The Jersey City riverfront financial center will soon have a new park. Newport’s developers are almost finished with the Newport Town Square on Pavonia Avenue, near the PATH station.
Along with open pathways for pedestrians and green space for people to have lunch in good weather, the park will feature a memorial to the Sept. 11 tragedy.
“There will be granite monoliths installed in the park to highlight the void left by the loss of the World Trade Center,” said Ed Cortese, marketing director for Newport Developers. “The monument was part of the design.”
According to Newport Town Square Project Manager David Thom, four pairs of monoliths will be installed in the latter phase of the park construction.
“The monoliths will be of various heights,” said Thom. “When you stand among the monoliths, the monoliths will isolate a person’s view of Ground Zero from the Jersey City side of the river.”
Thom added that the Sept. 11 monument will be illuminated by lights placed around the memorial and surrounded by benches made from the same material as the memorial.
The soon-to-be-opened Square will be in a park area first constructed in the late 1980s, according to Cortese.
“There weren’t many trees there at the time,” said Cortese. “But as the office area grew up around the park area, it was decided to build the square.”
The design for the Square was the brainchild of two architectural students from the Pratt Institute in New York City: Maoz Price and Carol Sarhi.
“There was a contest last year to design the park at Newport,” said Price, who is currently doing graduate work at Columbia University, while Sarhi has recently returned to Israel.
Price and Sarhi were paired up to draw plans for the contest. Their park design was one of 12 that Pratt’s architectural students submitted, according to Price. However, Price and Sarhi’s submission was the only plan to have a memorial to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
“I was surprised they were the only students that included a World Trade Center memorial in their design,” said Signe Nielsen, a professional landscape architect. Nielsen was also the professor who oversaw the park design contest at Pratt.
“Along with the memorial sculpture, Price and Sarhi’s design has room for people to pass through on the way to the offices and stores in the area.”
“The main intention of the plan was to create a place where people could come and go with ease,” said Price. “Also, there are provisions for an area for concerts to be held.”
Thom explained that construction on the Square has been done in phases.
“The walkways and grass were put in first,” Thom explained. “The monolith will be put in next.”
Thom said the park was looking at a mid to late December opening date.
Once the plan created by Price and Sarhi was selected, it was turned over Marl Movitz, a landscape architect from the firm of Paulus, Sokolowski and Sartor.
“The plan was a little abstract,” Movitz commented. Movitz had to make sure the plans were brought up to Jersey City building code and modified to fit the needs of the particular community.
“The plan was devoid of landscape,” Movitz said. “There were no lawns and trees.”
Movitz incorporated green space and made the park more accessible to office workers for outdoor use.
Thom said chairs and tables could be used for dining by people in the area during the warmer part of the year.
“The park should reflect how people socialize in the area,” Movitz stated.
Sonia Maldonado of the Newport Waterfront Association, a tenant group, spoke positively about the park.
“I think the fact that the Square contains the World Trade Center Memorial is a wonderful gesture on the part of the developers,” said Maldonado. “Many of the people who work and live in the area of Newport lost friends and family in the terrorist attack. It will be a long time before we are over that tragedy.”