HOBOKEN — Tuesday, the city of Hoboken voted not to go through with the sale of its public works garage to S. Hekemian Group – the developer that agreed to buy the property for $25.5 million in 2008 and then wanted to lower the amount to $14 million. Now, the city faces litigation and has still been moving its own equipment out of the garage and into an uptown property. (See this weekend’s newspaper for an extensive article.)
A few aspects of the situation have concerned several residents. Wednesday, it was revealed that another business had a lease on the uptown property where the city is moving its garage operations. The city’s attorney assured the City Council on Wednesday that the prior lease would not present a problem, but some residents didn’t like the way that matter was handled, nor the fact that it only came to light after a member of the public revealed it. And questions linger about that aspect of the matter.
Meanwhile, both sides of the garage sale – the city and S. Hekemian – are working to ensure that it looks like they have met their obligations of the deal, so they can accuse the other of a breach of the sale contract. This is likely why the city made sure to move out of the garage this week, even though they are not selling it right now.
One Hoboken resident, who ran for council last year on former Mayor Peter Cammarano’s ticket — but asked Cammarano to resign once Cammarano was arrested for political corruption — emailed a letter to several people on Thursday, criticizing several moves made my Zimmer regarding the deal.
What do you think of his points? Comment below.
The letter from Michael Novak:
“At last night’s Council meeting, it was revealed that the city of Hoboken has apparently strong-armed a Hoboken small business out of its lease at 17th and Willow. The small business apparently commenced its lease earlier this year, and is waiting for minor variances from the Hoboken Zoning Board to start operating at the property. A few weeks ago, Hoboken (and Weehawken) offered the tenant’s landlord twice what the Hoboken small business was paying for the same space. Moreover, representatives of Hoboken City communicated to the tenant that they would ‘help them in relocation if the city stayed at the property beyond 3 months.’
As a member of the Hoboken business community, I think this is a terrible thing. What choice does the small business owner have? … Fight the City and his Landlord to protect his Lease, only to get his variances rejected at the City Zoning Board? This ‘taking’ of a private lease is patently unfair and shows the bullying tactics this Mayor will employ.
Not only is this unfair to the Hoboken business that signed the lease, this is yet another indication of the Mayor’s incompetence. After 3 years of knowing it needed to move its garage, the City started looking for new locations, merely weeks before it was scheduled to hand over the existing garage property to Hekemian (more than 9 months into this Mayor’s term).
Had the City legitimately started its search a year ago, they would have ended up with the same location but at half the price, and without stepping on the rights of, and interfering with the business of, the Hoboken small business.
…. And this only relates to the incompetence the administration has shown on the new location …
Two nights ago, the Council voted to pull out of the sale of the existing garage property at Observor Highway. After waiting multiple months subsequent to taking office to even start on the minor environmental cleanup activities necessary, and after stalling between each phase of the cleanup during the last year, the City is now blaming the Buyer for the City’s inability to timely obtain the No Further Action (NFA) letter it owes the Buyer to close this Friday.
I have been in this particular business (transactional environmental remediation) for 22 years, and have never seen a Seller blame a Buyer for the Seller’s failures to do its own work. Additionally, on a commercial real estate deal of this size, I’ve never seen a Seller, or a Buyer, think it could wait until the week before closing to submit a remediation report along with a request for an NFA.
This Mayor clearly expected the Governor would bail her out, despite the requirements of the NJDEP, and has jeopardized this $25.5MM sale of property through poor management and schedule maintenance. This was entirely avoidable.
Michael J. Novak”