Bridgewater Saved the Route 28 Farm Stand. Its Lease Comes Later.
October 22, 2026
October 22, 2026
A two-story stand sits beside a gravel lot at 351 Route 28, just off the Route 22 interchange. This time of year it sells apples, cider and pumpkins from a pumpkin patch. Someone has sold produce from this spot for about 80 years. On Oct. 13, Bridgewater's Zoning Board of Adjustment voted 5–2 to approve a self-storage facility on the 5.4-acre property around it, and the approval kept the stand.
Most headlines stopped at "farm stand to stay." What the vote protected is narrower. It secured a farm stand on Route 28. It did not, and legally could not, secure the Melick family as the people running it.
For 22 years the Melick family of Hunterdon County has run the stand seasonally as a non-conforming use, TAPinto Bridgewater/Raritan reported. That means it was allowed to keep operating but didn't fit the zoning. The approval includes a variance that turns the stand into an approved use. The property is in the C3 zone, where neither self-storage nor a farm stand is permitted. So the applicant needed use variances for both, plus approval for two principal uses and two principal structures on one lot.
The developer's commitments grew as the hearings went on. The first amended plan left rehabilitation, utilities and restrooms to whoever ran the stand. The later revision, as Patch reported in September, moved those costs to the applicant:
One condition gives these promises weight. According to Patch's report on the Oct. 13 vote, the farm-stand improvements must be finished before the self-storage building gets its certificate of occupancy. The storage business can't open until the stand has been upgraded.
The farm stand is protected in the approval. The Melicks are not, and the reason is procedural. At the Oct. 13 meeting, board attorney Richard Oller said the certificate of occupancy for the site would not be approved without clauses allowing a farm stand. He also said that document could not name a specific operator, because who runs the stand is a private agreement, according to TAPinto. Oller and the applicant's attorney, Matthew Capizzi, both said Bridgewater Storage could not sign a lease on property it did not yet own.
The offer on the table is a 10-year lease with a possible 10-year extension. Capizzi said it was stated on the record at the Sept. 22 meeting. Rebecca Melick, who runs the stand, asked for the 10-year option, and the terms included modest increases tied to inflation, Patch reported. Melick, who describes her family as 10th-generation Hunterdon County farmers, gave the board a letter from her attorney. It raised a concern that the agreement would not be final until the application was fully approved, which left room for the deal to change. NJ.com reported that she was disappointed by the approval and worried the promise might not be kept, since no lease with her business was written into it. The same report said the applicant's goal is to keep the stand and have the Melicks as tenants.
This corner has already seen one handoff. From 1946, the Kiser family ran the site as Bob's Fruit Stand, according to NJ.com. Rebecca Melick told Patch that the Bridgewater stand began when the family that had long run the property as a seasonal farm market asked the Melicks to rent the site. That history matches how the approval works. The use has stayed the same for eight decades while the people running it changed.
Some of the old property won't survive. Under the approved plans, the Kiser family's farmhouse, which dates to the 1800s, will be removed. The storage building will replace what TAPinto described as a dilapidated, long-vacant office park at the corner of Routes 22 and 28.
Most changes are aimed at keeping the two businesses apart. Here is what the hearing record shows:
| Farm stand | Self-storage building | |
|---|---|---|
| Entrance | Existing Route 28 driveway | Route 22 |
| Connection between them | None | None |
| Parking | Gravel lot, engineer's estimate of 10 spaces | Separate site plan |
| Hours | Seasonal farm market hours | Customer access 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily |
| Site limits | Landscaping near its entrance may shift for visibility | No tractor-trailers, no outdoor storage, lighting limits |
Parking is the one detail residents may notice. The new gravel area is the same overall size as the current one, and the engineer estimated 10 spaces. A stand employee told the board about 13 cars fit there now and asked whether staff parking would cut into customer spaces.
The storage building itself shrank during the review. TAPinto reported that over the course of the hearings the applicant reduced the building's size, changed its colors, added faux windows, revised the landscaping and changed the traffic pattern. The approved version is 106,000 square feet.
The review ran for seven meetings, from March 2025 to October 2026. At the final hearing, 25 speakers spoke against the plan. Their concerns included traffic, landscaping, setbacks from Route 22, the building's size, how visible it would be from Route 28 and nearby homes, and whether Bridgewater needs another self-storage facility. Board chairman John Kulak pointed out that several uses people said they'd prefer, such as nursing homes, offices and medical buildings, are already permitted on the site. Those would never come before the zoning board, and he said they would generate more traffic than self-storage.
Kulak, vice-chairman James Weideli and members John Colucci, Pushpavati Amin and Andrew Fresco voted yes. Christine Henderson Rose and James Franco voted no.
Bridgewater Residents United, a local group that organized against the project and hired an attorney, may not be finished. A member told NJ.com she plans to pursue an appeal. Neither the reporting nor the approval sets a construction start date. Nobody has said publicly whether the stand will stay open while the storage building goes up.
None of this changes what's on the shelves this fall. NJ.com describes the stand as open from late June or early July through November. Melick's Bridgewater page lists the stand's own fruits and vegetables, baked goods, jams and jellies, and cider. It also notes the stand is a CSA pick-up location. The posted closing date on that page may be from an earlier year, so call (908) 725-0225 before making a late-November trip.
For apple picking, the family's Hunterdon County farms are still busy. Melick's currently lists Califon Orchards, at 472 County Road 513, and the Oldwick Cider Mill, at 19 King Street, as open daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. for pick-your-own apples and pumpkins. Califon's current varieties include Winesap, Evercrisp Fuji, Ludacrisp and Rome, and the cider mill adds hard cider and roasted corn on weekends. The family is taking Thanksgiving pie orders now, including apple, pumpkin and pecan. Its site lists the Oldwick Farm Market at 170 Oldwick Road as open Thanksgiving morning from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. After that come Christmas trees, wreaths, kissing balls and live spruces.
If you live near Routes 22 and 28 and want to know how the approved plan could affect your street, The West Oak Team can go through the site plan conditions with you and explain how nearby commercial projects tend to show up in local home values. Schedule a complimentary local market consultation and we'll go through it with you.
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