>Valley Renewal comparison to Paramus Park
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2011
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
Valley Renewal equivalent to Paramus Park
TO THE EDITOR:
As president of Concerned Residents of Ridgewood, Inc. I wanted to share with readers some background on our use of the Paramus Park Mall as a comparison to the Valley Hospital’s Renewal. The supporters of the hospital’s expansion have said this comparison is unfair and that you can’t compare a mall to a hospital. The decision the Village Council must make is whether Renewal makes sense from a land-use perspective. We think the comparison to Paramus Park is fair.
Renewal is more than twice the size of the existing hospital, and most of us can’t envision what it would be like to have this much building on this 15-acre property. Paramus Park, at just over 1.0 million square feet, gives people a sense of what we’re talking about, and it’s a reference that most in Ridgewood can relate to, even though Renewal is at least 10 percent larger than the mall in square footage. At 94 feet above-ground, and two stories below ground, Renewal is significantly taller than Paramus Park’s 30-foot atrium.
