Decades ago, a massive waterfront structure sitting on Weehawken’s Port Imperial Boulevard was a headquarters for the United Fruit Company, with a pier where regional distributors purchased bananas from the Caribbean to be shipped throughout the country.
Hence the site’s unofficial moniker: the “Banana Building.”
However, for the last 25 years, the Banana Building hasn’t been the home for a single banana. Rather, it has been a decaying and rusting eyesore that was used sometimes as a temporary nursery or a repair depot for the NY Waterway ferries.
Now, after a decade of debates and plans of what to do with the Banana Building, the Weehawken Planning Board has officially given approval to Roseland Properties, Inc. to build 163 new luxury townhouses and condominiums at the site.
When the massive Port Imperial South project was originally designed and introduced to the Weehawken Planning Board by Roseland in 1995, the Banana Building was not included in the plans.
At that time, there was a standing approval to turn the area into a large health club and catering banquet hall. The Planning Board gave ARCORP, which originally owned the property, permission to enter a joint ownership with Roseland Properties three years ago. An application for a health club/catering facility was approved in 1995 and re-approved in 2000.
But over the course of the last five years, the real estate market has exploded along the waterfront. Suddenly, the idea of a health club didn’t appeal as much as adding more luxury residential areas to already booming waterfront. The idea of more residential development made more fiscal sense for everyone involved, both for the developer and for the township.
Fruits of their labors “We encouraged that the previous approval usage should go by the wayside,” Weehawken Mayor Richard Turner said. “We suggested that the area would be better served for housing instead. Roseland agreed, and about a year ago, Roseland came in with a plan for housing at the site. We had a sub-committee of concerned residents and officials sit down with Roseland, along with our professional consultants. Everyone agreed that it would be a better site with housing.”
The obvious reason for changing the original plans from a health club to luxury housing is financial gain. Luxury housing along the Hudson River waterfront is going from as low as $650,000 for an apartment studio to sometimes higher than $3 million for townhouses.
A health club or catering hall could never draw that much income.
It also represents another tax windfall for the township.
It’s not just the money! But there are other reasons that Turner was quick to point out. The amount of general traffic in an already heavily congested area would be decreased with housing rather than what would occur with a 1,500-vehicle parking lot.
The area would become more beautified and have more of a neighborhood feel, because it would parallel the townhouses in the first phase of the Port Imperial South project that have already been built and have residents already dwelling there.
Plus, with the township’s 16.5 acre recreation park set to be built directly south of the site in the coming years, it is a better idea to have residential homes next to the park than a commercial site.
“The whole idea just makes more sense with houses and condos there,” Turner said.
Although the property was originally given approval for commercial use, Turner said that Roseland Properties did not require a variance to turn the area into residential space because of the existing approval given to the townhouses directly adjacent to the north.
“It was made to have the same type of zoning as the rest of the Roseland property,” Turner said. “It just makes everything much simpler.”
The plan calls for 163 low-rise units, both townhouses and condominiums, which will include a two-lane waterfront roadway for easy access, a 30-foot wide walkway, additional public parking, and extra viewing corridors to see the Manhattan skyline.
“You will actually get [improved] views from the top of the Palisades to the shore than what you have now,” said Turner, explaining that the current Banana Building now stands about 50 feet high and only 25 feet from the shoreline, but the new housing will be built 70 feet from the shoreline and only 40 feet high.
Plants on top Weehawken experts are also working with the development company, headed by mogul Carl Goldberg, to put rooftop landscaping on the homes to make it more aesthetically pleasing for the residents looking down from the top of the Palisades.
This application by Roseland Properties was given approval in just two Planning Board meeting sessions, a far cry from the days when the Port Imperial South project was originally introduced and the Planning Board meetings and hearings stretched on for years – including litigation trying to block the project from continuing. The haggling dragged out the eventual development for almost eight years, before the first phase of 44 new brownstone homes began construction in 2003.
“We were very successful to put a plan into place,” Turner said. “It will be a nice neighborhood surrounding our new park. That was the most unsightly building on the North Hudson waterfront from Hoboken through North Bergen.”
There was no time frame given for the construction of the new homes.
SIMILAR TO NEIGHBORING PROJECT – The 163 units slated to be built by Roseland Properties, Inc. will mirror those already built directly to the north of the Banana Building, shown here.