George W. Newman, owner and found of Allied Junction Corporation, didn’t start out his working career as a man with incredible dreams, but worked his way up a long ladder of success. Allied Junction is a proposed commercial development project in excess of 4 million square feet. It will be constructed above the Secaucus Rail Transfer station in the southeastern corner of town. Complete with numerous 40-story towers, the project could be one of the most ambitious undertaken in the state of New Jersey and it has won the blessing of state and federal authorities for its concept of combining local train tracks in order to provide another, quicker means for commuters to access Manhattan. In 1935, at the age of 18, Newman became a sign painter’s helper. “My father had died and I couldn’t continue school,” he said last week. “On my first job, I had to paint a sign 16 stories up in the air.” Although the experience scared him, he began to get numerous jobs in which he had to climb to vast heights in order to do the work. “I even worked on the Empire State Building for four days with a master rigger,” he said. “I was glad to get off that job.” Newman said part of his daily duties involved waking his drunken boss up each morning, until eventually their roles reversed and Newman found himself as boss. “I kept on painting signs, and then started to lease locations, where I could rent signs to other people,” he said. “That’s how I started Allied Outdoor Advertising – what I think was one of the best billboard advertising companies.” The concept of Allied Junction came quite by accident when in 1973, Newman was scouting out a location for a billboard between the Turnpike and a railroad line when he noticed some workers on the railroad tracks. “I saw some men working on the rail road, surveyors. I ran up the side of the embankment to ask what was going on.” He found out that the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad was going bankrupt. He decided then and there to make an offer on the land. “Anyone could have bought it, but no one else wanted it,” Newman said, noting that the $5,000 per acre he paid back then was considered an exorbitant price for swampland. Even then, Newman wondered what would happen if the train lines could be connected providing a quicker means of getting into Manhattan. He didn’t know that he had started a revolution in transportation, one that was destined to transform the whole of northern New Jersey as other people caught on to the idea. Newman went to Washington D.C. and met with then-Congressman Bob Roe. “He responded immediately,” Newman said. “He asked me what I needed. I told him I needed $406 million.” This was $6 million more than the projected project would cost at the time. ” Bob asked me what I needed the extra $6 million for,” Newman said. “I told him ‘pocket money.”