Harmon Cove station may close

Changes for Allied Junction will move tracks

Despite past promises and agreements to keep the Harmon Cove train station open, New Jersey Transit officials say the station will be closed once the Allied Junction transfer station becomes active next year, leaving residents of the condo development to take shuttle buses or find other ways to get to Manhattan.

“What we’re being told is that people in Harmon Cove will have to take shuttle buses to Allied Junction in order to make their connection to New York,” Town Administrator Anthony Iacono said last week.

An inside source at New Jersey Transit said the decision was made earlier this year when plans to alter the direction of the Bergen Line were finalized.

New Jersey Transit will make use of its right-of-way through town-owned property to redirect trains coming into Harmon Cove. Tracks will turn south along the Hackensack River and connect with the Main Line, which goes through the south end of Secaucus. The Main Line will stop at the Secaucus Transfer Station, common known as Allied Junction.

“We’re just finding out the details,” said Town Administrator Anthony Iacono last week. “We have not yet received official word.”

Mayor Dennis Elwell has issued a letter to New Jersey Transit strongly objecting to the move, believing that it violates agreements made between NJT and the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission (formerly the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Corporation). The Meadowlands Commission would have had to approve the development plans.

“Somewhere in the application process, New Jersey Transit said the Harmon Cove train station would not be affected,” Iacono said. “We’re trying to get that application [to the NJMC for Allied Junction] now.”

Harmon Cove has 2,000 residents, many of whom will be affected by the change.

In public hearings held during early 1990s on Allied Junction, the issue of the station’s closing was among the most frequently asked questions. But according to Mayor Dennis Elwell, it is unclear who made the promise to keep it open. While the rail aspect of the Allied Junction project is New Jersey Transit, the commercial project slated for the top of the transfer station is a private corporation.

“We’re not sure who said what,” said Mayor Dennis Elwell, “though we know someone told residents the Harmon Cove station would stay open.”

It is true that in 1993, William McCann, President of Allied Junction, told residents of Harmon Cove that the station would stay open.

As originally presented by New Jersey Transit in the 1980s, rail plans for Secaucus showed the Harmon Cove station closing once Allied Junction came on line. Although Transit officials were believed to have changed their mind on that afterward, Secaucus officials recently heard new rumors that they had decided again to close the station.

In a sharply written letter sent a week ago, Mayor Elwell and the two 3rd Ward council members, John Reilly and Fred Constantino, said they were “shocked, angered and outraged.”

“At no time have we received any form of notification from New Jersey Transit about these plans,” the letter said. “We have been given no opportunity for input to discuss alternatives or to explain why this station is so vital to many residents of our community.”

Town officials have requested a meeting with New Jersey Transit and with various federal and state legislators in order to explain the negative impact residents will suffer as a result of the change.

The town has also issued a letter to Harmon Cove residents.

“You can be assured that we will diligently do everything we can to make New Jersey Transit reconsider its decision,” this letter said.

“We’re looking to set up a meeting in Harmon Cove so that the residents can hear what New Jersey Transit has to say,” Elwell said during a telephone interview last week. “But this would affect more than just people in Harmon Cove. There are other residents who use that train station.”

Many residents moved to Harmon Cove, Elwell admitted, because the train station was there. And though New Jersey Transit has not yet said it would definitely close the station, Elwell said hints in that direction have emerged over the last couple of years.

“Two years ago, we asked to look at plans for the new station,” he said. “We were shown rough sketches, not general plans, and the station was going to be located down further along the tracks, not by Harmon Cove where it is now. We were told they couldn’t put the train station on the bend.”

Since then, Elwell said he has heard “a trickling and rumors” concerning the closing, and that a meeting with New Jersey Transit at Harmon Cove will finally put the rumors to rest.

“We’re working on a few options to present New Jersey Transit,” Elwell said.

A change of plans

In its original proposal to close the station, New Jersey Transit claimed the Harmon Cove stop was just too close to Allied Junction in order to justify keeping it open.

Allied Junction is scheduled to open next year and will connect many of the existing train lines throughout Northern New Jersey with an Amtrak line going to and from midtown Manhattan.

Part of these plans call for moving trains from the Bergen Line to tracks currently accommodating the Main Line, which goes directly into the Allied Junction site. Plans to alter the direction of the Bergen Line – on which Harmon Cove is one stop – make it virtually impossible to keep the station where it is currently located.

New Jersey Transit is currently in negotiations with the Town of Secaucus for the purchase of a 16-acre tract along the Hackensack River, through which the Bergen Line will pass to get to the Main Line. While New Jersey Transit already has right-of-way to run its tracks, the purchase would allow for the construction of a staging area for trains (see sidebar).

Several sources say New Jersey Transit may also be considering a vast parking lot for the property and a shuttle service allowing commuters to park there and shuttle to Allied Junction for daily trips to Manhattan.

Impact on commuters will be mixed

Mark DeLuca, one of the principal real estate agents for Harmon Cove, said the shuttle service may actually help some commuters, since the train service to the station was extremely limited. Trains tended to run frequently only in rush hour and only toward New York in the morning and away from New York at night.

“This change may actually benefit Harmon Cove in the long run,” DeLuca said, “especially if New Jersey Transit increases the frequency of shuttles to Allied Junction.”

DeLuca, however, said the change would not likely negatively effect the attractiveness of Harmon Cove as a residential community, since it is still within a short ride to Manhattan.

Rhoda Traum, who also sells housing in Harmon Cove, echoed DeLuca’s statements.

Catherine Murray, a real estate agent who recently moved her offices to the center of town, but who lives in Harmon Cove and sells units there, called this “terrible news for Harmon Cove.”

Although residents may get to midtown Manhattan by making the same number of connections, people working downtown in the Wall Street area will find their commute made much more difficult.

“This is a disaster. Many people in Harmon Cove work or go to school downtown,” Murray said. “This is terrible news for them.”

Murray added, “The train is dependable even in bad weather. What happens when it snows or floods? What happens if there are 50 people waiting and the shuttle bus only has room for 20 people?”

Comments from the commuters

Commuters waiting for the morning train to New York said the news was disheartening, but not completely negative.

“Since I’m going to midtown it has less of an impact on me than other people going downtown,” said a woman in her mid 20s who has lived in Harmon Cove since 1999. She said she moved to Secaucus because of the train. “I like it here because I can take a cab from Manhattan if I have to and be here in 15 minutes.”

Another man, who declined to give his name, said he has lived in Harmon Cove for nine years and has grown used to the convenience of walking across a bridge to the train station. Although he works in midtown Manhattan and would be less affected than other people, he had his doubts about the change.

One commuter, who drove to the Harmon Cove station from Bergen County, said the change would be very inconvenient.

caption:

A THING OF THE PAST? Harmon Cove train station may soon take its place among the vanishing historic sites of Secaucus, according to a New Jersey Transit plan.

We can work it out?

After weeks of wrangling over the sale of 16 acres of land south of Harmon Cove to New Jersey Transit, the Town Council voted on Aug. 28 to allow Mayor Dennis Elwell to negotiate with the agency – but they may include the Board of Education in their negotiations as well.

The 16-acre tract in question sits just south of Harmon Cove Towers on the eastern side of Meadowlands Parkway. The land – which was set aside in the 1980s by Hartz Mountain Industries for possible use as a school – is required to be used for educational or recreational uses, according to a 1987 agreement.

The Board of Education deeded the property to the town in 1987 order to accommodate the construction of several ballfields – for recreation programs run by the town as well as provide space for local industrial leagues.

The proposed land sale to NJT became the source of contention at the Aug. 28 meeting of the Town Council when Board of Education Member Tom Troyer and Councilman John Bueckner grilled the council as to why the Board of Education had not been consulted.

School officials said deed restrictions state that the board has the final say on how the land is allocated, claiming the town moved ahead without asking the board’s permission. According to the 1987 agreement between the town and the board, the board could take back the land any time it needed it for educational purposes.

“Considering the history of that property, I would have expected there would have been consultation with the Board of Education prior to the introduction of an ordinance to sell,” Troyer said.

Troyer said the deed to the property contained specific language that clearly gave the Board of Education a say into the sale of the land.

Bueckner, who said he had been involved in the early negotiations, also said the board should have been notified, since the property was supposed to revert to the board if an education use was found for it.

“We gave it to the town because the town wanted to put ballfields on it,” Bueckner said. “The board was supposed to get it back.”

Town Attorney Frank Leanza said a review of the matter showed that both the town and the board have an interest in the property, and that he intended to meet with the board’s attorney to discuss negotiations with NJ Transit.

Troyer and Bueckner cautioned against having the board and town negotiate separately. Mayor Elwell, however, doesn’t think the board should be involved at all. “We can’t have 16 people negotiating this thing,” he said.

Troyer noted that the ordinance passed by the town leaves all the negotiations in the hands of the mayor.

“That’s unacceptable,” Troyer said.

Elwell claimed that NJ Transit did not have to pay the town anything because of an existing easement through the property. Elwell said the agreement would be a show of good faith by NJ Transit, and he feared that a conflict over the proceeds would discourage NJ Transit for giving the town anything.

Although New Jersey Transit is seeking to use the land as a staging area as well as part of a redirecting of the Bergen train line, which currently runs from Hoboken through Secaucus to points in Bergen County, more than one person has asked the obvious question: Why is NJ Transit willing to part with as much as $1.8 million it doesn’t have to?

Elwell said that once the rail line is redirected, the land on the riverside of the tracks became virtually useless for a school or a recreational site. One source, who wished to remain unnamed, said NJ Transit could be considering a parking lot. Current designs for Allied Junction prohibit massive parking facilities as part of the agreement with New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.

“You can fit a lot of cars on 16 acres,” this town official said.

The move would likely make use of a shuttle service to bring people from the parking lots to the train station.