After almost a year of debate between City Hall and community activists over a blueprint for how the city’s southwest border should be redeveloped, a Superior Court Judge ruled this past Tuesday that the site’s designation as “in need of redevelopment” was defective because of a technicality.
In August, five Hoboken residents who live in the southwest part of town filed a lawsuit challenging the procedure by which the Planning Board designated the 15-block area as in need of redevelopment.
According to the residents’ attorney, Michael Rubin, Judge John O’Shaughnessy found Tuesday that during a June 2, 2006 meeting, the Planning Board relied solely on the testimony of planners who were not sworn in prior to making their statements, which is required.
Because of that technicality, Judge O’Shaughnessy considered the procedure defective and remanded the matter back to the city’s Planning Board for a new hearing in which all testimony is to be taken under oath.
The plan as a whole has been controversial because some residents believe the area is too flood-prone and too traffic-tied to allow the scale of development suggested in the plan. They also want more open space in the plan before the city goes forward with seeking developers.
The lawsuit was filed in August of ’06 by five Hoboken residents: Dawn Zimmer (currently a City Council candidate), her husband Stanley Grossbard, former Councilman-At-Large Anthony Soares, Southwest Parks Coalition President Sara Stojkovic, and coalition member Nishant Amin.
Although the decision was viewed as a victory by critics of the proposed plan, Hoboken’s Director of Community Development Fred Bado described it as a stall tactic that “doesn’t really throw us off schedule.”
Although Bado could not set a definite date for the future Planning Board meeting in which the area would be re-designated after testimony by sworn in planners, he did say it would happen within the next four to five weeks, sometime in mid-June.
After the Planning Board puts forth a resolution regarding the plan, it will go back to the City Council for approval.
Bado said he didn’t expect there to be many changes to the existing study, but he also refused to rule out the possibility of alterations if the planners feel that significant changes have occurred in the property over the past year.
Bado also stressed that O’Shaughnessy’s decision was not a judgment on the redevelopment plan itself. Bado said that the planners were not sworn in at that June 2 meeting because they were not going to be cross-examined by attorneys at the time, so the board didn’t feel it was necessary.
Reactions to the ruling
As could be expected, several critics of the plan were happy with the verdict. However, they admitted that the victory was at best temporary.
“It was great to receive the winning verdict; however, this does not mean that the 4th Ward is saved from overdevelopment,” acknowledged Sara Stojkovic, president of the Southwest Parks Coalition (SPC), a group of residents dedicated to creating park space in the region.
“There is much more work we have to do with the Planning Board and City Council to ensure that the southwest area of Hoboken is developed properly and includes a large park,” added Stojkovic.
Zimmer, a member of the group’s steering committee, was also excited about the ruling. She said, “It is my hope that the city will use this opportunity to conduct the comprehensive valuation, traffic and flooding studies which were missing from the old plan. Then we can bring residents of southwest Hoboken and the development community together in an open process to create a plan that permits developers to make a fair profit while maximizing the benefits to the community.”
Fourth Ward Councilman Christopher Campos, who faces Zimmer in the June 12 council runoff election, rejected some of the statements made by opponents of the plan.
“This is something we’ve been talking about for years, revitalizing and improving [the southwest] area of town,” he said. “The decision has nothing to do with the merits of the Southwest Redevelopment Plan; it’s a purely technical issue.”
Campos added, “The city has gone through great lengths to include the entire community in discussions [about the plan], balancing redevelopment with the needs of the community, not only the creation of open space, but of affordable housing and infrastructure improvements as well.”
What the plan does
The Southwest Redevelopment Plan consists of 13 acres in the 4th Ward, encompassing 15 blocks between Newark and Marshall streets from Paterson Avenue to the Jersey City border.
The plan aims to take a traffic-congested former industrial area, which is plagued by flooding and dilapidated buildings, and turn it into a thriving community that will be defined by park space, housing, and businesses.
According to the planners, the redevelopment plan will add between 2,000 and 2,500 residents to the area, plus a 4-acre plot for open park space, which will be achieved if Paterson Plank Road is rerouted and parts of Harrison and Jackson streets are closed. Both would require city, county, and state approval.
Critics of the plan have argued that it does not address important issues such as the impact to the district’s infrastructure when 12-story buildings and 2,000-plus residents are added to the area, or how the flow of traffic would be affected by such a population influx at one of Hoboken’s main two entry points.
Michael Mullins can be reached at mmullins@hudsonreporter.com.