West Side growth spurt is envisioned
NJCU officials: It all starts with ambitious plan for West Campus

Originally appeared in the Jersey Journal onWednesday, January 26, 2005
By Maria Zingaro Conte

Jersey City's West Side is poised for a major overhaul and officials at New Jersey City University believe a redevelopment effort their school is about to undertake will be the project that gets the bulldozers moving.

The university plans to redevelop its 21-acre West Campus site and is expected to receive the blessings of the Jersey City City Council tonight, which will vote on whether to deem the site as an area in need of redevelopment.

The council is also expected to introduce an ordinance accepting the redevelopment plan for the area. The Planning Board gave its approval to the plan last week.

NJCU's redevelopment will be among the first steps toward implementing the broader Bayside Redevelopment Vision Plan, a proposal to redevelop the 75-acre area between Communipaw, Bergen and Stevens avenues and Newark Bay.

"We saw it as an opportunity to work with the city and catalyze the West Side," said Howard Buxbaum, NJCU's vice president for administration and finance.

Buxbaum said the changes are designed to entice students to the university, whose enrollment he said sometimes suffers because of the city's negative reputation among outsiders.

"It's important for our students and faculty to come and feel that they are a part of a secure and safe area," he said. "It's just going to give the place life because urban is hot now."

An annex to NJCU's main campus, which runs along Kennedy Boulevard, the university's West Campus site is bounded by Route 440, West Side Avenue, Carbon Place and the property line of the Home Depot store, which also fronts Route 440.

The school plans to build a performing arts center and three other new educational buildings, over 218,000 square feet of retail space, 400 residential units spread between four additional buildings and parking for 2,000 cars.

The project also will extend Audubon Avenue and Stegman Street, bringing the city's street grid into the development in an effort to encourage access to and through the site from the surrounding neighborhoods.

"With its inviting public edges, human-scaled architectural details and quality academic and cultural venues, the West Campus will be a destination as well as a place to raise a family," the redevelopment plan says.

Most of the land is already owned by the university. A portion of the site is currently used by the university for parking and storage. Another section houses the vacant Baldwin Steel plant.

Although portions of the site have environmental contamination, including some chromium contamination - a result of the land's past industrial uses - the university and Honeywell Remediation are negotiating an agreement to clean up some property, the redevelopment plan says.

The price tag of the redevelopment will be $150 million, including construction of the roads and infrastructure, Buxbaum said. Work is expected to begin in late 2006 and should take about two years to complete.

Several council members have already expressed support for the plan, saying the construction will help to bring the prosperity seen along the Hudson River waterfront to another part of the city.

"I think it's a great plan," said Councilman Peter Brennan. "It's going to really bring a new birth to West Side Avenue . The west side of Jersey City is going to be a boom town."

An earlier redevelopment effort on the West Side was kicked off last year when ground was broken for the Residences at Westside Station, a 52-unit townhouse development that will include retail space, being built at Mallory and Crescent avenues, near the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail station on West Side Avenue.