After about a year of working with New Jersey Transit, the Union City Redevelopment Agency may finally see some progress at the old New Jersey Transit bus depot site on 27th Street and Bergenline Avenue.
New Jersey Transit will eventually sell the property to a private developer of residential and commercial property. The city of Union City, as per an earlier agreement between the two entities, will get 40 percent of the proceeds. But first, the land has to be inspected to determine if there are contaminants. If so, New Jersey Transit will have to clean up, or remediate, the property.
Lou Flora, counsel for the Union City Redevelopment Agency, said at the Redevelopment Agency meeting Oct. 4 that New Jersey Transit has agreed to perform further environmental studies on the site.
According to Flora, representatives from the city and New Jersey Transit met on Oct. 1 to discuss remediation of the two-block lot. These representatives set up a time line of six to eight weeks to perform a further study on the area.
"They agreed to perform a further study to determine what the true environmental condition is on the property and how much the total remediation is going to cost," said Flora.
"We are continuing to work with the city," said New Jersey Transit Senior Information Officer Michael Klufas. "We will be performing an additional environmental study and will continue to make the area ready for development."
Environmental concerns
The bus depot property was deemed an area in need of redevelopment more than a year ago. Since then, the city has rezoned the two-block area to allow for both commercial and residential use.
However, the city cannot build a residential complex on the property until the state Department of Environmental Protection approves the site. Since the site was a bus garage, there are concerns about contaminants on the land.
New Jersey Transit has agreed that they are responsible for the remediation, but has yet to move on the studies. "They [New Jersey Transit representatives] confessed that they were not moving quickly," said Flora about comments made at the Oct. 1 meeting with the transit agency.
The Redevelopment Agency is responsible for controlling and directing the development on parts of town deemed by the Board of Commissioners as redevelopment areas. The depot was the first property deemed a redevelopment area under the city’s Redevelopment Agency, formed during former Mayor Raul "Rudy" Garcia’s term, which ended October 2000.
Although this was the first area that the Redevelopment Agency was working with, Union City mayor Brian Stack said that other properties will most likely be developed first. The agency is also working with the property surrounding the Yardley building on Palisade Avenue and Sixth Street and the Swiss Town Property on 33rd Street and Hudson Avenue, as well as other redevelopment areas in the city.
As for the bus depot property, the first development proposal was made by Treeco, a northern New Jersey based development firm, but it was rejected by the agency. The proposal was for a large supermarket with a 115-spot parking garage.
Two years ago, then-Mayor Rudy Garcia included money from the proposed sale of the site in a city budget, but because the site was not ready for sale, the city had to scramble to fill a budget hole.