Rutgers, State University v. Piluso

• Citation: 60 N.J. 142,286 A.2d 697
• Parties: RUTGERS, The STATE UNIVERSITY, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Stephen PILUSO, Building Inspector of the Township of Piscataway, and the Township Committee of The Township of Piscataway, Defendants-Appellants, and The Board of Adjustment of The Township of Piscataway, Defendant.
• Decision Date: 24 January 1972
• Court: United States State Supreme Court (New Jersey)

Page 142

60 N.J. 142

286 A.2d 697

RUTGERS, The STATE UNIVERSITY, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Stephen PILUSO, Building Inspector of the Township of Piscataway, and the Township Committee of The Township of Piscataway, Defendants-Appellants and The Board of Adjustment of The Township of Piscataway, Defendant.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Argued Oct. 27, 1971.

Decided Jan. 24, 1972.

Angelo H. Dalto, South Plainfield, for defendants-appellants (Howard Gran, South Plainfield, attorney; Angelo H. Dalto, South Plainfield, on the brief).

Clyde A. Szuch, Newark, for plaintiff-respondent (Pitney, Hardin & Kipp, Newark, attorneys; Clyde A. Szuch, Newark, and G. William Sisley, Newark, on the brief).

The opinion of the Court was delivered by

HALL, J.

The question presented by this litigation is whether Rutgers, The State University, ('Rutgers') is subject to the zoning ordinance provisions of a municipality in which one of its campuses is located--here Piscataway Township, Middlesex County. Although the provision precisely involved is a limitation on the permissible number of housing facilities for student families, the broader issue necessarily present encompasses the matter of intergovernmental land use regulation in general as well as the particular status of Rutgers. The Law Division, granting Rutgers' motion for summary judgment, held that it is an instrumentality of the state and immune from local zoning enactments. 113 N.J.Super. 65, 272 A.2d 573 (1971). We certified the township's appeal while it was pending in the Appellate Division. R. 2:12--2.

This legal problem arises in the following panoramic context. It is well known that New Jersey has long lagged in providing public higher education facilities. To commence to meet that unquestioned need, Rutgers has expanded tremendously during the past few years in undergraduate and graduate enrollment and necessary teaching buildings, student housing and other physical facilities required for a larger university for the benefit of the people of the whole state. Further expansion in all these aspects will undoubtedly continue for many years to come. As far as the New Brunswick center of operations is concerned (two other centers are situated in Newark and Camden), the original College Avenue campus within the city is fully occupied. A second campus, which includes Douglass College and the College of Agriculture and Environmental Science, located in the southern end of the city and running over into North Brunswick Township, offers some room for expansion. But it is apparent that the greater part of the necessary future physical growth will have to take place on the Piscataway campus, where a substantial number of new buildings and other facilities have already been erected.

That campus, across the Raritan River from the College Avenue campus, comprises many hundreds of acres and occupies almost all of the southwesterly corner of the township. It is quite set apart, physically, from other land uses and is roughly composed of two segments--University Heights and the Kilmer section--separated only by a county road. (A small portion of the Kilmer section extends into Edison Township and the Borough of Highland Park.) The University Heights area has been owned by Rutgers for many years; the Kilmer section is a recent acquisition from the federal government. It is a portion of former Camp Kilmer, a military installation during World War II.

University Heights is already rather substantially occupied by collegiate buildings and facilities. These comprise classroom and research buildings, mostly new and principally used for science and engineering studies, the College of Pharmacy, and the Medical School (now administered by a separate governing body). Also located there are the stadium, golf course and playing fields, as well as apartments and small dwellings for the housing of married students. The Kilmer section is the site of recently opened Livingston College, an undergraduate unit of the university; the rest of its very sizeable area is largely vacant land where most future expansion will have to take place.

The township as a whole is a large, sprawling area--until fairly recently mostly unimproved land with few centers of population, but now, typical of so many such municipalities in the northeastern New Jersey suburban ring, in the throes of extensive development of all kinds. Many housing developments, a few garden apartments, and a very considerable number of industrial establishments adjacent to new Interstate Highway Route 287 have come in, and there is room for a lot more of each. This growth has necessitated great extensions of municipal services and facilities, including schools, which must be principally financed, under New Jersey's present tax system, out of local property taxes. The result has been financial and other growing pains.

The township's present zoning ordinance, enacted in 1964, along with amendments thereto, reflects the usual means employed by this type of municipality in attempting to meet local financial problems by land use regulation, I.e., so-called 'fiscal zoning.' The legally dubious stratagems of zoning wide expanses of vacant land for industrial use only, requiring large lots for undeveloped residential land, and rigidly regulating multi-family dwellings are all utilized to restrict private growth to land uses which will produce few school children and show a 'tax profit.'

Also included in the ordinance are detailed regulations of all of Rutgers' lands. They are placed in and comprise most of the area of an education and research zone (E-R). Permitted uses are 'educational and research activities and related service activities' conducted by non-profit public and private educational institutions and by 'scientific or research laboratories of private corporations, institutions, or other agencies' together with accessory uses, as well as uses allowed in the highest residential zone. Accessory uses are spelled out in considerable detail, as are minimum lot size, setback, first floor building area and percentage of lot coverage requirements. It may be observed in passing that while these detailed regulations are pertinent with respect to a private research enterprise, they are not physically suited to a vast university complex comprising dozens of buildings and allied collegiate uses on huge tracts of land having their own private interior roads. (The record does not disclose whether they were insisted upon or complied with in connection with the previous erection of university buildings and facilities.)

The ordinance provision here precisely involved is found among the permitted accessory uses in the E-R zone and reads as follows Dormitories for matriculated students; dormitories and other housing facilities for use by matriculated students and their families, provided, however, that such facilities do not exceed 500 units. ¹

In other words, the township purported to allow unlimited housing facilities for unmarried students, but to arbitrarily restrict the number of those which could be used by married students and their families.

In 1969 Rutgers had reached the maximum of 500 student family housing units in Piscataway. It sought to build 374 more garden apartments in the middle of the Kilmer section (together with an additional number in adjacent Edison Township). Building permits were refused because of the ordinance restriction. The university then sought a variance, which the Board of Adjustment denied.

Rutgers thereupon started the instant suit. Originally it asserted three claims for relief: one, to compel grant of the variance; two, to declare the ordinance restriction invalid; and three, to declare Rutgers, as an instrumentality of the state, not subject to a local zoning ordinance. The variance aspect was remanded for further evidence before the township agency. When that was completed, Rutgers abandoned the first two claims and successfully moved in the trial court for summary judgment on the third, thereby producing the ruling now on review. The trial judge had before him on that motion the evidence developed before the Board of Adjustment, as do we.

Rutgers' proofs demonstrated the public need for the proposed housing beyond question, although in the view we take of the case that matter is of little relevance. These proofs showed that, as of the time of the agency hearing, there were almost 10,000 full- and part-time students enrolled on the New Brunswick campuses, and that the enrollment there is expected to increase to something over 19,000 by 1980. The present number of full-time graduate students is 1,788, of whom about half are married, and the projected number in 1980 is about 5,900, of whom again approximately half will be married. Graduate students, for whom the planned garden apartments are primarily designed, play an indispensable role in assisting in undergraduate instruction and will not come to this institution absent available accommodations for themselves and their families. There is already such a shortage of facilities for this purpose that all the proposed units will be immediately used. It is estimated that a minimum of 1,500 apartments will be required for such purposes by 1980.

The local interest which may be said to constitute the reason for the detailed zoning regulation of Rutgers' lands is in one respect somewhat difficult to fathom and in another, quite obvious. The campus is physically well insulated and substantially self-sufficient from the municipal service point of view. Reference has already been made to the interior roads constructed and maintained by the university. It has its own police force for routine purposes (see N.J.S.A. 18A:6--4.2 to 4.11). At oral argument, counsel for the township agreed that the only municipal services it had to furnish were fire protection and access roads. The presence of the campus in the township nonetheless does have a local impact. For...