Hoboken Reporter, July 9, 2000

Dear Editor:

If you plan on waiting until the municipal elections for city officials in 2001, it will be too late. By the time that election comes around next year, when we could use our votes to put candidates favoring controlled growth into place, it will be too late to express our need for less traffic congestion and smaller development projects. By then, all of the development will have been approved, be well under way or have construction completed. The time to "vote" is now with our presence at the meetings where it counts today, before further damage can be done. The time and the place to vote are at the planning board on Tuesday, July 11 at 7 p.m. at City Hall.

On July 11 there will not be a voting booth but there will be a hearing concerning the addition of 150 units of housing and 150 units of parking to the Shipyard property. The construction will be on the northernmost pier in Hoboken. Though the present residents of Hoboken welcome newcomers to enjoy the city's small-town yet urban living, the addition of 150 parking spaces to an already-congested area of the city is not in our best interests or in the best interests of the people who might purchase the proposed units. The fact that this development will occur on a pier only adds to the unsavory aspects of this proposal.

In addition to adding parking spaces, and if you build those spaces, cars will come, this proposed project is just the start of even worse things yet to come. As now projected, sometime in September, the Maxwell House project will come before the planning board with a proposal for 1,400 to 1,600 parking spaces, along with 950 residential units plus office and retail space. Two piers on the property are destined for housing. Maxwell House is just south of the Shipyard property. The questions become, how does the city handle all of this additional traffic when it cannot handle what it has right now? How much of our unique view corridor will be destroyed with buildings on piers?

The pity of it all is that there is enough upland area for housing at the Maxwell House property without using the piers. At the Shipyard it is a slightly different matter. The developer, Applied Companies, indicates that 150 units of 4-story housing or a 7-story office building is the only financially feasible way to repair a crumbling pier; that it can't be done any other way. It should be noted, however, that the Shipyard developer is an experienced and gifted expert in obtaining government funding from county state and federal governments. At least $6 million of government money (us taxpayers' money) has already gone into the Shipyard property for the construction of roadways, the Walkway and pier refurbishment. Even if it means a wait of several years, the developer should use his magic touch to pursue additional governmental largesse to rehabilitate the pier and keep Hoboken free from the onslaught of 150 more cars and the destruction of the open-space views from the Walkway that will soon be our only means of seeing the river and the incomparable majesty of New York City.

The time has come to stop talking among ourselves about the traffic and parking problems and the loss of a sense of openness that overdevelopment has already visited upon us. Come to the planning board meeting July 11. The time to "vote" is now. The now is July 11 at 7 p.m. at City Hall. It is a civic duty.

Helen Manogue, Coordinator<br>Hoboken Quality of Life Coalition
Hoboken