Although Jersey City has seen plenty of plans for high-rise towers over the last few years, some of which have come to fruition while others have either been halted or just recently proposed, construction has also continued recently on several smaller developments, particularly in Downtown Jersey City.
Significant progress has been made on two Ward E projects that Jersey Digs has previously reported on, while construction on a third appears to be nearly complete.
Just a few years ago, a garage called A&L Auto Body could be found at the corner of Newark Avenue and 5th Street. However, there is no sign of the former repair business at the site today. The property at 338 Newark Avenue is now home to a six-story building.
Work on this new structure has not yet wrapped up and fencing along with a dumpster were still visible outside the unfinished first floor earlier this month. A November 2018 public notice said that the development was slated at the time to consist of 37 residential units and 1,534 square feet of commercial space, all next to a new 18-unit building.
A few blocks away, the parcel at 233 Newark Avenue has gone from being a vacant lot that was sometimes used for parking to containing a five-story building. This new building, which stretches back to 1st Street, appears to be almost finished and already resembles the rendering that was released in 2019. Signage on the facade of the 16-unit rental development currently brands the building as “The Hemlock.”
Around the corner at 208 Christopher Columbus Drive and 39-41 Maxwell Alley, construction is still underway on a complex that appears at first glance to be one structure, but is actually made of two adjacent buildings.
This appearance is not a coincidence. Back in 2017 when plans for a four-story building with four townhouses and a five-story building with four additional units were announced, a public notice said that “while the two buildings will legally be maintained as two separate buildings on two separate lots, they are being planned and designated concurrently to create a complimentary facade that anchors the southwest corner of the Harsimus Cove neighborhood.”
Part of this location was previously home to a vacant building that was the site of a fire nearly a decade ago. A garage occupied another part of the premises.
