The Board of Freeholders voted Tuesday to uphold a 2012 decision by the Hudson County Planning Board to reject a plan to build two 11-story residential towers on a pier on the northeast corner of Hoboken. The ruling will prevent Shipyard Associates LP from moving forward with construction of its Monarch at Shipyard project for the time being, although the freeholders’ ruling falls under the jurisdiction of a New Jersey appellate court and could be subject to further legal challenges.
The Monarch pier, which juts out into Weehawken Cove, is the last undeveloped portion of a Planned Unit Development (PUD) that has already added over 1,000 high-end residential units to the North End of Hoboken. Shipyard had promised to build tennis courts and parking on the pier in a 1997 agreement, but in 2011 decided to seek two additional buildings totaling 78 residential units instead.
The three-year fight over the Monarch project has pitted Applied Development, Hoboken’s largest developer and Shipyard’s parent company, against the city’s current political establishment, which is nearly unanimous in its opposition to the project.
Based on the public response at Tuesday’s hearing, many Hoboken residents share their elected officials’ anti-Monarch sentiment. Over 100 people attended the meeting, which was held in Hoboken at the Wallace School cafeteria rather than in Jersey City like most freeholder meetings. The crowd clapped loudly for everyone who spoke in opposition to the Monarch plans.
“Merely because someone is an expert does not mean…that everything that person says is gospel.” – Eric Goldberg
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Shipyard retains the option of submitting a new application to the Planning Board, though the board’s special counsel Clifford Gibbons said it was his opinion that the proposal would have to contain substantive revisions in order to be considered.
Streets and sewers
In February 2012, the Hudson County Planning Board voted to reject Shipyard’s application for site plan approval for the Monarch project. Shipyard challenged the decision in court, and in July 2014, Hudson County appellate court judge Nesle Rodriguez remanded the appeal to the freeholder board.
Hudson County’s oversight of development projects in Hoboken is limited to the effect they will have on sewers and county roadways. The lawyers could not introduce new evidence on Tuesday and were limited to discussing the facts presented in two early 2012 hearings before the Planning Board. However, the freeholders were not required to show any deference to the previous ruling of the Planning Board.
According to Kevin Coakley, the attorney for Shipyard Associates, both Shipyard’s experts and those hired by the county agreed that the Monarch project would have no significant impact on vehicle traffic in Hoboken’s north end – a statement that elicited derisive laughter from the crowd.
Coakley said Shipyard’s traffic expert estimated that Monarch would add one car every two to three minutes at peak commuting hours, with most residents using the 14th Street ferry to commute to New York City. He called suggestions that traffic would be an issue a “total fabrication.”
Coakley said it would be unfair and capricious for the freeholders to disagree with their own experts and strike down a project that was in keeping with the county master plan.
Clifford Gibbons, the special counsel for the Planning Board, rejected this assessment. He said there were nagging issues with the testimony of Shipyard’s traffic engineer Gary Dean.
“I’m not going to questions Mr. Dean’s credentials,” said Gibbons, “but sometimes you get a situation where you can’t always make it look as good as you want.”
Gibbons also argued that Shipyard Associates had pursued “procedural sleight of hand” as a way of securing approval. In its suit challenging the Planning Board rejection, Shipyard had sought for its project to be automatically approved because the freeholders had not taken up the case within 45 days of the 2012 ruling as required by law.
Public speakers
Eric Goldberg, the counsel for the condo association of the Hudson Tea Building adjacent to the Monarch site, alleged that Shipyard’s 2012 application to the Planning Board contained multiple errors and inaccuracies, some of which remained uncorrected even after the firm submitted a revised version. “Merely because someone is an expert does not mean…that everything that person says is gospel,” said Goldberg.
The Monarch project is of particular concern to Hudson Tea residents because it would stand directly east of the building, blocking Hudson Tea’s view of the Manhattan skyline.
Tiffanie Fisher, the president of the Hudson Tea Building Condo Association, agreed with her organization’s lawyer. She asserted that the Shipyard traffic study had ignored the impact of more than 2,000 residential units (some by other developers) that were already approved but had not opened when the Monarch hearing took place. This included 210 units in 1100 Maxwell Place, which opened last year.
Over 20 members of the public spoke on Tuesday, and only one spoke in opposition to the rejection. Many residents discussed the current traffic situation on Sinatra Drive and Shipyard Lane in the vicinity of Monarch, saying it was already congested and would not be improved by the addition of more residential units.
Walkway or roadway?
One of the key issues cited as triggering the Hudson County Planning Board’s initial rejection of the Monarch project was how the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway, which would encircle the proposed buildings, would be used.
At the 2012 hearings, Shipyard representatives referred to the walkway as a street, but said that only emergency vehicles and city vehicles attempting to access the city-owned parcel on the end of the pier would be allowed to use it.
Hoboken requires that PUD projects like the one Shipyard secured approval for in 1997 must be bounded by a street on all sides. Nearby buildings like Hudson Tea are surrounded on two sides by the Waterfront Walkway alone, but are exempted from the rules about streets because they are renovations of preexisting buildings.
Though the street designation may have ultimately been a legal technicality, it appeared to produce lingering doubts among Planning Board members, and may have contributed to the rejection of the Shipyard application.
Freeholder vote
Five out of the nine freeholders voted to uphold the rejection. In explaining his motion that the Planning Board decision be affirmed without conditions, Freeholder Bill O’Dea cited the “ample concerns” raised with respect to the Monarch project’s effect on traffic conditions. Freeholder Al Cifelli abstained. He had made a motion to postpone the vote in order to further review the facts of the case, but it was voted down.
Freeholders Anthony Romano, who represents Hoboken and Jersey City Heights, and Doreen DiDomenico were not present on Tuesday, having recused themselves on the advice of freeholder board legal counsel Carmen Mendiola due to their active membership on the county Planning Board. Freeholder Thomas Liggio was also absent.
Mayor Dawn Zimmer and City Council members Ravi Bhalla, Jim Doyle, and Beth Mason were at the meeting. On the council, Mason represents the 2nd Ward, where the Monarch pier is located, and she spoke in opposition to the Monarch plans, inviting the freeholders to come out and see how bad the traffic is in that area.
Carlo Davis may be reached at cdavis@hudsonreporter.com.