The owners of the Hudson Tea Building at the northern tip of Washington Street were before the city’s Planning Board Tuesday night to request a variance for increased lot coverage on one of the blocks in their development.
While the variance is relatively minor, the significance of the meeting was that the completion of a 1,183-unit complex might not be far on the horizon.
Hoboken Cove had originally been proposed in 1998 by the financial services firm Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, which was acquired by Credit Suisse First Boston in 2000.
Discussed Tuesday night was much of the property that surrounds the existing Hudson Tea Building at the northern end of Washington Street. The entire development will be known as “Hoboken Cove.”
BDLJ owns the 525-unit Tea Building and much of the land north of 14th Street, except those buildings that directly abut 14th Street, including the Hudson Reporter building and City Bistro. To the west, the property is bounded by Park Avenue and the Park on Park garage on Park Avenue, and on the north by the Weehawken border. Most of BDLJ’s land, excluding the Tea Building, is currently parking lots, abandoned industrial buildings, or non-accessible grassy areas.
But that will change.
The developers currently have permission to build 343 more units of housing on the surrounding lands, but may seek permission to build 658 more instead.
In preparation, they would like to center much of the parking for those units in one large building, instead of spreading it among the first few floors of different buildings. This would make the residential buildings shorter. To do this, they would like to increase the lot coverage for the building that will contain the parking.
The project’s history
In September of 1998, the Planning Board gave approval to the BDLJ partnership to build an 868-unit, 1.18 million square-foot development on the site, with 5.9 acres of open space, of which 4.1 acres would be publicly accessible.
The developers have completed the luxury Tea Building, which started leasing its 525 apartments in 2001.
Since then, BDLJ expanded its local holdings by purchasing a parcel of land between Garden and Bloomfield streets north of 14th Street. This land acquisition has prompted BDLJ to rethink its plans for the area.
Thus they may later need to submit major amendments to increase the amount of public open space, but also to increase the number of total residential units and total square footage of the development.
The next step
Although the official amended site plan has not yet been submitted to the Planning Board, the developers are expected to request approval for over 1,183 units of market rate housing (that number includes 525 already completed in the Tea Building); 6.3 acres of open space, of which 4.5 will be fully accessible to the public; approximately 1,500 parking spaces, and 67,291 square feet of retail space.
In total, the developers are likely to propose around 1.5 million square feet of residential units. Five new buildings would be added to Hoboken Cove, including a total of 96 condominiums and some retail space.
But before the developers submit the entire proposal, they are seeking a zoning variance on one of the development blocks to allow for 86 percent lot coverage on a block that only allows 75 percent. Normally, variances for most projects go before the Zoning Board of Adjustment, but because it is a Planned Unit Development, the variance needs to be approved by the Planning Board.
The block with the additional lot coverage would hold approximately 1,250 parking spaces in an eight-story brick-façade parking garage between 14th and 15th streets between Bloomfield and Park. According to the developer’s planning expert, Peter Steck, by expanding the lot size, the developer would be able to optimize the parking spaces in the garage and put less in the other buildings.
“By taking the parking out of the other buildings, we are able to significantly lower the heights of the buildings on Washington and Hudson streets,” he said.
By moving parking to mainly one location, what were previously proposed as nine story buildings on Washington can be reduced to six, and the 13-story building on Hudson can be reduced to eight stories. Before that, the developer had planned to build residential housing on top of parking, but with the central garage, the buildings could simply be housing.
Some neighbors opposed
The only opposition to the variance presented Tuesday was by property owners who have land that abuts the proposed garage site. Many of them would like to construct residential buildings on their property and believe that a garage would drive the property values down.
Most of their property is presently zoned for industrial buildings. However, the city is set to present a new Master Plan for development by the end of the year. In that Master Plan, it is expected that the property north of 14th Street will be rezoned for residential use, which would drive up property value and give incentive to property owners to building housing units there.
Attorney John J. Curley, who represented the owner of Preferred Media, a microfilm production company that owns a 14th Street building near Garden, said that if residential units were to be built on that site in the near future, there would be a negative impact if such a large parking garage was so close to the property line. The garage, which would be by far the biggest in the city, is proposed to have a 20-foot setback.
An attorney for the owner of the Park on Park garage on 14th Street and Park Avenue also said that in the near future the garage might be turned into residential units, and so, having the BDLJ garage so close would not be conducive to a residential development because of the traffic, emissions, and excess light it would produce.
Michael Stefano, a local firefighter whose family owns an old industrial lot that borders the proposed garage lot, said that his family plans to build a residential building. He said he opposes the building because of the light, noise and traffic.
Even though the meeting ran nearly four hours, the testimony and questioning from the board and opposition counsel were not finished by 11 p.m., so the matter will be continued at a future Planning Board meeting. The hearing will continue at a 7 p.m. meeting on Sept. 25.