Jersey City’s Bergen-Lafayette has seen significant development over the last decade and is perhaps the city’s best neighborhood in terms of creating affordable housing, but a few major projects have thus far stalled out when hoping to add to the evolving landscape.
The most notable revitalization area is certainly along Johnston Street near the Liberty State Park Light Rail Station, which continues to be redeveloped. A 55-unit project at 342 Johnson Street is in the final stages of construction and will create nine new affordable housing units in the area.
Designed by GRO Architects, the eight-story development will include 14 parking spaces and a storage room for 55 bicycles. When completed, a 2,095-square-foot commercial space will occupy the ground floor.
Just a few doors down and across the road, 337 Johnston Street is also nearing completion. To be called The Haven and developed by Jersey City-based Myneni Builders, the six-story mixed-use building will feature a 1,367-square-foot retail space plus a separate 835-square-foot café storefront.
The development includes 33 residences, including 13 studios, 18 one-bedrooms, and a single two- and three-bedroom unit each. Three of the spaces will be set aside as affordable housing.
Further east, a project from AM Development at 306 Johnson Street is also in the home stretch. The five-story building will consist of eight residential units and feature a brick façade to match neighboring buildings on the block.
The development will include a rooftop amenity area plus 930 square feet of retail space on the ground floor. Only one residential unit would be affordable, but the developer will contribute $10,000 to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
Just a few blocks away, construction is humming along at 17A-19 Ash Street. The development, first proposed way back in 2018, has topped out at six stories. It will add 21 residential units to what was previously a vacant lot, a site that was very common just a decade ago in the area.
Down the road, early foundation work has begun at a development on 401 Whiton Street. The endeavor, from Vreeland Projects, will utilize a traditional red brick façade and include 49 residential units, broken down as 14 studios, 25 one-bedrooms, and 10 two-bedroom spaces.
Under the plan, eight affordable housing units will be created, all of which will be classified as moderate income. The development will create a 400-square-foot “emergency storage space” for publicly owned emergency response and flood resistance equipment, hoping to better serve the neighborhood during storms.
The largest development under construction in Bergen-Lafayette is Scholar’s Village, which will add 500 housing units near Liberty Science Center. New York-based Alpine Residential was chosen to develop the housing portion of the larger SciTech Scity endeavor, a plan to revitalize about 16 acres of vacant land.
The 500 total units in the two-building Scholars Village are divided into 110 studios, 223 one-bedrooms, 131 two-bedrooms, and 36 three-bedroom spaces. The plan does not include an affordable housing component, but retail on the ground floor is included.
While Scholar’s Village is nearly finished, things haven’t been all rosy for the rest of SciTech Scity. Edge Works, a seven-story, 111,000-square-foot incubation and research facility, has yet to begin construction despite a groundbreaking ceremony held in 2021.
Construction at Liberty Science High School, also part of the development, has yet to commence. However, Hudson County did recently approve $73 million to fund the project.
Another major development yet to materialize is at 417 Communipaw Avenue, known as Steel Tech. The ambitious plan was to transform an industrial site near Berry Lane Park into a high-rise, marketplace, recreation center, and several community-minded components.
Skyline Development Group won approvals for a 17-story tower with 420 units. The development would see the existing Steet Tech Head House adaptively reused and include the construction of a new three-story, 22,000-square-foot recreation center that will be deeded to the city upon completion.
Little work has commenced at the site despite the development being greenlit over two years ago. But a recent trip to the property did reveal demolition work taking place on the Woodward Street portion of the property, perhaps indicating that the project isn’t dead just yet.
Another stalled project hangs over the neighborhood at 125 Monitor Street, perhaps the most controversial address in Jersey City. A giant sign outside the property warns those passing about ongoing remediation of hazardous materials at the building, which is progress in itself considering the code violations that occurred under previous ownership.
The current owners of 125 Monitor Street claimed in a legal filing several years ago that they submitted an application to revitalize the site into a school, market, and affordable housing while preserving the historic building at the property, but nothing other than a cleanup has emerged just yet.
The other major unfulfilled development site in Bergen-Lafayette is Canal Crossing, which is currently owned by Boraie Development. The sprawling Garfield Avenue property once housed a chromium production plant during the 1950s before the facility was shut down in 1963.
The New Brunswick-based company submitted plans to Jersey City in late 2020 to build 1,256 apartments in seven buildings on the land, but nothing has materialized other than that application, and the land remains vacant.
