For over 15 years, an abandoned eyesore has towered over a Union County neighborhood. Spread across five acres at 907-931 East Jersey Street, just a block east of the heavily traveled Routes 1 and 9, lies a vacant complex consisting of multiple three-story and seven-story buildings.
Atop one of them, the remains of a sign that once read ‘Elizabeth General Medical Center’ are visible, but the last time a patient walked into this facility was in 2000. Today, several of the sign’s letters are crumbling while others have fallen off altogether.
On the exterior of the complex, which contained the Elizabeth General Hospital beginning in the 1920s, there is graffiti, weeds growing alongside a building, posters advertising danger and that the property is for sale, boarded up windows, and the remains of other signs once used by the hospital. In the back, a vacant lot with construction debris can be found, a result of when another part of the medical center was demolished five years ago.
Now, there are plans to finally revitalize this property. According to a legal notice from the City of Elizabeth, CMT Developers, LLC is planning to demolish the former medical buildings, which have not been utilized since the hospital merged with St. Elizabeth Hospital to form what is now Trinitas Regional Medical Center on Williamson Street. CMT Developers, which is based out of an office building in Lakewood, Ocean County, bought the East Jersey Street property for $7 million last year, according to NJ Parcels records.
The company is planning to build a seven-story mixed-use building at the site of the hospital with 163 apartments and 14,316 square feet of retail space. The plans call for the old hospital parking garage behind the building to remain, however, and for it to be expanded into a 10-story structure with parking on the bottom and 111 apartments on top. Jersey Walk would likely be the name of the new complex.
Residents would be within walking distance of the Citi Grocer at the former Daffy’s site, the Elizabeth Avenue business district, the Elizabeth Train Station, and NJ Transit’s Bus 62 to Newark Liberty International Airport and Newark Penn Station, and would be a short drive away from The Mills at Jersey Gardens, the Elizabeth IKEA, and the Goethals Bridge to Staten Island.
Records from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Division of Water Quality show that CMT Developers applied in March for a Treatment Works Approval permit, which was approved by the State.
