What We Do

Four interconnected focus areas. One coordinating mandate.

NJNMA operates across four interconnected focus areas. Each represents a different layer of the sequencing problem. They are coordinated together, not in isolation, because that coordination is what makes the corridor capable of absorbing investment and producing durable community outcomes.

Maritime, Naval & Defense Industrial Capacity

NJNMA's current primary focus area.

The U.S. maritime and defense industrial base faces a qualified-capacity problem.

Demand is rising. Production is concentrated in a small number of primary yards operating at or near physical capacity. The supplier base has consolidated for decades. Modular fabrication, advanced manufacturing, distributed production, and qualified throughput are now policy, not aspiration.
South Jersey and the Delaware River Valley sit at the natural catchment point for that demand. Deep-water river access. Heavy industrial transportation infrastructure. Skilled workforce concentration. Adjacency to one of the most significant private shipbuilding investments in a generation. Hundreds of acres of industrial-zoned land already configured for heavy manufacturing reuse.

NJNMA's current primary focus is coordinating the corridor:

Sites
Infrastructure
Workforce
Suppliers
Government posture
Community priorities

This coordination is so that New Jersey is positioned to absorb a meaningful share of the next decade's distributed defense and maritime industrial demand on terms that benefit the state, its communities, and national security.

What this looks like in practice

Coordinating with federal, state, and county partners on defense industrial readiness, site activation, and infrastructure sequencing.
Engaging with industry, including manufacturers, primes, OEMs, and tier 2 and tier 3 suppliers, to understand what the corridor must offer to be selected for distributed production.
Supporting workforce, training, certification, and supplier development to match anticipated qualified-throughput demand.
Aligning environmental, infrastructure, and regulatory posture with the realities of defense industrial production timelines.

Strategic Industrial Repositioning

Across New Jersey's industrial corridor sit hundreds of legacy assets:

Former refineries
Terminals
Chemical sites
Manufacturing plants
Ports
Waterfront industrial parcels

These assets no longer match their original use. They carry environmental complexity, ownership constraints, and stalled redevelopment momentum.

They also carry enormous latent value. Deep-water access. Rail and highway connectivity. Existing infrastructure. A workforce shed of skilled industrial labor that few greenfield locations can match.

Cleanup alone does not create redevelopment. Productive reuse requires demand, control, infrastructure, community support, environmental responsibility, and capital moving together.

NJNMA coordinates the layers required to convert that latent value into productive use. The work spans ownership stacks, environmental posture, infrastructure readiness, end-use demand, public coordination, capital alignment, and host community engagement, so that sites that would otherwise stall can move.

What this looks like in practice

Mapping ownership, regulatory, environmental, infrastructure, and capital layers on complex industrial sites.
Identifying end-use pathways that fit the site, the corridor, and the host community.
Coordinating across developers, industry, regulators, capital partners, and public actors to remove sequencing barriers.
Working alongside regional execution partners and structured redevelopment vehicles where additional capability is required.

Coastal Community & Economic Development

Coastal, riverine, and industrial communities along New Jersey's waterfront and inland corridors carry the legacy of decades of industrial cycles. Jobs that came and went. Tax bases that eroded. Sites that closed. Infrastructure that wore out. They also carry deep local knowledge of what their communities need to thrive: jobs, amenities, waterfront reuse, education and training pipelines, infrastructure investment, environmental cleanup, and a meaningful voice in what gets built.

NJNMA works with municipal, county, state, and federal partners to ensure that industrial and waterfront redevelopment advances community priorities rather than overriding them. The coordinating role brings community-defined priorities into the development sequence early, so that the result is durable economic growth the host community recognizes as its own.

What this looks like in practice

Engaging municipal and county leadership to understand community priorities before redevelopment sequence advances.
Coordinating workforce, training, and supplier pipelines so jobs created on redeveloped sites are accessible to the communities that host them.
Aligning state and federal investment with locally defined community benefit, not the other way around.
Supporting waterfront, amenity, and quality-of-life uses alongside industrial activation so the corridor is a place people want to live, work, and visit.

Environmental Stewardship & Coastal Resilience

Redevelopment that ignores environmental responsibility is not redevelopment. It is deferral.

NJNMA treats environmental stewardship as a structural layer of every project; not an afterthought, not a marketing line, and not a barrier to be minimized.

Legacy industrial corridors carry real environmental obligations. Coastal communities face real climate and resilience pressures. The corridor's long-term health depends on advancing remediation responsibly, protecting shorelines and ecosystems, and creating space for regenerative practices alongside industrial activity.

What this looks like in practice

Building remediation and environmental responsibility into the development sequence from the start, not bolted on at the end.
Coordinating with state and federal environmental agencies as project partners, not adversaries.
Advancing environmental justice priorities for host communities through transparent engagement and durable commitments.
Supporting coastal resilience and, where appropriate, regenerative land and shoreline uses alongside industrial activation.