Dear Editor:
Nobody is opposed to the idea of Union City attracting development with its promise of additional tax revenues, but anyone with a shred of common sense is opposed to assembly line approval by the Board of Adjustment of applications without concern for the problem of parking.
In February the board approved a grotesquely oversized apartment complex on a vacant 50-foot lot on Manhattan Avenue. With nine stories, it does not fit in to a neighborhood of low-rise structures, and with 40 bedrooms on such a small lot, it represents a mindless overuse. The ordinance calls for 27 on-site parking spaces, which would be totally inadequate. The developer asked for a waiver to 18 spaces, and his request, which was actually a request for an unnecessarily big payday, was speedily granted. Not only does this reduce the quality of life for those of us who live there, but the biggest victims will be the newcomers who invest money and emotions in moving in, only to find they bought in to a critical shortage of parking.
Our neighborhood is already holding its collective breath waiting for six or eight vehicles to be dumped on its streets from a loft conversion at the corner of 16th Street and Mountain Road – which was approved with no parking – and the tenanting of a long-empty, newly refurbished six-family building on the corner of Cliff Street and Mountain Road, also with no on-site parking. Those apartments are so big that within six months they will be sublet and the number of vehicles seeking spaces will rise from 12 to at least 20. Already we have corners blocked overnight, hydrants intruded upon and sidewalks closed off with illegal parking.
While residents of our neighborhood were attending Board of Adjustment meetings trying to get the Manhattan Avenue project reduced to a reasonable size, we learned Mayor Stack met with the developer and told him he welcomed the project.
When is this totally unacceptable approach to parking going to end? Soon Union City will grind to a halt, even as Hoboken has, with people declining evening engagements rather than give up their spaces.
Tom Sullivan