For all of the people who constantly complain about the lack of waterfront parkland in Weehawken and those who worry about a serious shortage of recreational areas: perhaps your worries are over.
The township learned last week that it will receive a $1 million grant from New Jersey’s Garden State Preservation Trust. The funds will be used in order to build a waterfront park/recreational area on a 7.5-acre lot at the foot of Baldwin Avenue that the township purchased from Hartz Mountain Industries nearly two years ago.
The parcel of land – which includes five acres upland and 2.5 acres into the Hudson River – was the former home of the Hudson Tank company, which Hartz purchased from Hudson Tank for $4.5 million in 1985, but sold to the township for $2 million in 1998. It sits directly north of the Chart House restaurant and the Lincoln Harbor park that currently exists there.
When Hartz first purchased the property, it planned to build a 90,000-square foot office building on the site, but the township’s Planning Board denied the application to develop the site. After exhausting all possible usage for the site, Hartz sold the lot to the township.
With constant cries for help regarding waterfront park space, township officials recognized the need and decided to apply for the grant to develop the area into a park.
“Since water use has become more prevalent in recent years, like kayaking, boating and the ‘Floating the Apple’ boats [which will be docked in Weehawken next spring], experts told us that the lagoon area would be the perfect access point for public usage,” Weehawken Mayor Richard Turner said. “We’ve done all the necessary environmental reviews with the DEP [Department of Environmental Protection] and after we clean up the property, we plan to turn it into a waterfront park.”
Turner said that building a park on the site was always the plan when the property was purchased.
“As soon as we purchased the property, we applied to the open space grant people,” Turner said. “They were ecstatic with our plan, because we were turning waterfront property into park land. We’ve received $1 million already and we have an application in for the second million. We originally applied for $3 million.” Turner said that with the proposed township plan to build a park, combined with the Roseland Properties, Inc. plan to build a six-acre park as part of its development agreement, there will eventually be 11 continuous acres of waterfront park land for the township.
“Plus, we will have preserved that entire area from development,” Turner said. “Other than Liberty State Park, it will be the biggest recreational site along the Hudson River. The state was enormously happy with the idea and glad that they could contribute.”
As part of the Open Space-Garden State Preservation Trust, the township also received $500,000 that will go to foot the bill for the funds the township already had laid out in the refurbishing and restoration of Weehawken Stadium. Most of the funding for that project, which was completed last year, also came from Green Acres Act state money. The current grant reimburses the township for the money it put out to complete the stadium project.
Since the land purchase and subsequent grants have been secured, Turner said that he will be setting up a committee of recreation people in order to devise a plan as to how best use the land for recreation purposes. “We’ve talked about baseball and softball fields, a soccer field, a football practice facility, possibly even some sort of a municipal pool area,” Turner said. “It’s the first time in the township’s history that we could even think about doing something like this.”
Turner said that if everything goes “according to plan,” then the new recreation area could be in place within two years.
Turner also announced that the township received additional special legislative state grants to the tune of $125,000 from bills introduced by State Sen. Bernard Kenny (D-33rd Dist.) and Assemblyman Albio Sires (D-33rd Dist.) that will enable Weehawken to do work on the township’s parks, such as Louisa Park and Old Glory Park.
“The bottom line is that we are very aggressive in applying and receiving grants,” Turner said. “I’ve always received compliments from people in the state for our efforts in getting grant money. This was an enormous boost for the township.”