Wait a minute! Sierra Club activist says South Waterfront commendation was ‘hasty’

It must have felt like a breath of fresh air to city officials who have been criticized in recent years for “overdevelopment” in Hoboken when a national environmental group released a report last month citing their development efforts on the city’s South Waterfront as an example of smart, anti-sprawl planning. Like any good politicos, the folks in City Hall did what they could to get news of the report which had been developed by the Sierra Club, a San Francisco-based organization boasting more than 500,000 members, into as many people’s hands as possible. Ads were secured in local newspapers, press releases were faxed and every city official seemed to try to work a reference to the commendation into their public remarks.

That’s how Jersey City resident Steve Lanset heard about the commendation – and that’s the problem.

Lanset is the chairman of the Hudson County Sierra Club Group, the local branch of the “volunteer-driven” organization that works with the paid staff people from all over the country who were largely responsible for the report. Wednesday night, Lanset went to the City Council meeting to express his disbelief that the group he volunteers with would endorse a project in his backyard – especially one he personally has concerns about – without his input.

“I was dismayed by the National Club’s hasty endorsement of the waterfront development,” he told the council during the public comment period. “That was made without consulting me or other representatives from the Hudson Group.” After the meeting, Lanset said that there were “serious size and public health concerns” related to a building that is being constructed between Third and Fourth streets on Hudson currently.

That building, a 13-story residential apartment complex being constructed by the Applied Companies, has been the subject of debate recently as neighbors insist that the plans that were originally approved by city officials have been changed to increase density. Residents of the building across the street have also complained that construction on site is kicking up so much dust that some people are having breathing problems. Applied Company officials have called the complaints “absurd.” They insist that the overall envelope of the building has not changed and that they are in compliance with all environmental laws regulating construction.

The South Waterfront plans came about in the mid-1990s through discussions that included local officials as well as the major development and waterfront activists in town.

Something missing

Lanset may have omitted one important detail when he made his presentation in front of the council, according to the paid Sierra Club staffers in Princeton who helped compile the report.

“At the time the background stuff was done to compile this report the Hudson group was under reorganization – it was not real active – and Steve was not the chair,” said Jeff Tittel, the Director of the New Jersey Chapter of the Club, Thursday. “At that time, there was no one to reach out too.”

After listening to Lanset’s remarks Wednesday, Mayor Anthony Russo said that he thought this did not have so much to do with the Sierra Club as it did with an effort on the part of his detractors to make the city look bad. As evidence, he cited “the fact” that Lanset was friendly with activists who have opposed a number of his policies in the past.

“What he was saying was bogus,” said the mayor. “The endorsement from the Sierra Club was so credible and so good that they would do anything they could to tear it down.”

Officials who work for the Club at the state and national level don’t quite see it that way.

“This was not meant to commend anybody or anyone,” said Tittel. “Whenever there is development there is going to be concerns and problems. The purpose of the report was to look at an area in New Jersey where development was occurring that was not just sprawl development chewing up natural resources. Against the backdrop of what else is going on the state, this is a good project. It is going into a place that was underutilized. It has a bike path, canoe access, a public park. Mass transit serves it. From a pure planning and design standpoint it meets a number of positive criteria.”

“What seemed to make people most upset was that the mayor tried to use it as a political vehicle for himself,” added Tittel. “In that respect it was the politicization by the mayor more than anything else that caused the backlash.”

Russo, who fought against two much larger proposed developments of the waterfront, said that the only point of taking out the ads was to thank the residents who had helped develop a waterfront redevelopment plan that more people were comfortable with.

“All the credit goes to the residents,” he said. “They were the ones who fought with me in the first place.”

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