Back on track

Development plan for rail yards approved by City Council

The Hoboken City Council has approved a sweeping plan to turn 36 acres of defunct rail yards into a dense mixed-use neighborhood oriented around Hoboken’s public transit hub. Unquestionably the most significant city planning project approved in the city since 1997, the Hoboken Yards development set in motion on Wednesday has the potential to rival the South Waterfront project in its size and economic impact.
Built to maximum specifications, the plan would add eight buildings, three of them as tall or taller than Hoboken’s tallest current building. It would include 583 residential units, 803 parking spaces, 1.5 million square feet of office space, and 129,000 square feet of retail space. All told, it could encompass 2.3 million square feet of new development.
New Jersey Transit owns the land and has sought city permission to build on it for at least a decade. Their initial 2008 proposal called for 9.2 million square feet of development on the site, including a 70-story office tower and a 50-story residential tower.
After strongly negative public reaction and a subsequent change in city government, Mayor Dawn Zimmer and the City Council hired planning firm Wallace Roberts Todd to help produce their own concept for the area in February 2011. The document approved Wednesday is the final product of that process, guided by a four-member council subcommittee.
If enacted successfully, the Hoboken Yards Redevelopment Plan has the potential to address a bevy of chronic issues, revitalizing the entryway to Hoboken, expanding the tax base, creating new jobs, and alleviating traffic.
However, many residents expressed fears that the Hoboken Yards would have the opposite effect, exacerbating flooding and congestion in Hoboken’s southern transit corridor while detonating Hoboken’s historically low-rise, residential character.

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“I don’t think New Jersey Transit is going anywhere.” – Councilman James Doyle
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The plan was approved by an 8 to 1 vote. Councilwoman Beth Mason said she could not support the plan, calling it another example of “too big to fail.”
Several other council members expressed discomfort with its potential height and promised to press NJ Transit hard in any future negotiations regarding the project. The city will still have to approve NJ Transit’s specific building designs before they can be built.

Out of character?

Many of the public speakers on Wednesday came from Hoboken’s development-wary civil society. They warned that the City Council was in danger of jeopardizing the small-town scale that has been Hoboken’s watchword for decades.
“Hoboken is a community,” said Cheryl Fallick, a member of the Hoboken Fair Housing Association. “You can’t buy that, and I hope you can’t sell it.”
Paul Somerville, an outgoing commissioner on the Hoboken Historic Preservation Commission, predicted that the new mixed-use development would behave as a city unto itself, not unlike Jersey City’s Newport or Crystal City in Arlington, Va.
At a special meeting on the Hoboken Yards last week, council members stressed the limited menu of options in front of them – too small of a plan could be vulnerable to a legal challenge from NJ Transit as economically infeasible, while delivering no plan at all could trigger state-level changes that remove Hoboken’s influence altogether.
But Ron Hine, the executive director of the Fund for a Better Waterfront, cast doubt on the prospect of an imminent state takeover. While a bill allowing NJ Transit to supersede local zoning was proposed in 2009, he noted, it had a single sponsor and did not make it out of committee.
“If you’re voting for this redevelopment plan tonight out of fear that this will soon become law,” said Hine, “that would be a mistake.”
Not all resident speakers hoped to see the project defeated.
“The competition that we’re getting from Jersey City is immense,” said Eugene Flinn, the owner of three restaurants in Hoboken. “If we have the opportunity to grow our businesses, we become a stronger community.”
Others said they looked forward to the construction jobs the new development would create.
The maximum height and overall size of the Hoboken Yards project were increased after Superstorm Sandy to offset the cost of an additional $18 million in mandatory flood mitigation measures, according to an economic analysis produced for the city.

Not afraid

The council subcommittee members behind the Hoboken Yards plan insisted that fear of state-level reform was not the primary motivating factor behind their decision to pursue large-scale development.
“Every time you drive up Observer Highway, you see an unpleasant rail yard,” said Councilman Michael Russo, “and that to me is just unacceptable.” Russo said he is convinced the proposed development would change Hoboken for the better.
Russo had choice words for those speakers who had suggested the council was ignoring their criticisms.
“Because those arguments don’t rise to the level and the merits are not good enough to change my views on a project does not mean that I didn’t consider them,” he said.
While candid about his distaste for the size for the plan, Councilman James Doyle maintained that it was necessary to push it forward, not out of fear but a sense of “risk management.” He cautioned strongly against pursuing a plan that would have to be defended in court.
“Litigation is a tool if either you think you’re going to win or if your goal is solely to stall,” said Doyle, “but I don’t think New Jersey Transit is going anywhere.”
Councilman Tim Occhipinti called descriptions of the new plan as bad or inconceivable an “insult” to the committee, the mayor’s administration, and the professionals behind it.
He highlighted a number of public benefits mandated by the plan, including at least 58 new affordable units, an as-yet unspecified contribution by NJ Transit to the open space trust fund, and a new pedestrian plaza adjacent to the Hoboken Terminal.
Those givebacks remained unsatisfactory for some members of the public.
“It is a bitter pill that the city, we are told, has to swallow,” said Helen Manogue of the Hoboken Quality of Life Coalition, “with little or no sugar being applied to make the swallowing a bit less difficult.”

Next steps

Putting a plan in place is a crucial step, but Hoboken could still be years away from the beginning of construction in the rail yards. The next step is to designate a conditional developer and ink an interim cost agreement that will cover traffic modeling and other necessary studies.
As of Wednesday, Community Development Director Brandy Forbes couldn’t say whether the designee would be NJ Transit or LCOR, the firm NJ Transit has designated as its “master planner and developer” for the rail yard property.
That designation will set the stage for the real negotiations over the redevelopment agreement itself. Zimmer and the council have stressed repeatedly that many of the concerns highlighted by residents, from tax abatements to open space to expanding city streets, will only be addressed within this agreement, which sets the true as-of-right zoning for the area.
In fact, the city will likely sign a separate agreement for each phase of the project, and possibly for individual buildings, as was done with the South Waterfront redevelopment area.
On Wednesday, council members promised to advocate strongly for the city’s interests in upcoming negotiations, emphasizing that nothing would be built if they are not satisfied. If the real estate market improves significantly, Councilman Doyle pledged to push for a corresponding drop in the height of the project.
A spokesman for NJ Transit said the agency has no official comment on the approved plan in deference to its ongoing negotiations with the city. However, a letter sent to Hoboken’s City Council and Planning Board by NJ Transit in early December detailed a number of objections and questions regarding the plan. A particular focus was the three design alternatives presented for NJ Transit’s bus shed, all of which the agency warned would interfere with their ability to “provide efficient, coordinated, safe, and responsive public transportation.”

Carlo Davis may be reached at cdavis@hudsonreporter.com.

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