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The city is seeking contractors, builders and developers for its upcoming Springwood Avenue redevelopment, and officials hope to give the jobs to local residents if possible.

“We don’t want to give [the project] to any one developer,” said redevelopment and planning director Donald Sammet. “We want to be sure that there are a number of firms and people that get the opportunity.”

The city has issued a request for qualifications for the project.

“We’re casting the net to see who’s interested … and then we’d have further discussions with them and potentially ask for more formal proposals as to what they’d like to build,” Sammet said.

The Springwood Avenue redevelopment zone encompasses the area between Memorial Drive and Atkins Avenue. The city has broken that zone into two separate districts — one residential zone and one mixed-used commercial and residential zone.

The residential zone encompasses 2.12 acres from Atkins Avenue to Sylvan Avenue.

The mixed-use zone will consist of mandatory commercial use on the bottom floor and either commercial or residential use on higher floors of any building.This zone encompasses 2.33 acres of land from Memorial Drive to Sylvan Avenue.

The total maximum buildout or “potential yield” for the redevelopment zone is 222 residential units and 79,000 square feet of commercial space, Sammet said.

In the 1970s, rioting took place on Springwood Avenue and many of the buildings there burned to the ground, Sammet said. The riots, combined with a failed redevelopment effort in the 1990s, left most of the land on that street vacant.

In the past, the city designated Somerset Development the master redeveloper of that area. Somerset built condominiums on Springwood Avenue and then “stopped development,” Sammet said. The city then declared Somerset to be in default of the redeveloper agreement. The case was in litigation for several years until the city eventually settled and obtained ownership of all the land in the redevelopment zone.

Sammet believes the new effort to use multiple developers on Springwood Avenue should fare better than naming a master redeveloper because the city has done much of the infrastructure work on that zone already and “has set the table rather than relying on a developer to come in and do everything,” he said.

Those who are interested in sending their qualifications to the city can go to cityofasburypark.com or contact Sammet directly at 732-502-5711.

According to the city’s website, the proposals are due by June 1 at 4 pm. Click here for the city’s notice seeking requests for qualifications.

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