The redevelopment of a parcel down the street from the “Monticello Triangle” in McGinley Square recently reached a significant milestone when members of the Jersey City Planning Board voted to approve a site plan for the project. Officials voted unanimously to approve a new mid-rise mixed-use building at 250 Fairmount Avenue, replacing the excavated foundation from a similar project approved in 2021 but never topped out.
Professionals representing the applicant, 250-254 Fairmount Ave LLC, submitted testimony during the board’s regular meeting on August 25.
Uriel Stern, a principal at UAS Architecture who worked on the previous site plan application, told the board the project was sold and is being developed by a different entity than the one that submitted the application five years ago.
Instead of the four-story mixed-use building the previous applicant began constructing, the new applicant intends to build a five-story building with 16 apartments and over 2,200 square feet of ground-floor retail space.
Each floor, from the second to the fourth, will include one studio, two one-bedrooms, and one two-bedroom unit.
The commercial portion of the site includes four retail pads: two along Monticello Avenue, one at the intersection of Fairmount and Monticello Avenues, and a fourth at the northernmost edge of the property fronting Fairmount Avenue. Although the proposed building does not include on-site parking, the cellar level will include 16 bicycle stalls and nearly 1,400 square feet of storage space for commercial tenants.
The board voted to approve the site plan application as well as three variances for roof equipment setback and two variances for signage.
Although it remains unclear whether the new applicant will actually complete the project approved by the board, the site plan approval could bring new housing and commercial space to an area of McGinley Square that has been on an upswing in recent years.
Jersey Digs reported in 2021 that the owners of the site at the time, West Bergen Heights Associates LLC, had been working on a plan to redevelop the parcel since at least 2018. The parcel was previously occupied by a two-story building that housed a laundromat but was torn down by the LLC. Back then, the applicant intended to deliver 12 units across four stories.
A new apartment building next to 250 Fairmount Avenue was completed two years ago on the adjacent lot on Monticello Avenue, according to the attorney working on behalf of 250-254 Fairmount Ave LLC, Eugene O’Connell. That building, at 99 Storms Avenue, includes 50 luxury apartments and ground-floor commercial space.
New York-based real estate firm Bushburg also completed a 16-story apartment building with more than 285 units at 55 Orchard Street in 2024. That project is less than two blocks from the site at 250 Fairmount Avenue.
