In The New York Times on Sunday October 10, 1999 Charles V. Bagli states, "The hottest address for investment bankers today is the former home of a toothpaste and detergent factory." That's the original site of the Colgate-Palmolive factory on Jersey City's bustling Waterfront.

The complex of Colgate factories - a once sprawling industrial behemoth that was served by trains that plowed through the city streets - closed in 1986. Most of those buildings are long gone, though the historic clock, seemingly timeless, still stands.

Colgate, realizing that the future of commerce on the Hudson River was bits, not atoms, envisioned office buildings taking the place of the original plant. The proof of that concept was the completion of the 101 Hudson building in 1992.

Hartz Mountain Industries is nearing completion of another building at 90 Hudson Street. The New York Times reports that a major financial concern, "Lord, Abbett & Company will move its entire operations there from the General Motors building." Jersey City's Mayor Bret Schundler has noted that, "Well, from one fine address to another!"

That's no joke. Top tier firms see Jersey City's Waterfront as Manhattan's West Bank - part of the action. The seeming alternatives of Brooklyn and Staten Island are really not alternatives at all. These fuzzy edges of the map are seen as places of exile - if they are given any thought at all.

Since "financial service firms are bursting at the seams," the success of this phase of the project has started a veritable stampede to the Jersey City Colgate development area.

Plus, Jersey City's new office buildings come standard with a host of options that have to be retrofitted into Manhattan's old structures - if they can be had at all in the New York used market. Last year in The New York Times, Sunday October 11, 1998, John Holusha quoted Michael T. Cohen of Williams Real Estate as noting that "the buildings on the Jersey City Waterfront are new and equipped with the latest technology..."

And the superior basic design of the new structures is an ever-present fact. In the same article, John Holusha goes on to state:

The availability of sizable tracts of land in the old industrial locations of the waterfront allows developers to offer prospective tenants large floors that are almost impossible to find in Manhattan. "We are offering floor plates of 95,000 square feet," Mr. Pozycki (President of SJP Properties, ed. Note). In New York it would take two generations to assemble enough land for floors like that." Big foot prints mean that buildings can be more efficient in several ways: For example, there is less need for common areas, such as elevator lobbies and reception areas, providing more work space. And 12- to 14-story buildings, which are what is being proposed and built on the waterfront, require far fewer elevator shafts than much taller buildings erected on smaller plots of land.

"SJP Properties, one of the largest commercial developers in New Jersey, recently bought the only remaining factory building at Colgate, 95 Greene Street, and plans to transform it into modern office space, which has attracted Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, as well as other potential tenants."

And all these office workers are going have to live somewhere! Jersey City recently approved a developer's plan to place 650 apartments in two, thirty story structures over a garage on the Colgate property. After all, even though the ferries, subways, trains, and New Jersey Turnpike make it easy, if you don't have to, why commute!