The Grandline Mixed-Use Development Approved in Palisades Park

• 6.2-acre site at 21 Grand Avenue, Palisades Park, approved for The Grandline
• Two towers, 17 and 19 stories, 510 apartments, 102 of them affordable
• 175,000 SF of two-story open-air retail, plus a hotel and a wellness center
• A builder's remedy settlement unlocked the density; no construction timeline yet

Palisades Park is about to get a building more than twice the height of almost anything around it. The borough's Planning Board has approved The Grandline, a 510-unit mixed-use complex on Grand Avenue that pairs two glass towers rising 17 and 19 stories with a 175,000-square-foot open-air marketplace. For a Bergen County borough barely a square mile in size, where most of the housing stock is two- and three-family homes, a 19-story tower is the news.

Demolition for 510 Apartments

The plan covers a 6.2-acre parcel at 21 Grand Avenue, bounded by West Ruby Avenue to the north, Route 46 to the south, and Grand Avenue to the east. Everything currently on the site, a retail property, gets demolished. In its place: 510 residential units split between the two towers, with 102 designated as affordable housing, roughly a fifth of the unit count.

A 175,000 SF Open-Air Marketplace

The retail piece is what the developer is selling as the draw, 175,000 square feet of commercial space across two levels, designed as an open-air shopping corridor wrapped around a landscaped pedestrian plaza. The program also includes a hotel, a wellness center, and multiple rooftop amenity decks, with a pool slated for the southern tower.

The Development Team

March Associates is developing the project, with LEEMS Corp listed as the site's owner. Hoboken-based MHS Architecture designed it, with landscape architecture by Melillo Bauer Carman. The broader team includes Stonefield Engineering and Design and MJ Planning.

The Builder's Remedy Behind the Height

The height and density didn't come through a routine rezoning. The approval follows a builder's remedy settlement, the mechanism that flows from New Jersey's Mount Laurel doctrine, under which a developer agrees to build a meaningful share of affordable units in exchange for the density to make the math work, and the borough gets credit toward its state-mandated affordable housing obligation. That trade is exactly why a project this tall lands in a town of mostly low-rise homes: the 102 affordable units are the currency that bought the 19 stories.

That framing matters for anyone tracking the pipeline in northern New Jersey, where builder's remedy settlements have become one of the few reliable paths to large multifamily approvals in built-out Bergen County boroughs. The Grandline is one of the bigger ones to clear in the area.

What's Next

A construction timeline has not been announced, and with full demolition of the existing site required before anything rises, the start date is the number to watch. Also still open: the construction cost, the financing, and the names behind LEEMS Corp, none of which have surfaced in the approval coverage.