefield
Park as friendly and secure.
Janice Cima, a broker associate with Keller Williams Village
Square Realty in Ridgewood, grew up in Ridgefield Park and said locals have
long invoked Sheriff Andy Taylor’s idyllic hometown when describing their own.
“Ridgefield Park is similar to Mayberry in that it’s picturesque and
tight-knit,” she said. “People move here and stay through multiple generations.
You can’t say that about many towns.”
While many prize Ridgefield Park for its proximity to
Manhattan, Ms. Cima said, the vintage homes — the oldest of which was raided by
the British during the Revolution — are also a draw.
“Buyers appreciate the uniqueness of the houses — the crown
moldings, the original woodwork,” she said. “You don’t come to Ridgefield Park
for new construction.”
Situated just north of the Meadowlands, Ridgefield Park
occupies a peninsula bordered by the Hackensack River to the west and Overpeck
Creek to the east. Interstate 80 is the northern border, with Teaneck and
Bogota on the other side; Route 46 slices through the village’s southern flank.
The New Jersey Turnpike parallels Overpeck Creek and
separates Ridgefield Park’s residential portion from Overpeck County Park and
the Overpeck Centre complex, which includes the Samsung Electronics America
headquarters, a hotel and a 12-screen movie theater.
A larger mixed-use project is expected to be built over the
coming years on vacant land south of Overpeck Centre, where the turnpike and
Route 46 converge. The $1 billion SkyMark Center would comprise 1,500 rental
apartments in a “town center” configuration and a high-rise — millennial
commuters are the target audience — as well as 212,000 square feet of open-air
retail and two hotels. All permits have been obtained, and a spokesman for the
developer, Eagle Nest Development Urban Renewal, said financing is being
finalized and ground could be broken in six months.
Mayor George Fosdick described his town as “ever-changing,
yet eternally the same,” and said commercial development east of the turnpike
keeps things that way. Homeowners benefit, he added, because “our future, in
terms of economic development, lies in the area of Ridgefield Park where people
don’t live,” ensuring that the village proper maintains its traditional
appearance.
On June 28, the New Jersey Multiple Listing Service website
showed 28 properties for sale, all but four priced under $400,000. At the high
end, listed at $535,000, was an early 20th-century brick center-hall colonial
on Euclid Avenue, with annual property taxes of $14,147. Nine single-family
houses and two condos were listed for between $300,000 and $400,000, with
property taxes of $7,500 to $12,000. Five co-ops were listed for less than
$100,000.
Between June 1, 2017, and May 31, 2018, 70 single-family
houses sold at a median price of $324,500, up from $310,000 during the previous
12-month period, according to the listing service. The median price of a co-op
was $83,500, and that of a condominium or townhouse, $184,950.
The timeworn Main Street business district takes all of four
minutes to walk and has a variety of tenants, including a bakery specializing
in wedding cakes, a bicycle shop, the village hall, a stationery store, a
dollar store and restaurants serving Greek, Peruvian and Thai fare, among
others. The anchor is the quaint Village IGA grocery, where village officials
dart in for lunch at the deli counter and fliers announcing pancake breakfast
fund-raisers and missing pets are taped to the entrance glass.
Volunteer organizations, from the fire department and
ambulance corps to the Masons, Lions, Elks and Knights of Columbus help keep
the townspeople connected, as does a popular Facebook group, Ridgefield Park
Moms. In April, the village rallied to support a family who had lost their home
to fire. “Instantly there were efforts by many of our organizations to raise
money for clothing for the family,” said Mr. Fosdick. “There’s a tradition here
of helping friends, neighbors and strangers.”
Stephen Quinn, a wildlife artist and member of the local
Environmental Commission, lives in a circa-1921 house built by his
great-grandfather. Several years ago, he bought the adjacent property, knocked
down the house and created a pocket-size wildlife sanctuary. A better-known
natural landmark is the protected nest of a pair of avian celebrities, bald
eagles Al and Alice.
“Ridgefield Park has always had a countrified air about it,”
Mr. Quinn said. “Compared to other places, we’ve maintained our small-town
character.”
Students in kindergarten through sixth grade attend one of
three neighborhood elementary schools: Grant, Lincoln or Roosevelt. Ridgefield
Park Junior-Senior High School enrolls 1,240 in grades seven through 12.
Average SAT scores for 2016-17 were 515 in reading and writing and 511 in math,
compared with 551 and 552 statewide. Sixty-nine percent of the class of 2017
went on to college, versus 71 percent statewide.
Mark Hayes, the interim superintendent, said the school
district is “turning a corner” three years after a $2.5 million budget
shortfall necessitated the appointment of a state fiscal monitor.
There is no train station in Ridgefield Park; most commuters
take the bus instead. From the principal thoroughfares of Main Street and Teaneck
Road, New Jersey Transit buses reach the Port Authority terminal in Manhattan
in less than 45 minutes; the fare is $4.50 one way or $148 monthly.
Decades before Ozzie Nelson presided over his clean-cut
family on television, he was the pride of Ridgefield Park: an Eagle Scout at 13
and, at Ridgefield Park High, a star quarterback who led the football team to
an undefeated 1922 season. The road looping around the current high school was
named Ozzie Nelson Drive in 1992, 17 years after the entertainer’s death."
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