Jersey City Heights residents looking forward to the construction of a new Stop & Shop supermarket on an empty lot near Summit Avenue may instead be see a school there in the future.
That’s because on Feb. 27 the New Jersey Schools Construction Corp. (SCC) took over the 2.8-acre property located within Summit, Laidlaw, and Jefferson avenues from its previous owners, the Stop & Shop Corporation. The SCC plans to build Early Childhood Center No. 9, a pre-school for 3- and 4-year-olds.
The SCC issued a “declaration of taking” and placed a $6.8 million deposit with State Superior Court in Jersey City after the court ruled in favor of the SCC taking over the property.
According to SCC spokesman Kevin McElroy, there are ongoing financial negotiations to acquire the property from Stop & Shop, since the company is looking for up to $10 million in compensation.
Stop & Shop spokesperson James Maglio said Stop & Shop will be appealing the court’s decision, as they still intend to build a 72,000 square-foot supermarket on the property with 218 parking spaces.
They also plan to allot space for a new police precinct building, citing overwhelming support for the project from area residents surveyed in the past two years, most recently in January.
There is already a Stop & Shop supermarket on Central Avenue that Maglio said would close if a new supermarket were built, and a restaurant would be opened on the Central Avenue site.
Many political officials and residents have stated either their support or opposition to the Stop & Shop.
Making his feelings known most prominently is State Assemblyman Louis Manzo (D-31), who favors the Stop & Shop.
Manzo issued a letter last week to the New Jersey Inspector General to investigate how the SCC’s able to find $6.8M when it was considered “broke,” and suggested the SCC build on an acre of property across the street for the site they acquired.Used to manufacture paper products
The property was once the location of the Davey Company, a manufacturer of binding boards and other paper products since 1840 that started their operations in Bloomfield, N.J. then relocated to Jersey City in 1923.
Many of the old-time residents in the area remember the fumes that would spew out from the factory, officially located at 164 Laidlaw Ave.
The company sold the property to the Rock-Tenn Converting Company out of Norcross, Ga. in November 2001. Rock-Tenn then turned around and sold the property in December 2001 to Laidlaw Avenue Realty, LLC, a company under the auspices of JDA Development, a firm based in Crowell, Conn. that officially owns the property and would be handling the planning and construction of a new Stop & Shop supermarket.
If a supermarket is completed, JDA Development will then sell the completed structure to Stop & Shop. They are what is known in real estate circles as a “preferred developer,” which large corporations retain in order to not have to worry about the responsibility of purchasing a property and developing it as well.
But in late 2004, the SCC entered the picture, looking at the property as the potential site of a preschool as part of their five-year $8.6 billion plan to build hundreds new schools or upgrade existing ones in New Jersey.
However, there were concerns that the SCC, if they somehow acquired the land, would not have the funds to start construction on the school, since they were short several hundred million dollars on 59 remaining school projects that were approved for $1.4B in funding from the state last summer.
And then there was announcement on Wednesday that an advisory board to Gov. Jon Corzine released a state report saying the SCC should be dissolved and the construction of schools should be placed under a new, independent authority that would oversee more carefully the spending on school construction. Save your money and build elsewhere
The unstable situation with the SCC factored into Manzo’s recent letter to the state’s Inspector General, Mary Jane Cooper.
In his March 14 letter, Manzo pointed out that the SCC had already spent over $1 million to study the Laidlaw Avenue property and is planning to pour more money into acquiring the property, which he said has “been nothing short of wasteful and inefficient.”
Manzo then gave his suggestion of how the SCC can save millions of dollars in building their proposed preschool.
“In reiterating the theme of waste, I would like to point out that currently a middle school is being constructed in the vicinity of the aforementioned plot, on a parcel of land, just a few blocks away, at Reservoir 2,” he said. “Ideally, the pre-school could be built on the same parcel as the middle school. In fact, the plot is so abundant that an acre-and-a-half of land could be utilized solely for the pre-school.”
Currently, the Heights Middle School is being built on Collard Street, scheduled to be completed later this year.
Manzo was at the Jimmy King Civic Association meeting on Monday night when he heard the news from Maglio, also an invited guest, about the SCC seizing the property. He said after the meeting that he would look into investigating how the SCC was able to find $6.8 million for acquisition. Mayor wants supermarket tax dollars
Mayor Jerramiah Healy also wants Stop & Shop to build on the site, looking at the bottom line – tax dollars.
‘They’re going to bring in about $300,000 in taxes if the supermarket is built there. We need that money,” said Healy. He also pointed out that there are at least 12 public and Catholic grade schools in a less than a mile radius from the site in question.
But Healy reiterated that he wants to see a supermarket, but not what Stop & Shop originally intended. He said he also wants to see some housing there as well and the police precinct.
“I want a supermarket but something scaled down so that it doesn’t hurt the businesses on Central Avenue,” said Healy.
Nearby residents also want to see a new Stop & Shop. Felix Cruz lives with his wife and two children on Waverly Avenue and works at JC Auto Parts on Laidlaw Avenue, across the street from the site.
“I would like to see Stop & Shop build a new supermarket,” he said. “I don’t ever bother going to the one they have currently on Central Avenue. Not enough selection. I or my wife, we go down to the Shop Rite in Hoboken, which is about three miles out of our way.” Anything but a Stop & Shop
Jersey City schools superintendent and State Assemblyman Charles Epps is in favor of a school being built on the site, since he believes there is a need for more schools in the city. Epps also defended himself against comments by Maglio at the Jimmy King Civic Association meeting blaming him for the seizing of the property, with Epps telling Maglio he should look at the SCC.
Laura Skolar, founder of the Pershing Fields Garden Friends organization and a longtime Heights resident who lives only four blocks from the site, said she definitely does not want to see a supermarket on the site.
“I definitely don’t favor the Stop & Shop, for the reasons of congestion and noise,” said Skolar. “I go shopping at the Stop & Shop they have now, and if they want a new one, they could modernize the one they have now.” Ricardo Kaulessar can be reached at rkaulessar@hudsonreporter.com