Dear Mayor Roberts:
We the undersigned are writing this open letter in the spirit of cooperation. We have supported your attempts to improve the city. We ask you to listen to us now.
> > > We have welcomed your willingness to open the mayor’s door to diverse > groups of Hoboken residents who have met with you recently. We > applauded when you hired a competent urban planning firm and cheered > when they set up a generous schedule of town meetings on revising the > Master Plan. But we recognize that it will be years until that plan is > implemented.
> We fear that unless City Hall acts NOW, soon there will be no land > left to “master plan.” You made the point yourself, in your “Report to > the People” (Hoboken Reporter 8/4/02), that “there are some issues in > town that cannot wait” on the plan. You claim to back a variety of > important and creative initiatives. But so far, none mentioned in your > column have shown results-not public use for the Pino junkyard, not > developing green space at the Lipton Tea building and Academy Bus > parking lot, not the high-tech lab school on the Maxwell House site, > and not changes in the Northwest Redevelopment zone. (The city has just signed another developer=s agreement for three blocks there. Will the city relinquish all undeveloped parcels before the new Master Plan kicks in?) We don’t want to lay out here our longer list of examples, and each group has its agenda. But as the months go by, we have to say that the Master Plan looks less and less like a solution and seems to be working more and more like a stall tactic.
> What is holding things up? The most obvious place for immediate change > is the Zoning Code. We must prohibit the profusion of oversized, ugly, > ultra-dense dorm-like complexes that are out of character with our > city. We must craft a law that gives the Planning Board the legal > basis to reject applicants whose “traffic engineers” give fantasy > assurances of flowing traffic, while instead delivering clogged > streets, foul air, and parking nightmares. We must encourage > commercial development now that would attract employers for our > citizens and enhance the ability of residents to walk to work and > shopping in the kinds of stores we really need. A more carefully > thought-out approach to historic preservation cannot wait on the > planners. And unless sections of the Northwest Redevelopment area, and > the I1W Planned Unit Development Zone, are required to provide for > more of it, we can forget about “master planning” for green space once > the concrete is poured.
> You know the laundry list-you’ve contributed your ideas and commitments–and it’s growing. Time is passing; on some large projects > before the Planning Board, time is very short. Where’s the action on > the promises? Where is the political will? Has the vision changed? We > stand ready to support good initiatives. Before we have to hold more > fundraisers, hire more lawyers, and launch our own campaigns, we are > challenging you to get City Hall unstuck.
> > Historic Hudson Street Coalition
> Hoboken Citizens for Field and Green Space
> Hudson County Alliance
> Residents for Responsible Development
> Hoboken Common Sense
> Daniel and Diane deCavaignac > * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *