When you grow up in a housing project, you’re bound to get mixed feelings when the buildings are demolished to make way for the future.
One part of you might remember the after-school fights, the scary walks home at night, the street gangs, drug dealers, and the visible and invisible scars of living with tension and violence. But another part of you might regret seeing a place you called home vanish.
These are the mixed feelings that some Jersey City residents may feel when three of the six remaining Montgomery Gardens buildings are demolished on Sunday, Aug. 30.
The scheduled implosion is part of a more than $100 million effort to eliminate concentrations of poverty in Jersey City and recreate the area as a mixed-income community.
In place of more than 400 units dedicated to housing some of the poorest residents of the city, the complex will offer senior housing, affordable housing, and market rate housing.
The result will be a much smaller concentration of the poor.
Part of a much larger redevelopment plan
Montgomery Gardens stands in the shadow of the former Jersey City Medical Center, which was converted into a luxury housing complex, The Beacon. That means that for several years, some of Jersey City’s poorest and the wealthiest have lived side-by-side along a stretch of Montgomery Avenue that city officials hope to redevelop.
Mayor Steven Fulop said the redevelopment of Montgomery Gardens will help revitalize the Montgomery Street corridor and nearby McGinley Square.
On a tour of the property prior to demolition, Fulop, along with Jersey City Housing Authority Director Marvin Walton and state Assemblyman Raj Mukherji, provided the positive spin on the project. He said that while the new facility will have significantly fewer homes to accommodate the poorest of the poor, it will no longer be an area of high crime and concentrated poverty.
“We’re going to make sure that anyone who wants to come back to Montgomery Gardens can come back to Montgomery Gardens.” – Ryan Jacobs
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“This is a commitment Mayor Fulop has made,” he said.
But where will the rest go?
Although residents had input to the new design, the city’s own statistics indicate the completed project won’t have enough housing for all the poor residents who might want to return.
The current phase of the redevelopment will eliminate 221 and rebuild only 126, of which only 26 will accommodate the poorest of the poor.
Because the demolition of the buildings uses money left over from a similar redevelopment on Duncan Avenue last year, residents who were displaced there will be first in line for the newly-created Montgomery Gardens.
Mukherji said this number is uncertain, but could be a few as none, as some have already relocated.
Ryan Jacobs, spokesperson for Jersey City, said residents of the Montgomery Gardens are not being cast out.
“We’re going to make sure that anyone who wants to come back to Montgomery Gardens, can come back to Montgomery Gardens,” he said. “Of course, we don’t yet know how many folks will want to return. The three buildings have been vacant since 2013, and all residents have found other homes in the Jersey City Housing Authority system or moved on to the private market with vouchers.”
A long history
Montgomery Gardens was completed on Nov. 1, 1952, with 434 units, next to what was then the Jersey City Medical Center. It was built on the site of the Boyle’s Thirty Acres 80,000 seat wooden outdoor boxing arena specifically created for the famous July 2, 1921 boxing match between Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier of France. (Dempsey won with a fourth round knockout).
Montgomery Gardens was completed during the administration of Mayor John Kenny and at the time was the largest multi-storied low rent project in the history of Jersey City, and the first to be completed under the accelerated housing program plan.
City officials pointed out that by 1963, quality of life in the community was in a decline as crime rose and conditions deteriorated, with litter and other junk filling public spaces.
“Crime is always the top complaint of the residents,” said Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy in 2008.
A list of “block gangs” in Jersey City posted on the internet in 2008 refers to various groups in the city’s projects, including “Gun Shot Towers” at the Montgomery projects.
The city began to accept proposals for the redevelopment in 2008.
“It is obsolete,” then-Housing Authority Executive Director Maria Maio said of the complex. “We don’t have enough money to maintain properties like Montgomery Gardens, and we think mixed-income development has proven to be the best way to develop affordable housing.”
Montgomery Gardens at one point housed more than 1,200 tenants, most of whom left in 2013 when plans moved ahead to redevelop the site.
Affordable housing is not for the poor
The three buildings being demolished will be replaced by 126 units, most of which will be in the affordable housing range. In Jersey City, affordable means an annual household income of $54,000 or less. Ten of the 126 units will be market rate townhouse structures.
Most of the residents of the three buildings moved out two years ago into other buildings owned by the Jersey City Housing Authority or into private residences discounted with Section 8 vouchers, and will not be returning to this site.
One building is currently being reconstructed to provide 68 low income units for senior citizens. The remaining two buildings of the six buildings will likely be demolished in the future, officials said.
The townhouse and senior building construction is estimated to cost $104 million. This comes from a variety of private and public funds.
“We estimate the project will be complete by spring 2017 and it will cost, the developers think, $44 million,” said Ryan Jacobs. The company redeveloping the site is MetroBest.
The demolition of the three buildings is being paid for out of left over Hope VI funds, a program that the federal government has phased out, despite public acclaim for being extremely effective.
Mukherji said they are using the left over funds to keep from losing them.
Al Sullivan may be reached at asullivan@hudsonreporter.com.