Stevens Institute of Technology is expanding. Just five months after receiving approval for a two-building Academic Gateway Complex on Hudson Street, the school got the thumbs-up from the Hoboken Zoning Board of Adjustment on Tuesday, April 26 to finish their Babbio parking garage, which overlooks the Hudson River. The project is already partially completed and in use, but the university needed permission for the next stage.
Completing the waterfront garage has lingered for over a decade. A hundred and forty four spaces and a classroom building adjoining the garage finished construction in the fall of 2005, but additional work on the garage ceased due to legal challenges. (There were also 30 outdoor spaces completed there.)
The school got additional approvals in 2009, but needed more. Last month, the school applied to the Zoning Board to accelerate the phases in order to finish the garage by 2017. A building enfolding the garage, the Center for Engineering and Science Innovation, was also part of the application and will be constructed between 2020 and 2022.
The parking spots will be for university faculty, staff, and students, but there will be a public benefit, besides getting the cars off the streets.
“[As part of phase two] Sinatra Drive will be reconfigured to include one driving lane in each direction, with a parking lane on the east side and bicycle lane on the west.” – Richard King
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The 50 public spaces will be allocated in the Griffith parking lot across the street from the Babbio Garage.
Stevens, founded in 1868 and currently with over 5,000 students, hopes to expand its student body to 8,000 by 2022.
The garage is both intended to accommodate the growing student body and improve the aesthetics of the garage that overlooks Frank Sinatra Drive.
“Stevens is delighted to receive the Zoning Board’s unanimous approval for amended phasing of the Babbio Garage,” said Beth McGrath, chief of staff, in a statement to the Reporter a day following the hearing. “While Stevens is taking a number of actions to reduce the number of ‘drive alone’ cars to campus—and has made progress through initiatives such as transit incentives, installation of bike racks on campus, and participation in car share and bike share programs — the completion of the Babbio garage is a big milestone. Not only will it provide the required parking for the Gateway Academic building, but it will have a dramatically improved façade facing the waterfront.”
According to the current plan, the garage will also have a rooftop plaza with a seasonal ice-skating rink, an exit/entrance and an eight-foot crosswalk along Sinatra Drive.
Down the line
As part of the garage’s first phase, Stevens will wrap the garage in a temporary polyester membrane. The fabric will enclose the exterior of the garage during the three years of construction from 2017 to 2020 in order to obscure the unsightly existing edifice from the groundbreaking of phase one to the start of phase two.
A staircase, with a built in rail to carry bicycles from Sinatra to the main campus, is also part of the initial phase. The stairwell, which is designed to have a sitting area in the middle, will replace the current dilapidated wooden stairs known for their shabbiness.
“[As part of phase two] Sinatra Drive will be reconfigured to include one driving lane in each direction, with a parking lane on the east side and bicycle lane on the west,” said King in an email after the hearing.
Representatives of the school have been in talks with a number of groups throughout the planning of the garage like the Fund for a Better Waterfront (FBW) and Quality of Life Coalition, as well as the Hudson Street Alliance.
The latter group was founded to address the Gateway Complex application and spoke positively of the Babbio Garage at Tuesday’s hearing.
Stevens’ plans reconfigure Fifth Street to make a 90-degree angle around McLean Hall instead of down toward Sinatra Drive, but that aspect has not sat well with the Fund for a Better Waterfront.
The FBW have said they’d want to see a piece of property that adjoins Sinatra Drive made public in order to extend Sinatra Park north and, through the current waterfront walkway, connect with Castle Point Park. Stevens will have to come back to the Zoning Board presumably around 2020 but the school isn’t indicating that they will take that route.
The entrance to the garage, which Stevens plans to put on Fifth Street in phase 2, will temporarily be on Sinatra Drive.
“Discussions took place, but no agreements were reached,” McGrath said in an email referring to a meeting between Stevens and the FBW following March’s hearing.
Executive Director Ron Hine of the FBW declined to comment.
Conditions and the 50 spots
The hearing back in March led many to question why Stevens would make 50 public parking spots available in the Griffith parking lot and not the new Babbio Garage.
Stevens said they preferred to appropriate the spaces in the Griffith lot for a number of reasons, including security. Stevens’ police are weary that if anyone can park in the Babbio lot the public will have easy access to the campus buildings.
This past Tuesday’s meeting shifted the question to, how will the city monitor said 50 spots?
“There may be administrative issues with running that…and how to issue the placards for [their] use,” said Cohen, who noted that city officials will need to publicize the rules.
The parking spaces, which will be open Monday to Friday 4 to 11 p.m. and weekends 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., are slated to open in 2017. Their intent is for those visiting the area’s waterfront during games at the nearby Little League and soccer fields. But while said sports are off-season, the public can ostensibly use them for anything.
At the conclusion of the hearing, Zoning Board Attorney Dennis Galvin read a number of conditions Stevens must abide by during the construction of the garage.
These include making sure the garage’s rooftop plaza not be obstructed, offer the spots in the Griffith parking lot and maintain them when school is not in session, evaluate if additional bike parking can be added to the second, third, and fourth floors of the parking deck, and create road safety improvements in the area near the garage.
Steven Rodas can be reached at srodas@hudsonreporter.com.