When Cheng Tan appears before the Jersey City Planning Board this week, it’ll be like déjà vu all over again. A year ago, the city passed a zoning amendment that would allow him to build five stories on the property where his bar currently lies. But he had hoped to erect an eight-story, mixed-use residential development on that site.
Now he wants a new amendment.
Tan – better known as “Terry” Tan, the owner of the Golden Cicada bar at the corner of Grand Street and Marin Boulevard – has already beat the city in an unrelated, hard-to-win eminent domain case involving the bar, so he knows something about perseverance.
“I’m going to need an additional number of units and the density to justify the costs of constructing the building.” – Cheng ‘Terry’ Tan
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But the approval is inadequate, according to Tan, who said last week that a five-story housing development on the Grand and Marin site won’t be an economically viable project.
“Even though I’m not in the Historic District, I’m in an area that buffers the Historic District. I’m more than 1,000 feet outside the Historic District,” said Tan last week. “The city’s argument is that I should comply with the building standards of the Historic District since the Tidewater Basin buffers the Historic District, which only allows for four or five stories…But I’m going to need an additional number of units and the density to justify the costs of constructing the building.”
He also argues that “nicer, more modern” buildings require more stories and design elements not typically found in the tenement-style apartment buildings in the neighborhood.
This Tuesday he’ll ask the Jersey City Planning Board to allow a seven-story, 24-unit mixed-use development that will include retail commercial space, in addition to housing. Included in his plan will be six to 10 units of senior housing, he said.
If he is able to build at least 20 units in the building, Tan said, this would also enable the building to qualify for certain low mortgage loans offered by the Federal Housing Administration and the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development. Such loans make it easier for modest wage earners and first-time homebuyers to get mortgages.
For a building to qualify for such loans it must have at least 20 units.
The building could be condominiums, rentals, or a combination of the two, said Tan.
So what, if anything, has changed within the last year that makes Tan think his dream of seven stories will come true?
For one, the housing market, while showing some signs of a turnaround in Jersey City, is still sluggish. Tan thinks his project, and its target market of moderate-income residents and seniors, is what the local housing scene needs more than “these expensive [luxury] condos that nobody can afford to live in for $2,000 a month…It behooves the city to grant me the necessary height so that I can build the kind of building I want.”
And while he disagrees with the requirement that buildings within a district must all “be the same,” he’ll also press his case that his lot isn’t in the Historic District, and thus shouldn’t have to follow the building requirements of the district.
If Tan successfully wins over the Planning Board this time, the amendment to the Basin Redevelopment Plan will still require approval by the Jersey City Council.
Meanwhile, the bar continues to be open for customers, until Tan someday decides to close it so he can develop.
E-mail E. Assata Wright at awright@hudsonreporter.com.