In this action, after a developer received final approval to build to residential towers on the Hudson River, the city of Hoboken passed two ordinances. The developer claimed that it should not be subject to the ordinances, as they were zoning regulations and Section 52(a) of the Municipal Land Use Law mandated that no new zoning regulations may apply to a project within two years of final approval. Relying on N.J. Shore Builders Ass’n v. Township of Jackson, 199 N.J. 38 (2009), the NJ Supreme Court considered not only how the municipality characterized the ordinance, but also how the ordinance functioned in practice. In doing so, the Court found that the ordinances were zoning regulations, as contended by the developer, and not environmental regulations, as the city had claimed.
