Elon Musk’s Tesla cannot get enough of the Route 17 corridor and the boom in electric vehicle (EV) sales in Bergen County. The company recently secured site plan approval for a new Supercharger station at 370 W Pleasantview Ave in Hackensack, further cementing its foothold in the affluent and busy corridor.
Meeting materials from the Hackensack planning board revealed that Tesla intends to build a Supercharger facility that can service up to 20 vehicles and is located less than 5 miles from the Garden State Plaza. It will install a transformer, Supercharger cabinet, new light posts and build retaining walls along the south corner of the retail center behind Dollar Tree.
The new station will be located less than 5 minutes from Tesla’s Supercharger station in Lodi and will be the ninth Supercharger station in the vicinity of its showroom at the Garden State Plaza and three service stations in Paramus.
While Tesla already has nine active stations in the area, the proposed station at 370 W Pleasantview Ave, also known as Summit Plaza, could become a huge hit with owners of electric vehicles as the retail center is located immediately adjacent to the I-80 and Route 17 exchange, and three blocks from Route 46.
Summit Plaza is owned by Hackensack-based real estate firm Alfred Sanzari, spans 100,000 square feet and is anchored by a Stop & Shop Supermarket. It is immediately adjacent to the Pathmark Plaza Shopping Center, which has direct access to Route 17. Marketing materials from Ripco Real Estate state that the area surrounding the retail center has a daytime population of 35,870 while the daytime population within a five-mile radius is 580,398.
Tesla is also developing another Supercharger station in Rochelle Park, but the company has not provided additional information about that location. The car company has had a presence in the area since it opened a showroom in the Garden State Plaza in 2014, but it has come to face increased competition in the area as EV sales continue to surge. Data from PlugShare, a crowdsourcing app that tracks the location of charging stations, states that there are 36 total charging locations in the vicinity of Summit Plaza including stations operated by ChargePoint, Shell Recharge and EVConnect, to name a few. The app lists more than 70 charging locations between Washington Township just north of Paramus and Hasbrouck Heights, just south of Hackensack, and over 150 charging locations in Bergen County.
A recent report from the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority suggests that charging station operators are responding to rising demand from Bergen County residents, who have continued to purchase and register EVs at the fastest clip in the state. The number of EVs registered in the county in 2024 totaled 32,619 and accounted for 4.5% of all vehicles registered in the county last year.
