Developers may soon find out there is life beyond the waterfront.

Development continues at a dizzying pace all along the Hudson County waterfront, but for the first time in years the construction activity is moving west. The soaring cost of waterfront land and some strategic public investment has restored hope in Jersey City's historical hubs, Journal Square and Martin Luther King Drive.

Location, location, location makes waterfront land easy to market. Parcels near Exchange Place have sold for as much as $10 million per acre. But attracting investors and business to Journal Square requires effort and imagination. Jersey City organized the business improvement district for Journal Square and cobbled together funding and plans for its facelift. Such public spending to prime the pump has drawn praise in downtown Newark as well as Cleveland and Baltimore.

On Journal Square the asphalt taxi stand is being replaced by a mini-park, with a fountain, gazebo, and trees. City officials who will unveil it soon hope it will become a lunchtime gathering spot for office workers, much like New York's Bryant Park. The new look, together with the proven security and sanitation service organized and funded by local business, is aimed at attracting heavyweight office occupants. Top office space on Journal Square rents for about $18 per square foot, compared to $28 along the waterfront, and as much as $45 in midtown Manhattan.

It's not just governmental prodding that is pushing the office market westward. Rent at the county's most prime locations is getting too high for some current tenants. As the price per square foot approaches midtown Manhattan levels, some public and private tenants are considering less expensive space in Hudson County. One example is Jersey City. Several agencies currently located in 30 Montgomery Street, including the Jersey City Housing and Economic Development and Commerce Agency plan to return to Journal Square when their leases expire, according to Thomas Gallagher.

"Journal Square is still a secondary market, but as prices rise on the waterfront, it becomes more and more attractive," Gallagher said.

One building, the 110,000 square-foot 26 Journal Square, is currently undergoing a $2 million restoration effort, complete with paneled lobby, marble flooring and new, high-speed elevators, according to leasing agent Robert Antonicello, president of ACI Real Estate Group.

Antonicello said the building's new owner, BFE TransHudson, of Fort Lee, made the investment because the building was "a diamond in the rough."

"It's a great location for small professionals and Internet based firms that can't afford the waterfront," Antonicello said.

Gallagher credits the Journal Square Special Improvement District and a city-financed $7.5 million makeover at the center of the square with renewing confidence in the area as a business location. The project is expected to be finished by late spring or early summer. Upon completion, officials say, the Square will look less like a gritty transportation hub and more like a cosmopolitan urban office district.

At the center of the restored Square will be an ornate wrought-iron Italian-made kiosk, a 35-foot wide fountain, and the relocated Christopher Columbus statue, moved last summer from a Kennedy Boulevard median.

The concrete kiosk island will soon get a covering of bluestone and anchored wrought-iron tables and chairs. The small house, with rolldown gates, will house a food vendor.

"The Kiosk has definitely enhanced the Square," said Brian Coleman, executive director of the Journal Square Restoration Corporation. "People working on the Square will be able to have coffee and Danish in the morning there and sit at the tables for lunch."

Still in the works are new sidewalks, a pedestrian walkway where a taxi stand once stood and new landscaped and granite-trimmed road medians.