Sizable former hotel poised to become demolition job site

Backers of a real estate redevelopment project in Bergen County, New Jersey, are seeking permission and zoning accommodations to move forward with a project on land that formerly hosted a Sheraton hotel that closed late last year.

A plan to redevelop the hotel site and surrounding land totaling some 140 acres has been under consideration since late 2022, per a document filed with the Mahwah Township Planning Board, produced by the township in coordination with Colliers Engineering & Design of Hampton, New Jersey.

In mid-August, reports discussed changing but ongoing plans to move forward with the project, which likely would see the hotel be demolished. The initial proposal asks for the parcel to be designated as an area in need of redevelopment with condemnation.

A report from NorthJersey.com says the former Sheraton Mahwah Hotel is slated for demolition when referring to some redevelopment and planning proposals that were approved by the Mahwah Township planning agency.

A listing for the now-shuttered hotel on the Visit New Jersey website says it consists of 225 guest rooms and on land convenient to Interstate 287, state Route 17 and the New York State Thruway, providing highway access to New York City and in other directions.

The highway-friendly location has yielded plans for a development called Crossroads that, according to NorthJersey.com, allows for a maximum of 1.7 million square feet of ground-floor nonresidential development and a maximum of 4 million total square feet on the property.

An NJ.com report by Brianna Kudisch refers to the 22-story former Sheraton property as “akin to a lighthouse [that] served as a geographical reference point: If you saw the Sheraton Mahwah Hotel near Routes 287, 202 and 17, it meant you were close to the New Jersey-New York border.”

According to a Wikimapia entry on the property, only a portion of the highly visible complex was used as hotel space, while the lower, wider half of the building was Crossroads Corporate Center, consisting of offices that were largely empty in the building's final years.

Considering the recent lack of success of the site as a hotel or office tower location, the initial redevelopment plan had focused on building numerous, smaller structures, some of which may be offices and others residential.

With the commercial office sector considered by many in the real estate market to be in an overcapacity situation, the planning agency requested and received approval to build larger structures that could include data centers and warehouses, according to local reports.

Should the hotel and office tower be demolished, it will be an act of repeated history on the property. The Sheraton complex was built on the site of a former 4.7 million-square-foot Ford Motor Co. assembly plant that was demolished in the mid-1980s.

With the redevelopment proposal still undergoing changes and potential investors in the project not yet identified, the timeline of a demolition project at the site has not been established.