Why would a two-acre-zoned, hedge-lined borough of roughly 3,000 people suddenly need a putting green, a gallery opening, and a barn moving corner to corner across town in the same twelve months?
None of these three things were planned together. One came out of the Parks and Recreation budget, one came from a brand-new arts council partnering with a local gallery, and one came out of a Planning Board resolution that had been stuck in escrow since 2023. But if you live in Saddle River and you've only noticed one of these, a bid notice here, an invitation there, you're missing how unusual it is that all three landed in the same year.
The Barn That's Finally Leaving Apple Ridge Road
The most visible of the three sits at the corner of East Allendale and West Saddle River Roads, where the old Exxon station used to be. That lot has been empty since the station closed in 2005, and the borough eventually bought it, though what to do with it sat under discussion for years after a committee formed to weigh options in 2017.
The answer arrived on November 3, 2025, when the Planning Board passed a resolution releasing escrow funds tied to a 2023 property sale. The funds had been set aside by a trust established by the family that owns Perillo Tours, and they're now financing the disassembly and reconstruction of a 25-by-36-foot barn from its current spot at 4 Apple Ridge Road. The barn dates to the 1800s and sits on what was once the landmarked property of John George Achenbach's 19th-century Dutch colonial house, a property that got split into two lots back in 2002 under a soil-removal permit that came with a condition nobody ever fully enforced: move the barn.
That condition finally has a real deadline. Preliminary estimates for the move ran as high as $130,000, but the borough now expects the project to cost closer to $58,000, with the borough contributing $19,000 and Steven Perillo covering the balance personally. Once it's reassembled on the borough-owned corner, the barn will get its original doors and details restored, and a well and electrical connections already on the property will eventually be hooked up under future budgets.
Mayor Albert Kurpis framed the project as continuing work started by a predecessor:
"Building on the leadership of former Mayor Sam Raia, the governing body and I are honored to continue that legacy by rescuing an authentic piece of Saddle River's past from demolition and giving it new life opposite our landmark buildings in our Historic District."
You can read the full breakdown of the financing, including the borough attorney's statement on Perillo's personal contribution, on NorthJersey.com or on the borough's own historic barn page.
Rindlaub Park Is Getting Two Things at Once
If the barn is the story everyone's already noticed, Rindlaub Park is the one that hasn't quite registered yet. The park behind Borough Hall has long carried the workhorse role in town: ball fields, tennis courts, a jogging trail, and an amphitheater that hosts the borough's public gatherings.
This year, the borough put two separate improvement projects out to bid for that same park. According to the scope of work on file, the additions include:
- A multi-purpose rubber path expansion, with the site prep, clearing, and stump removal that comes with it
- Landscaping upgrades, including new trees and garden beds along the path
- A roughly 1,000-square-foot artificial putting green
Neither project shows up as completed yet in anything the borough has published, so treat this as construction in progress rather than a ribbon already cut. But the combination is telling. A rubber-surfaced path is an accessibility upgrade, the kind of thing that matters for strollers, walkers, and anyone who doesn't want to navigate grass or gravel. A putting green is a leisure amenity, not a utility one. Building both in the same bid cycle suggests the borough isn't just maintaining Rindlaub Park, it's expanding what the park is for. You can track the current bid postings directly through the Borough of Saddle River's solicitations page.
The Borough's First Gallery Show
The third piece of this is the quietest, and it's the one most likely to slip past anyone who isn't already on the borough's mailing list. The Saddle River Arts Council, working with the Paul Larsen Gallery, held its opening reception for an exhibition called "This is Life: Reflections in Sculpture." The borough's own announcement described it as the pairing's inaugural exhibition, with light refreshments served at the reception.
An inaugural show means there wasn't a Saddle River Arts Council exhibition to point to before this one. That's a genuinely new civic institution taking its first public step, not a returning annual event. Details on future programming weren't available at the time of writing, so if a gallery show is the kind of thing you'd plan an evening around, it's worth checking the borough's news page directly for what comes next.
Three Committees, One Year
Here's the part that's easy to miss if you only encounter these one at a time. The barn came out of the Planning Board. The park upgrades came out of Parks and Recreation, working through the borough's standard bid process. The gallery show came out of an arts council that didn't have an exhibition history to speak of before this one. Three different parts of borough government, moving on three unrelated timelines, all produced something visible in the same calendar year.
Small-town government doesn't usually work that way. More often, one project eats the budget attention for a year and everything else waits. What happened instead in Saddle River this year was closer to several long-stalled or newly formed efforts all clearing their own separate hurdles around the same time: an escrow account finally released, a bid cycle that happened to include two park projects instead of one, and a new arts partnership reaching its first public event. It's also worth noting that 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and towns across Bergen County have used the occasion to fund or highlight local history projects this year. That broader context doesn't explain every piece of this, but it's a reasonable part of why a preservation project like the barn move found its moment now rather than in some other year.
If you've lived in Saddle River for a while, you already know the ball fields at Rindlaub Park, you've probably driven past the old Exxon corner a hundred times without a second thought, and you may or may not have heard about a gallery reception through the borough's email list. Put together, though, this is a more active year for public-facing investment than the borough has had in some time, and it's happening in three places most residents wouldn't naturally connect.
If you're weighing what a year like this signals about the character of the town, whether you already call Saddle River home or you're thinking about what life here actually looks like week to week, the team at Christian Di Stasio spends its time tracking exactly these kinds of local details. If you'd like to talk through what's changing in the borough or anywhere else in Bergen County, schedule a white-glove consultation and we'll walk you through it.
