Dear Editor:
In 1992, a little less than a year after buying my first home in Hoboken, I joined an effort to stop a proposal by The Port Authority supported by then Councilman Roberts (now Mayor) to build a 23-story high rise on Pier A, instead of the park that’s there now. That effort was lead by Ron Hine and many others. A fight against a political machine that faced a public referendum twice. And both times the machine lost!
Now some 12 years later we are fortunate to get $500,000 in new federal money to continue Sinatra Drive along the Northern edge of Hoboken and who is now deciding that plan?
Not Ron Hine or the activists that fought the waterfront highrises in the first place. No, the folks in charge this time are none other than Dave Roberts, Bernie Kenny and a Congressman that just six months ago worked hard to stop a high tech high school from being planned on the Maxwell House site. A Congressman whose former Political Director now represents Developers of 1600 Park Avenue and The Meadowlands Xanadu projects.
While I agree the aid to finish a needed/mandated walkway and open space is great, I believe it should not go without notice that this aid will go to the landlords of the very property that now hosts Senator Kenny’s law firm and whose names appear quite frequently on Menendez’s, Kenny’s and Roberts’ ELEC reports.
When the folks that saved the Hoboken Waterfront are excluded and replaced by the very politicians that almost destroyed public access in the first place, one has to wonder what their true plans really are.
Councilman Anthony Soares
Hoboken