As the photo shows, construction is moving ahead in Pluckemin on a new branch bank for the investment and banking firm of JPMorgan Chase. I never thought that I’d find myself in the position of favoring one giant financial institution over another, but this is an exception: Just a few hundred feet away from where Chase is erecting its ill-advised building sits a Bank of America branch on Burnt Mills Road.The BofA branch is sufficiently removed from the intersection in Pluckemin where U.S. Route 202-206 joins with Washington Valley Road and Burnt Mills Road. The BofA location does not disturb the traffic pattern at the intersection.
This cannot be said for the new Chase building which sits on a corner within spitting distance from the sidewalk where it will hamper traffic flows at that busy commuting intersection.
The reason that Chase is setting up on that spot is obvious: That’s where the money is – in them thar’ hills. There is nothing wrong with chasing after the wealth to be mined in the Somerset Hills, but the site chosen for the battle between BofA and Chase (the Peapack-Gladstone Bank is in the Hills Shopping Center just a block away) is incompatible with the personality of the village of Pluckemin.
It’s another bad decision by Bedminster officials who once acquiesced to having a major interchange which would have unloaded traffic from Interstate 78 onto Rt. 202-206. That interchange would have been right on Bridgewater’s border, next to the Bridgewater Manor and would have ruined the character of the village of Pluckemin, not to mention its negative impact on the northern section of Bridgewater.
The citizen pushback on that scheme was overwhelming; State of New Jersey officials and Bedminster had to back off. Too bad that there isn’t a similar rethinking of this unnecessary addition to the Bridgewater-Pluckemin landscape.
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