This week, Jersey City has one last chance to create a truly unique public park—an elevated sanctuary—in the heart of its thriving downtown.
On Wednesday at 10 a.m., the City Council will hold a public hearing and a final vote on a bill that would finance the purchase of the Harsimus Stem Embankment, the abandoned elevated railroad line that runs along Sixth Street from Marin Boulevard to Newark Avenue.
The citizens' group Embankment Preservation Coalition supports a plan to turn the embankment into a public park and urban nature sanctuary.
The park would be the first stage of an ambitious project to connect the embankment to the East Coast Greenway via the Erie Cut, another piece of abandoned railroad infrastructure that is essentially an open tunnel through Bergen Hill near Journal Square that was constructed in the 1900s.
(Jersey City was once almost entirely controlled by railroad corporations, which held fee-simple ownership of about a third of its land. The Harsimus Stem Embankment, one of two in the city, was an essential part of the Pennsylvania Railroad's operations in Jersey City, carrying seven freight lines which brought the commodities of America's heartland to the waterfront for export. The corporations thought of the city as nothing more than a conduit through which to run freight trains, and every time the city attempted to get a fair tax assessment from the railroad property, the corporations would have the Statehouse Republicans--whom they owned as clearly as they owned the railroads--restrict the city's power with so-called "ripper" laws.)
The council bill authorizes the city to sell $7.65 million in bonds to fund the purchase of the embankment; the bill lists grants worth about $6.5 million for which the project would be eligible, including $3.5 million from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and $1.6 million from New Jersey's Green Acres program.
With those grants, the project would likely cost the city only a little over $1 million.
If the council passes the ordinance, it would end a years-long court fight between the city; Conrail, which inherited the tracks from the defunct Pennsylvania Railroad; and real estate developer Steve Hyman.
In 2005, Conrail sold the property to Hyman for $3 million, in apparent violation of a federal law that requires railroad corporations to offer abandoned property for sale to local governments before selling it on the private market.
In 2006 Jersey City sued Hyman, who planned to tear down the embankment and further glut the downtown real estate market with more "luxury lofts". Although the city won a decision from the federal Surface Transportation Board enjoining Hyman, the board's decision was overturned by a federal appeals court.
Even as he expects to sell the property, Hyman is still fighting. He was last in New Jersey Superior Court, fighting the Zoning Board for denying him a permit to go ahead an tear down the embankment. A judge called for a new zoning board hearing.
If Hyman really cared about Jersey City, he would be moved by the tremendous public support for this project and allow the city to purchase the embankment for cost. But at this point it is worth allowing him to extract an illegitimate profit if the benefit to Jersey City is a one-of-a-kind park that will connect the city to the East Coast Greenway and that can be enjoyed by generations of citizens.
If the bill fails to pass, Hyman will very likely get to tear down the embankment and replace it with "luxury" housing the city does not need and no one who lives in the neighborhood wants.
Wednesday is Jersey City's last chance to stand up for a unique public asset.
As Downtown Jersey City has grown in the last fifteen years, its parks have not. In the rush to build and create profits for the real estate developers who have funded their campaigns, Jersey City governments from Schundler to Healy have allowed building downtown and along the waterfront with no consideration for public space and public amenities. The embankment park would go a long way to redressing that neglect.
I encourage you to go to the meeting to show your support, and I encourage the City Council to approve the bill. We need the embankment park.
D.C.
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