As reported by GlobeSt.com, the two sides had launched dueling Web sites to argue their cases. Now, the battle has taken on election-style overtones as the issue moves closer to votes by the township's planning board and committee. Lawns all across this township of some 70,000 people 40 miles southwest of New York City have been sprouting developer-supported signs that read, "Middletown Together…Middletown Town Square…$3.7 million tax benefits for residents." Mountain Hill has backed up the signage with a slick eight-page brochure extolling the virtues of their proposed project.

Signs have been sprouting on behalf of the opposition as well, but their tack is much simpler. It reads, simply, "Middletown Town Center," but the words have a bright red circle around them and a bright red slash across them. And demonstrators for both sides have been regular visitors to the township's municipal building, which, ironically, is diagonally across an intersection from the northwest corner of the site.

For principal Joe Azzolina, Jr., the project is as much self-defense as anything. He asserts that the 132 acres will eventually be developed anyway, and "several developers have offered to buy the land for 'big box' or strip commercial development." He sees it as a way of controlling what eventually happens to the site, while providing the township with an urban core that it has never had. "It implements the New Jersey Master Plan and the Middletown Twp. Master Plan, both of which advocate new town centers as the solution to suburban sprawl."

The opposition isn't buying into that theory. Despite Mountain Hill's proposal to set aside 55 acres of the site as open space, as well as to build a new school to handle the load of projected new residents, Concerned Citizens is expected to be out in force at the township committee's next meeting, scheduled for later this week.