Nearly 150 members of the public turned out Thursday night for a hearing on the future of development in Hoboken.
Mayor David Roberts and the Hoboken Planning Board initiated the public outreach portion of the city’s intended revision of the Master Plan, a document that will detail guidelines for future development. The Master Plan has not been revised in 16 years.
The positive atmosphere was markedly different from some of the contentious Planning Board meetings in recent memory. The audience eagerly and energetically participated, looking at Hoboken’s present status and expressing concerns and hopes for the future.
Before the meeting, Beth Mason, chair of the Master Plan Subcommittee of the Planning Board, said that this will be the first in a series of public meetings laying the groundwork.
"The point is to get the issues on the table," Mason said. "Then, the Master Plan subcommittee will divide up the issues, and future public outreach will occur on these topics."
Roberts introduced John Shapiro, a partner in the firm of Abeles, Phillips, Preiss, and Shapiro, Inc. (APPS). APPS is the consulting firm charged with revising the Master Plan. Paul Grygiel, a Hoboken resident and Master Plan Project Manager at APPS, was also introduced.
John Shapiro, a partner in the firm, then took the floor. "This is going to be a partnership," he told the audience. "Ultimately, this is your Master Plan, and you’re the experts."
Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
The core of the meeting was the SWOT analysis. A SWOT analysis looks at the community’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Shapiro broke these down into more concrete terms.
Strengths, he said, are the things that make Hoboken special, the reasons people choose to live here. Weaknesses are the problems. Opportunities are potentials like the new light rail. Threats are things that are changing and getting progressively worse. Shapiro encouraged the audience to contribute.
"Hold nothing back," he said. "Even if you think it’s a crazy idea, say it."
The group brainstorming session that followed was enthusiastic and dynamic.
Shapiro wrote as quickly as he could, and yet still at times he could hardly keep up with the eagerness of the crowd as suggestions flew at him. The mayor himself was an active participant throughout the meeting, and pages were filled with the strengths of the city, most were related to the solid sense of community, the history and diversity of the city, it’s many cultural assets, and the sense of identity here in the Mile Square.
The event was not without stirrings of prior battles, however. When someone cited the Bauhaus architecture of the Maxwell House building, the mayor interjected, "Maxwell House is a double-edged sword. It was built over where America had its first baseball game."
There is an ongoing dispute over a developer’s plans to erect townhouses and a park on the Maxwell House property, as some feel the project is too large. Others are in favor of it.
Several of those double-edged swords came up in the course of the meeting, with items like bars and restaurants winding up on both the strengths and the weaknesses lists.
Dennis Shah, who own a manufacturing business here in Hoboken, pointed to the geographical isolation of the city as an asset.
"Hoboken is isolated between the river, a cliff, and the railroad tracks," he said. "It’s only a mile square. This creates a very strong sense of identity." But later in the meeting, Shah added, "I think it’s important to recognize that we’re part of a whole. Our proximity to New York City will affect us. We need to look beyond our own borders to address our problems, or else we’re going to shoot ourselves in the foot."
The weaknesses, probably to no one’s surprise, focused largely on issues of parking, traffic, and transit, excessive residential development, the lack of open space, places unfriendly to pedestrians, and infrastructure problems, especially the aging sewer lines.
Vulnerabilities
The threats portion, relabeled "vulnerabilities" on the advice of Beth Mason, echoed many of the weaknesses. Particular attention was paid to the transience of the population and the lack of settled families. Additional mention was made of the loss of water-dependent uses and industries as well as the need to recognize the city’s limitations. A call was made for a capacity study. Others emphasized the need to address the infrastructure serving the northwest quadrant as it develops. Despite occasionally opposing viewpoints, the atmosphere remained upbeat and cooperative.
Opportunities included the new light rail, making more use of the educational, recreational, and commercial potential of the Hudson River, Hoboken’s proximity to New York City, and opportunities for more public-private partnerships.
At one point, the voices against any further development at all grew loud, and John Shapiro tried to encourage people to think of the new Master Plan in different terms.
"You can’t just shut the door on development, and it’s also not legal to stop it," Shapiro reminded them. "Think of it in terms of, how do we make development work for you."
Having assessed Hoboken’s present, the brainstorming then looked forward, toward the community’s future vision for Hoboken. One key question for Hoboken was, and is, does the city see itself as a city or as a suburb?
Christine Wright-Isak said, "You make a very public statement with the Master Plan. This attracts those who want to develop projects within those guidelines."
But Cheryl Fallick of the Hudson County Alliance, a local group that is concerned about big development, urged, "Take into account that a lot of what happened [with the development and the rising rents] was based on what was going on on Wall Street. Things may be changing. We may have created a problem in the long run where there’s a lot of vacant properties."
The final item for public input was "ideas," or suggestions for areas in which APPS should do additional research. This fast-paced brainstorming session included suggestions that favored a third station for the light rail, a Hoboken trolley system, no new parking (or no parking at all), lower speed limits, bikeways, zip cars, more historic districts, and utilities to be buried underground. One of the biggest laughs of the evening came when someone suggested a border patrol. At one minute to nine, John Shapiro called a halt to the community contribution portion of the meeting.
What’s next? What can you do?
Shapiro informed the crowd that future public meetings will be more narrowly defined workshops, either topic-based or geographically based, although the categories are not yet nailed down. Shapiro said, "We’ll take these ideas back to the Planning Board and work with the subconsultants."
Paul Grygiel, the Project Manager, then took over for the section on how citizens can get involved during the next two months while data is being collected and assessed. A document handed out entitled "Hoboken’s Master Plan – Volunteer Tasks" encourages public participation outside of the meetings series and asks citizens to identify and map or photograph positives and negatives within the city.
For other suggestions or ideas, the public is invited to send in any comments which will help APPS in this process. These can be submitted in person to the Office of Constituent Affairs in a sealed envelope marked "Hoboken Master Plan", via e-mail to
hoboken@appsplanning.com, or by mail to Paul Grygiel, Abeles, Phillips, Preiss, and Shapiro, Inc., 434 Sixth Avenue, New York, NY 10011. Those with questions can contact Paul Grygiel at (212) 475-3030 or pgrygiel@appsplanning.com.There will be another meeting later in the summer.
As Thursday’s meeting came to an end, Grygiel encouraged everyone to tell more people about the issues.
Planning Board member Beth Mason said, "We want everyone to feel that they are a part of this process," to which Planning Board Chairman Thomas Mooney added, "And everyone will be heard."
Reactions were mixed after the meeting. Some activists were pleased, while others took a wait-and-see attitude or suggested more talk about infrastructure.
Planning Board member Kim Fox said she was pleased with the turnout.
Community activist Elizabeth Markevitch, who has been looking forward to the new Master Plan, said, "I think there was a lot of consensus. Even when people disagreed, there’s a better tone of civility. This is what I expected."