The Jersey City Planning Board at their Tuesday meeting approved a warehouse with 344 parking spaces and 159 loading docks for the western side of the city near Lincoln Park.
The AMB Warehouse project, an 878,000 square-foot warehouse, will be built on property that is being sold by the Archdiocese of Newark. The property was home to The PJP Landfill where chemical and industrial waste was dumped from about 1968 to 1974.
“[The project is] an effort to bring some of the large scale development occurring on the Gold Coast and the eastern part of the city to the west side and [Route] 1 and 9,” said Tom O’Connor, an attorney for the developers. “It is also a tax-exempt property that will bring substantial ratables to the city.”
The warehouse is slated to be built at 219-295 Route 1 and 9 between Sip and Duncan avenues.
No starting date has been set for the construction of the warehouse.
O’Connor said during the presentation at the Planning Board meeting that the 49 acres of land on which the facility will be built has to be cleaned of contamination before construction begins.
The board asked questions about how trucks would enter without blocking traffic on Routes 1 & 9, and the kind of signage being sought for the warehouse.No controversy this time This most recent presentation for the warehouse project was quiet compared to past discussions of the subject.
In March of last year, both the City Council and Planning Board first considered changes to the city’s land development law to allow the warehouse to be built in an area already zoned as the city’s Waterfront Planned Development district.
The Planning Board approved the changes, but the City Council had to postpone its own approval of the changes until October because residents living near the site of the future warehouse brought up concerns pertaining to the past land use.
Finally, in October 2006, the City Council approved the new Hackensack River Edge Redevelopment Plan, including the warehouse site. The new plan allows 137 acres of land between the Hackensack River and Highway 1 & 9 on the west side of Jersey City to be developed for commercial use and open space.
Starting around 1970, fires under the ground’s surface burned continuously in various parts of the landfill, the result of the decomposition of landfill materials. The fires were finally extinguished by 1986. Since that time, the site has been in the works for cleanup. The state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ordered the cleanup to be carried out by those companies responsible for dumping on the site.
The Archdiocese currently owns it, and is in the process of selling it to the AMB company contingent on AMB receiving city approvals. Ricardo Kaulessar can be reached at rkaulessar@hudsonreporter.com