By Guy T. Baehr

A hotel row along New Jersey's side of the Hudson?

With the first shovel going in the ground yesterday for a 187-room Marriott hotel at Newport in Jersey City, people are starting to think that way.

Until 10 months ago, name-brand hotels were all but unknown along the Hudson River waterfront. Then Hartz Mountain Industries opened the 200-room Doubletree Suites hotel in Jersey City, with occupancy now exceeding 80 percent -- well ahead of the average for most hotels.

Now, according to an informal survey, at least five more name hotels besides the Marriott are being actively planned -- four in Jersey City and one in Hoboken. "It's gre

at. In almost no time we're going from zero to whatever the number is now," said Elizabeth Spinelli, executive director of the nonprofit Hudson County Economic Development Corp. in Jersey City.

"Over the past couple of years I've had every major hotel group coming through just to talk, and now we're beginning to see the results," Spinelli said.

But Hartz Mountain's Emanuel Stern isn't entirely comfortable with the new competition.

"It's very good right now, although I think we may be flirting with the danger of overbuilding," said the president of the Secaucus-based development company.

Marriott, at least for now, couldn't be happier.

"Jersey City's a hot location," said Robyn Caruthers, a spokeswoman for Courtyard at Marriott, the Marriott brand that broke ground at Newport yesterday. "It has great proximity to Manhattan and to the airports, which makes it a great location for a Courtyard."

The Courtyard brand, designed to appeal to business travelers, has grown to more than 400 hotels in years. "But this will be the first on the Hudson River," she said.

The new 10-floor hotel will have an 80-seat restaurant, indoor pool and four conference rooms. Courtyards, which typically charge rates of $60 to $90 a night, normally do not provide full services such as catering, 24-hour room-service, concierge desks and the like.

The hotel, to be built near the Newport/Pavonia PATH train station, will be the first in the Lefrak Organization's 600-acre Newport mini-city near the Holland Tunnel, but probably not the last. Marriott has an option with Lefrak to build a second hotel if the first does well, according to people familiar with the deal.

Lefrak expects that Newport will have 1,200 hotel rooms when it is completed over the next decade or so. That's to go with the 5 million square feet of office space and 9,000 apartments the Queens-based private developer plans to put on the huge riverfront site it began developing back in 1985.

Hartz Mountain has been the pioneer in developing hotels on the Hudson River waterfront. It built the first hotel on the waterfront in 1991, a 244-room Ramada Inn at its Lincoln Harbor development site in Weehawken near the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel.

Stern said the all-suites hotel at Lincoln Harbor became a Sheraton Suites hotel in February and will gain an additional 108 suites when a new wing is completed in August.

The combination of business from the 8 million square feet of office space already developed along the Hudson County waterfront since the 1980s and overflow from Manhattan's extremely tight hotel market is driving the waterfront's hotel boom, he said.

Candlewood Suites, a Witchita, Kan., hotel chain, is expected to break ground for a 215-room extended stay hotel across from Hartz's Doubletree within a few months. "They have all their approvals, and we expect construction to start by this summer," said Thomas Gallagher, chief of staff to Jersey City Mayor Brett Schundler.

Gallagher said Jersey City's waterfront hotel boom is following its waterfront office boom. "The more office construction there is, the easier it is for developers to get financing for new hotels. Even though we have such great proximity to New York City, the underwriters and hotel market consultants want to see a local mass of office buildings before they can justify construction," he said.

Mack-Cali Realty of Cranford is planning a 220-room, full-service hotel for an unused pier extending from the south end of its Harborside office building at Exchange Place in Jersey City. Mack-Cali officials says it is in negotiations with several large hotel chains, but have not closed the deal yet.

Another full-service hotel is being proposed for the former Flintkote factory site overlooking Liberty State Park in Jersey City, said Gallagher. He said city officials are negotiating with a private hotel operator, Tramz Hotels, to build a 240-room hotel on the city-owned site.

At the same time, the city of Hoboken and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey are preparing to designate a developer to build a 300-room hotel on a waterfront tract north of Hoboken Terminal.

Hoboken Business Administrator George Crimmins said the city and the bistate port authority, which owns the land, are evaluating proposals from three developers and should have a decision by July 1. They have already chosen developers for a large office complex just south of the hotel site and an apartment complex just north of it, he said.