Tiny N.J. town to auction off dozens of residential lots to make ends meet
Crystal Keirn points to the roof of 101 Penn Street, which has partially collapsed, causing damage to the unit she is currently renting next door.Penns Grove borough government may be short on money, but it’s long on property.
“The whole goal here is to have our town be revamped and revitalized,” said Councilman John Rambo. “It’s really a .9 square mile town, so there is no room for industry or commercial businesses and stuff like that. So you have your small shops, retail sales. Where do you start to revitalize a town where you have nowhere for growth? The growth is you have to sell your properties.”A blue-collar town, it’s clear Penns Grove has had better days. Structures are abandoned, businesses are closed.
The borough has on its ledger 98 parcels, according to property records. It’s selling about 78 of them, 17 of which have structures on them. The rest are empty. Rambo said the borough is holding off for now on selling some of the commercially-zoned property it owns. In 2020, the state Department of Community Affairs, which oversees the state aid Penns Grove to Penns Grove, recommended the borough unload the property it had accumulated, according to Tammori Petty-Dixon, the department’s director of communications.
Black mold grows inside 101 Penn Street, a borough-owned vacant home with severe damage. Luis Burgos, 39, who rents the connected unit with his wife, Crystal Keirn, live in the connected unit.“At the state that it’s in, it’s going to cost too much money” to fix, he said. “This is a town that has a lot of potential because it’s waterfront property, and they just let it rot.”
The everage Penns Grove home was worth $72,730 in February 2019 and has doubled since then to $114,000 in January 2022, according to Zillow estimates.
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