A devastating fire last week at the Avalon at Edgewater, a Bergen County apartment complex owned by the same developer that will build a rental apartment complex on the site of the nearly demolished Princeton Hospital site, is causing renewed concerns among area residents and officials.

On Monday, Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes and Princeton Mayor Liz Lempert issued a press release calling for “an emergent review of the state’s Uniform Construction Code prior to the formal evaluation of AvalonBay’s plan to construct 280 housing units on the former hospital site on Witherspoon Street in Princeton.”

The state Department of Community Affairs is set to review AvalonBay’s plans for its Princeton development to determine whether they meet all present day requirements under New Jersey’s Uniform Construction Code. Ms. Lempert and Mr. Hughes said they will ask DCA Commissioner Richard Constable to put a hold on the review of the Witherspoon Street project until state construction codes are re-examined.

“I’ve been contacted by concerned residents,” Ms. Lempert said on Monday (see this week’s Mailbox). “And seeing the reports about this fire, one of the most alarming things is that the Edgewater complex appears to have been built to code. It certainly bears re-examination. We want to make sure that residents and surrounding neighbors will be safe. And if there is a fire there, we want to have the capacity to put it out.”

The fire on Wednesday, January 21 displaced more than 1,000 residents and caused flames big enough to be seen across the Hudson River on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, for several hours. Ruled an accident caused by maintenance workers using a blowtorch to do plumbing work in a wall, the fire produced smoke so thick that firefighters had difficulty getting through. Despite the magnitude of the blaze, only a few minor injuries were reported. But several pets could not be rescued. The fire destroyed 240 of the 480 units in the complex.

Bergen County executive and former Paramus fire chief James Tedesco III was quoted in the New York Times as saying “It was a combination of many things. Fire load and light-weight wood construction, and all built to code, but this is what happens sometimes.” He called the fire “if not the worst, one of the top two in my 39 years of firefighting.” Edgewater fire chief Tom Jacobson said, “It if was made out of concrete and cinderblock, we wouldn’t have this sort of problem.”

The blaze was not the first for Avalon at Edgewater. In 2000 while under construction, the luxury development burned down. AvalonBay settled lawsuits by people who had been displaced by the fire, and then resumed building with lightweight, wooden construction. It was that construction that allowed the flames to spread rapidly, officials have said. Governor Chris Christie has said that fire codes may need to be re-examined.

“We’re calling for this emergent review in light of the fact that the Edgewater building burned so quickly and so horrifically, despite apparently meeting all current code requirements” Mr.Hughes said in the press release.

Contacted last week, AvalonBay did not respond to a request for comment. No information about the fire was posted on the website the company has dedicated to the Princeton project, avalonprinceton.com.