Berkeley Township, Ocean County, New Jersey

Berkeley Township, Ocean County, New Jersey, population 41,762 (2018) lies on the Atlantic Coast roughly 40 miles north of Atlantic City. It also sites at the eastern edge of the New Jersey Pinelands and serves as a receiving area community for the interjurisdictional Pinelands Development Credit program. In 2013, it adopted an intra-jurisdictional TDR ordinance primarily designed to conserve the remaining wetlands and forested uplands of the township’s Pinewald section, an area characterized by paper streets and small lots often given away with newspaper subscriptions in the early 20th Century.    

The five sending areas are mapped and sending sites cannot include land deed restricted against further development or owned by governments or public utilities. Owners who choose to deed restrict their sending sites are allocated one TDR for deed-restricting the area needed for a lot meeting current development standards. More than one substandard lot must be retired in order to sever one TDR. Commercially-zoned sending sites are allocated one TDR per 15,000 square feet of lot area. 

TDRs severed from a sending site can be reassigned to that site within one year of severance if the Planning Board finds that the owner is unable to find a receiving site.    

All potential transfers must be reported to the New Jersey State Transfer of Development Rights Bank. The state bank is empowered to buy TDRs.  

Receiving areas are mapped and include Town Center 1 (Phase Two), Town Center 2 and the Light Industrial Area.