Two visions of traffic Experts, residents disagree on North Pier’s impact

By 9:45 p.m. Monday night, Gary Dean, a traffic engineer hired by a developer who hopes to build a 120-unit building on the North Pier, closed his eyes and put his head in his hands. Dean was the principal witness at a three-hour planning board meeting devoted to analyzing the potential impacts on the city’s snarled traffic patterns that building the structure may have.

While some of the meeting was devoted to sorting out a potential conflict of interest on the part of one of the board members (see sidebar), much of it was devoted to Planning Board members’ and residents alike attempting to punch holes in the engineer’s arguments.

The 120-unit project is being proposed by the Shipyard Limited Liability Corporation, a partnership whose principal owners are Joe Barry, the president of the Hoboken-based Applied Companies, and his sons, Michael and David.

If approved, it would become a part of the Shipyard development, a luxury development between 12th and 16th streets on Hudson Street.

While nobody would argue that traffic is not a problem uptown, it fell to Dean to explain to the board and to the audience of 50 residents who came out to watch the proceedings, why the addition to the project would have almost no impact on the city’s already congested roads.

Due to easy access to public transportation options, Dean argued, some residents of the new building would barely use their cars.

“The North Pier project will have no material effect on traffic,” Dean told the board. “[During peak hours] there would only be one car added for every two minutes. If we were to sit here for two minutes and wait, it would be a long time.”

This was not the first time that Dean has attempted to present this argument to the board. On Sept. 5, he sat in the same seat and made virtually the same argument. But he was asked to re-do his projections once the board found out that they had been based on traffic counts taken during the summer months when many residents may have been on vacation.

Reporting on the recount

Monday night, Dean reported that the recount he conducted in mid-September yielded the same conclusions. He also hammered home the point that his projections for the North Pier project were likely to be accurate since his projections for the Shipyard project – now under construction – have been accurate to date. So far, 504 of 1,100 proposed units have been constructed, and 75 percent of the retail space is filled, Dean told the board. He said that his projections for that project were right on.

“We felt that having data on how people would actually use the site would help,” he said.

Most people in the room – Planning Board members and residents alike – seemed to take Dean’s projections with a grain of salt. Under polite but aggressive questioning from Planning Board member Hank Forrest, the Board found out that Dean had not considered the potential traffic impacts that other add-on pieces to the entire Shipyard project may have on traffic patterns in the area.

Dean admitted, for example, that he had not considered the impacts of cars driven to and from a soon-to-be built ferry stop in the area.

“You don’t think we will have anyone drop someone off or pick someone up there?” asked Forrest with the tone of someone who really only expects one answer.

“There is no parking there,” is all Dean responded.

The traffic engineer also seemed to be unaware that an 87-slip marina had been added to the overall plan in the last year.

When the board gave the public a chance to question the engineer, they seemed to be less concerned with the minutia of the report he had painstakingly compiled and more interested in his general view of the traffic situation in and around the project.

Many seemed horrified when they found that he had not evaluated the oft-gridlocked intersections that are only a few blocks away from the proposed site. Intersections not evaluated included 14th and Park, 15th and Park and 14th and Washington. If the impacts at the site were negligible they would only become more diluted as one examines areas further away from the site, the engineer argued.

Still others argued that perhaps the counts should not have been done during rush hour, but at other times instead, when traffic may be even worse.

“Would it surprise you to learn that two Friday nights ago it took me about 10 minutes to go from 12th and Hudson to 14th and Hudson?” asked Steven Kosmacher. “And when I got there, there was nothing unusual.”

Dean responded with a slew of arguments including the fact that Kosmacher did not know if an accident may have been just been tidied up prior to his arrival at the 14th Street intersection. The engineer also pointed out that the date of Kosmacher’s ordeal was a day of unusual traffic patterns since some people had it off for Veterans Day.

When the meeting was over, resident Carol Marsh seemed to sum up the feelings of most of the people in the crowd best by saying, “his testimony was limited in its relevance to reality.”

Even when David Pearce, an attorney representing a dozen residents opposed to the project, questioned Dean about matters he had gone over a half-dozen times already, Dean stuck to his line.

“The level of impact is negligible,” he said repeatedly. Finally, just after 10 p.m., the board’s attorney, Jack Carbone, cut questioning off due to the late hour. The hearing will resume next time the board meets on Dec. 5.

Roberts sidelined for now, vows to return

A contentious Planning Board meeting Monday night began on a shaky note when Planning Board member David Roberts was told that his continued participation in the evaluation of a contentious project the board is considering may taint the outcome of the board’s conclusions in the eyes of a court. The project up for the board’s consideration was an addition to the Shipyard project, the waterfront development that stretches from 12th and Hudson to 16th and Hudson. The developers of the Shipyard, Applied President Joe Barry and his sons Michael and David, hope to build a 120-unit residential building on the North Pier as an extension of the 1,100 unit development.

Roberts, who also sits on the City Council, decided to recuse himself from the meeting after a lawyer representing the Barrys said Roberts might have a conflict of interest. Roberts owns a rental property at 11th and Washington that may be situated within 200 feet of the Shipyard project’s southwestern edge. According to state law, Roberts’ participation in the proceedings would be unfair if the property in question is within 200 feet of the proposal.

Normally these sorts of conflicts are cleared up long before the board actually meets. The tax collector routinely prints a list of property owners who may have conflicts for review by the applicant months before the application is considered.

In this case, the list appears to have been printed in June, but Ira Karasick, an attorney for the developers, told the board that he did not notice Roberts’ name.

“I would like to apologize to the board,” Karasick said. “There were 10 pages of names here and I did not notice Mr. Roberts’.”

After discussing the matter for 10 minutes behind closed doors, Roberts said that he would be willing to watch the proceedings from the audience and not ask questions, in order to ensure that the outcome that the board decided on would not be subject to a court challenge. Before he stepped down from the board he waved a tax map around in the front of the room which he said “proved” that the property in question was well beyond the 200-foot boundary.

“I am prepared to recuse myself and sit in the audience, but I do this under protest,” Roberts said. Planning Board attorney Jack Carbone then delivered a harsh rebuke to Karasick for not bringing the matter to the full board’s attention sooner.

“[I’m giving you] a verbal thrashing,” Carbone told Karasick. “You have upset and embarrassed this councilman, this board and this city.”

The incident seemed to be forgotten until midway through the three-hour meeting, when Mayor Anthony Russo came in, and, noticing Roberts sitting in the audience, went over to find out why he was not in his usual seat at the board.

Though the traffic engineer who was speaking at the time continued his testimony, all eyes were on Roberts and Russo, two men who used to work together but have since become political enemies.

Roberts is considering challenging Russo for mayor in elections next May.

Once Roberts showed the mayor the tax map that he had been holding earlier, the mayor asked if he could interrupt the meeting for a moment.

“This is very clear,” he said, holding up the map much like Roberts had an hour earlier. “As much as I sometimes disagree with Mr. Roberts, I think this is very clear.”

The mayor’s statements forced Carbone to re-explain the situation, but they did not put Roberts back up on the dais.

Later Roberts argued that the mayor had orchestrated the entire event since Carbone, who is close to the mayor, had suggested an interim solution that forced him to sit in the audience. It had all been done to make the mayor look good, the councilman concluded.

“Beware of someone who rocks the boat and then yells out that the boat is rocking,” said Roberts. After the meeting Karasick had his own interpretation of events. He explained that it was up to the applicant to “notice” property owners who live within 200 feet of the proposal. Only when they did not receive anything back from Roberts saying that he had been properly noticed did they realize that this was someone that they should be paying special attention to, he explained. At that time, several months later, “a courtesy call” was placed to the councilman, he said.

“He was fully aware that this was an issue,” said Karasick, “and he chose to do nothing about it. When it was raised at the meeting all he did was whine.”

While Roberts admitted that he did receive a courtesy call, he says that he saw Karasick at a fundraiser subsequently and that the lawyer told him there was nothing to worry about.

Karasick wasn’t sure. “He’s got a faulty memory,” he said.

The whole issue seems unlikely to surface again. On Wednesday, Roberts said that he had received an assurance from the tax collector that his property did not fall within the 200-foot boundary.

Roberts has not openly said what his view is on the project so far, but his political allies on the City Council have spoken out against developments on the piers.

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