Hoping to quicken the pace of the proceedings before the Hoboken Planning Board, the lawyers for developers Daniel Gans and George Vallone made a slight shift in the strategy in presenting their application for a proposed residential development on the site of the former Maxwell House coffee plant on the northern waterfront.
The plans call for the site from 10th to 12th streets to include 982 residential units, including townhouses, duplexes and apartments; 1,674 parking spaces, and a four-acre waterfront park that will be fully accessible to the public.
The applicants believe their project meets existing zoning guidelines; thus, they are not asking for variances. If the applicants can successfully prove that they meet zoning laws regarding traffic, parking, density, and other aspects, the Planning Board is legally obligated to approve the application. If variances are needed, the application would have to go before the Zoning Board of Adjustment for them to be granted.
Tuesday night picked up with the testimony of the project’s architect, Dean Marchetto. The board and the public spent a little over three hours questioning Marchetto. He is the second witness presented by the applicants in the process that began at the end of September.
When the hearing started, Gans’ and Vallone’s attorney, Arnold Mytelka, was ready to parade a host of experts before the board to answer questions about the project. But now that the proceedings have slowed, the applicants said they are only going to have a traffic expert testify. This move risked the alienation of some of those in the audience and several of the Planning Board members, because on Sept. 25, Mytelka had said his clients would produce an expert to testify regarding the designing, building and maintenance of the open space set aside for the park.
Since then, the developers have backed off that statement and said they do not have any intentions of producing such and expert. "We are certainly going to produce in writing a commitment that the park will be maintained," said Mytelka. "The developer has decided to do much more than [the city’s] ordinance requires."
Planning Board Attorney Doug Bern disagreed and said that consideration of the maintenance of the park falls within the domain of the Planning Board. "I think the board’s desire to know who is going to maintain this park is a valid concern," said Bern. "Maintenance issues such as this have come before the planning boards in the past and have been heard."
Mytelka would not say whether or not he would present an expert, but that they would "take it under advisement."
"We’re trying to speed things up," said Gans Thursday. "There’re a lot of issues that we could spend a lot of time talking about. We will present all the information needed to prove that this project complies with the city’s ordinances, and [we] are more than willing to answer questions when they come up, but we are not going to produce testimony that has nothing to do with the city’s ordinances."
Marchetto’s testimony
Most of the evening’s testimony centered on light and air issues. "In my opinion this project is designed within the limits of the city’s ordinance. There’ll be adequate light and air," Marchetto said in his testimony.
Marchetto showed an elevation drawing of the Maxwell House site the way it is now, superimposed on a drawing of the proposed site. He pointed out that the area currently covered is greater than what will be covered in their plan.
Board members Hank Forrest, Beth Mason and Carol Marsh pressed Marchetto on whether or not the new project would have a negative impact on the neighbors across the street on Hudson Street.
Even though Marchetto presented the elevation comparison, several of the board members found it to be misleading because it did not take into account the depth of the project. If constructed, most of the taller buildings will be directly on Hudson Street, while in the exiting site the tallest buildings are set back and well inside the site.
In the plan that was presented, there will be two 12-story buildings abutting the Hudson Street property line. Currently the tallest building on Hudson Street is six stories.
"It seems to me that if you have a building that is double the size and move it closer to the street, you are going to have a impact," said Marsh.
Fire chief signs off
Also presented Tuesday were a series of correspondences between the applicant and Hoboken Fire Chief Robert Falco discussing the fire safety of the project.
Falco reviewed the plans and suggested minor changes including installing a safe lock and key box for firefighters, adding a 12-foot safety road around the park, implementing a gated draft extension station so fire trucks can pull water out of the Hudson River, and installing better signage for apartments and buildings.
Marchetto made the necessary changes and Falco reviewed the revised plans and said in a letter that all fire safety requirements have been met.
The project’s impact on taxes
After more than15 hours of the Maxwell House testimony before the Planning Board, many aspects of the 982-unit development have been dissected. Items such as density, light and air, and traffic have been volleyed about, but what has not been mentioned thusfar is the impact that such a large project will have on the city’s tax roles.
If the project is approved and built as currently planned, the development will contain 982 residental units. Each unit will be slightly over 1,100 square feet in area, and the entire residential component will equal roughly 1,090,000 square feet.
According to developers Daniel Gans and George Vallone, the residential units will fetch $450 per square foot on the real estate market. That means that the residential portion alone will have $490.5 million in ratables, which are defined as property that is taxable.
The space in the development slated for office use contains 170,000 square feet and on the market it will go for $250 a square foot, according to the developers. That portion will have $42.5 million in new ratables.
The space reserved for retail contains $40,000 square feet at $350 per square feet for $14 million in ratables, and the 1,674 parking spaces at $25,000 a parking space garners $41.85 million.
When the figures are added up, the total tax value of the project is over $588 million.
Since most municipalities in New Jersey do not reassess property each year, the state establishes an equalization ratio for every municipality. In Hoboken, the equalization ratio is currently 69 percent. Thus, one can multiply $588 million by 69 percent to get the total value of the property that the city and the county could tax: $408,838,555.
If the overall tax rate for the 2001 fiscal year of $30.98 per thousand dollars is applied to the assessed value of the proposed Maxwell House, the project would inject a total of $12,665,818 into the city’s, school’s and county’s coffers in the form of property taxes.
To break down the contributions for city, school and county taxes:
The city’s tax rate alone is $7.84 per thousand dollars of property owned. So the project would pay $3.2 million in taxes to the city each year.
The school tax rate is $11.69 per thousand. If built as planned, the project would pay $4.77 million to the schools.
The county’s tax rate is $11.39 per thousand dollars of property. So the county would collect $4.65 million more from this project.
The $3.2 million paid to the city would make up a big percentage of the tax levy, which is the total amount the city collects from all of the taxpayers each year. Last year, the levy was $16.6 million. If more properties are contributing to the tax levy, then each taxpayer pays less.
(It may seem that with all of the buildings in Hoboken, there would be more than $16.6 million in taxes paid each year. However, some of the town’s residences are making payments-in-lieu-of-taxes as per decades-old agreements, so their revenues also help fund the city’s budget but are not included in amount of the tax levy. Other buildings, like schools and churches, don’t pay property taxes.)
"This project will have a very positive affect on the tax base of Hoboken," said Gans Thursday. "I think a strong tax base is especially important when times are tough. It’s hard enough to cut budgets and maintain a stable tax rate, but to do it in today’s economy is even harder. This project will compose almost 19 percent of the city’s tax base and when built, will make tough budget decisions a little be easier."
However, the project also might require an increase in city resources, such as police and trash collection, which are paid for by taxes.