New Jersey approved new guidelines for warehouse development, giving its municipalities tools to stop what critics call the sprawl of industrial properties that's come with the rise of e-commerce — and triggered concerns across the nation.

The state's planning commission in Trenton adopted this week its guidance, a document that has been in the works for months after input from and meetings with stakeholders such as municipal officials, real estate executives, business organizations and community groups. The agency released an initial draft of the guidance back in June to solicit more feedback from the public.

The guidance, which amounts to recommendations rather than mandates, appears to be one of the most comprehensive attempts by any state across the country to have its municipalities control warehouse development as local officials try to deal with projects. New Jersey, already a highly developed state, is a much-desired site for logistics hubs because of its proximity to seaports, airports and a large population as online shopping requires more logistics centers to bring shipments to doorsteps.

With little room for development left in North Jersey near New York City, the country's most-populous municipality, new warehouses have been springing up in more suburban and rural areas, raising objections from residents and environmentalists about the noise, traffic and pollution they can create.

The guidance aims to help local governments update master plans, zoning and development standards; review development applications; and take a regional approach to warehouse projects. It was drafted as an alternative after organizations such as NAIOP New Jersey, the commercial real estate trade group, successfully lobbied against proposed legislation that would have put serious strictures on industrial development. Business advocates claimed it could be hamstrung by too-tight regulation of the state's booming logistics industry.

The guidance, in part, essentially says that towns need to update their zoning and master plans to adopt to an new era of megawarehouses. Some old municipal regulations broadly permit industrial development in designated parts of town. But those rules were drafted when there were only relatively small warehouses being built, not today's giant logistics hubs. Yet some town ordinances don't distinguish between different types of industrial properties or which would be appropriate for different areas, for example.

The development of large warehouses in the past "occurred in urban cores and nodes near major ports and highway interchanges, in designated redevelopment areas, contaminated sites, and brownfields," according to the guidance's executive summary.

"It occurred in places where the reuse of previously developed, underutilized, blighted, or otherwise appropriately located land continues to be repurposed, providing many benefits to the hosting community and state, through job creation and returning unused land and stranded assets to the tax rolls in a sustainable manner," the summary says.

The guidance document acknowledges the importance of the Garden State's booming logistics industry. Nearly 12.2% of all jobs located in New Jersey are in the wholesale trade, transportation or warehousing sectors, those that are devoted primarily to the storage and distribution of goods, according to the Census Bureau. That is the highest share among the 50 states, with those sectors together responsible for 15.7% of New Jersey’s total payroll.

Nonetheless, the summary says, "At the same time, large-scale regional warehousing, can if not properly sited and scaled, result in significant negative impacts, from the intensive consumption of undeveloped land to the degradation of habitat, air and water sources, quality of life, public health, safety, infrastructure, and transportation networks."

In New Jersey’s more rural and less developed areas "large warehouse projects are encroaching deeper into remaining unprotected agricultural and forested areas," according to the summary.

"With only a finite amount of available land near major ports, highway interchanges, and accessible freight rail lines, warehouse development is occurring in outlying locations that have limited infrastructure and capacity to support them, particularly along local roads and related infrastructure that was not designed to handle heavy truck traffic," the summary says.

The guidance warns of situations that have developed in some municipalities but could be avoided with updates in zoning laws.

"Many towns in New Jersey are finding that their communities are particularly vulnerable to poorly sited and scaled warehousing projects because they zoned large areas of their community, particularly farmland in rural areas, for broadly applied 'light industrial' uses without consideration or limitation on the size and intensity of today’s distribution warehouses," according to the guidance.

"As a result, many land-use plans and zoning ordinances may be inadequate in their present form, to address the pace and scale of new warehousing proposals and their impacts on neighborhoods, local roads, adjacent communities, and finite resources," the guidance says.

It continues: "Indeed, much of the current outcry from residents in municipalities reviewing and approving warehouse proposals that they are unhappy with are cases where the projects largely conform to local zoning standards. Given the scale and intensity of new and emerging warehousing trends and building types, zoning that simply permits generic warehousing may not be sufficient to address the different types of warehousing uses, nor to give a municipality the performance standards it needs to adequately review an application or require developers to properly minimize and mitigate impacts."

The state said the guidance is meant to: facilitate a proactive, rather than a reactive, approach by towns; provide factors to consider and balance when developing or updating a master plan and reviewing applications, land use and development requirements; and encourage a regional approach to planning, siting and facilitating logistics properties.

The guidance includes detailed separate documents addressing:

• Types of warehouses.
• Municipal considerations.
• The role of redevelopment and brownfields.
• Public health and overburdened communities.
• Transportation, traffic and road safety.
• Sustainable design.
• Mitigation best practices.
• Community involvement and public engagement.
• Regional approaches.
• Special resource area considerations.
• The role of state agencies.

The 50-day public comment period on the guidance closed on July 29, with 47 comments submitted by a variety of groups, individuals, municipalities and counties, according to Donna Rendeiro, executive director of the state Office of Planning Advocacy, which developed the guidance document.

Rendeiro said in a statement that while her office understands the concerns expressed by the public, "it is important to keep in mind that we are as much a home rule state as we are a logistics state.”

Since “land-use planning and development review occur predominantly at the local level in New Jersey, our approach has been to provide technical assistance and guidance within the context of sound planning and policy that balances competing needs — including protecting important resources and impacted communities, while ensuring economic growth and viability,” she said.

Michael McGuinness, CEO of NAIOP New Jersey, called the guidance "a comprehensive, well-researched document."

"The format of multiple short sections is user-friendly and a good reference document for municipalities to remind them to update their master plans and ordinances," McGuinness said in a text to CoStar News on Thursday.

But he did add, "It would have been helpful to have included some case studies of projects that achieve the goals of good planning by addressing many of these issues."

The New Jersey Business & Industry Association said it appreciated the guidance but didn't think it would address all the problems relating to industrial development.

"New Jersey is a logistics state and we need sufficient warehouse space to support not only our ports, but our growing e-commerce industries," Raymond Cantor, the NJBIA's vice president of government affairs, said in an email to CoStar News. "At the moment, there is a growing need for more warehousing in New Jersey. For those reasons we support efforts, such as this report, that seeks to help local governments make good choices in warehouse siting decisions. We do not, however, believe this report will resolve the conflicts in the siting and permitting process but we stand ready to work with policy makers to ensure we have the infrastructure we need to support our economic growth, including more warehouse space."

Rendeiro said in an email to CoStar News there weren't any major amendments to the guidance from the original draft that was released earlier this summer. There were some additions offering "more details on the logistics industry, clarifications, more on types of warehouses" and some reordering to its sections.

"Nothing that changed the flavor of the guidance," she said.