UPDATE Aug 11 2023: The project now has 360 apartments, 2,979 sq ft retail, no parking.
ORIGINAL POST:
This project depends on an upzoning tied to provision of affordable housing. 336 apartments, 45 parking spots (replacing the current city-owned spaces on the lot), 2979 sq ft retail. This site was previously slated for a 25-story hotel/residential tower. It is currently a city-owned parking lot.
FYI, the rezoning which enables this building to be built was adopted at the last Municipal Council meeting of 2022 by a 9-0 vote. The next move is for the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency to finalize a redevelopment agreement to sell the lot to a developer.
The JCRA agreement has been finalized, and the Planning Board will vote on the plan next Tuesday.
What’s left is to get ASPIRE funds from NJ state to subsidize the income-restricted housing. Without that funding, the project will not go forward, but I think there’s reason to be optimistic. The project has already received federal funds to subsidize the income-restricted housing.
The parking has been removed and replaced with more mixed-income housing.
This project was approved by the Planning Board, and a resolution of support was passed by the City Council.
The land has been transferred to the developer. Today I saw some sort of drilling on site. Hopefully soil testing.
Let’s hope the developer receives the Aspire grant from the state that will make the mixed-income development financially feasible.
Looks like the developer will get a tax abatement, but as a condition they need to make 25% of the units income-restricted instead of 20%. The project still can’t happen without additional state Aspire grant funding, a state low-interest HMFA loan, and LIH tax credits, so it’s still in doubt. Aspire funds are limited so not all projects that apply get them.
What’s strange is I just looked through all the planning resolutions and memos and they still only show 20% income-restricted. I guess we’ll see when the next Council agenda comes out and the PILOT legislation is introduced what the deal is.
Another change in the planning documents is they added an extra mezzanine floor updated the title to 35 floors.
