September 2000

Hoboken Residents Petition City to Stop Pier Development

Landscape design for the North Pier shows walled entrance with guardhouse, typical of private enclaves at the Hudson River waterfront.

On Tuesday, September 5, Hoboken residents jammed into the ground floor conference room at City Hall to protest Applied Companies' application to build 120 townhouses on a pier at Hoboken's north waterfront. The following evening, Elizabeth Markevitch presented the Hoboken City Council with 2500 signatures of Hoboken residents urging the City to take action to prohibit private development on Hoboken's piers. Now that empty lots and blocks throughout Hoboken are being developed at a remarkable pace and builders are putting up large structures along the waterfront, citizens are fighting the latest proposals to build condominiums over the Hudson River on several piers.

In 1996, the Hoboken Planning Board granted developer Joseph Barry approval for a planned unit development (PUD), called the Shipyard, comprised of 1160 residential units and 63,000 square feet of commercial space. Now Barry is seeking to amend this PUD approval by adding 120 units on a 859 foot long pier at 16th Street. The row of townhouses on this pier would stretch 720 feet toward Manhattan, forming a 50-foot high wall that would block views to the north of the Hudson River, the George Washington Bridge and northern Manhattan. 720 feet is equivalent in length to the two-block distance from 12th Street to 14th Street in Hoboken.

At the Tuesday night Planning Board hearing, members of the public as well as the board members and board attorney asked tough questions of the experts testifying on behalf of the developer. Planning Board member and City Business Administrator George Crimmins asked the developer's planner and architect Thomas McGinty how the public would be able to access the City-owned land at the end of the adjacent pier facing north into the Weehawken Cove. McGinty conceded that there was a 30 foot easement granted to the City of Hoboken that runs on the western portion of that pier, but that the easement is covered by a parking lot, handball court and a tennis court.

Most of the Planning Board hearing was taken up by testimony by Gary Dean, the traffic engineer, who conducted the traffic study for the developer. Dean argued that the 120 townhouses would only add 25 to 30 cars per hour to nearby intersections and therefore, would not adversely affect the flow of traffic. Under questioning by the commissioners and the public, Dean explained that problem intersections at 14th Street and Washington and further west were not part of his study.

Individual objectors as well as the Coalition for a Better Waterfront and Quality of Life Coalition were represented at this hearing by an attorney from Stickel, Koenig and Sullivan, a firm specializing in land-use law. By the time their attorney got up to cross-examine the traffic engineer, it was 10:20 p.m. and Planning Board attorney, Jack Carbone, requested that the questions be deferred until the subsequent hearing which is scheduled for Tuesday, October 3.

The following evening, Wednesday, September 6, after delivering the petitions to the City Council, six speakers addressed the governing body regarding the issue of pier development. Todd Clear, a property owner at the Shipyard project, told the Council how much he and his wife liked living in Hoboken. He expressed alarm, however, about the North Pier project. "When we bought our unit, we were promised that this pier would be reserved as open space for recreational use. This is unfair that the developer should now change his mind."

Helen Manogue, the chair of the Quality of Life Coalition, stressed the public nature of the Hudson River and the state-mandated walkway at the water's edge. "This project would rob the public of access to this part of the waterfront and the spectacular views that now exist." She urged the Mayor, who defended the developer's right to build on the pier, to reconsider his position and to meet with community leaders to discuss this issue.

Annette Illing, who headed up the petition drive, collecting all 2500 signatures within a two-week period, has made copies of the petitions so that they can also be submitted to Governor Christine Todd Whitman. The state must grant a waterfront permit for the North Pier project to be built. Opponents of the project have criticized the state's regulations that permit non-water dependent uses to be built on piers, over the Hudson River, an area that they claim belongs to the public.