An apartment building in Jersey City’s Bergen-Lafayette neighborhood could soon have a new owner, but it will not be a private developer.
The Jersey City Redevelopment Agency (JCRA) is planning to acquire 97 Monitor Street, a property between Johnston Avenue and Maple Street in Ward F that has long contained a three-story apartment building. A resolution from the agency states that the New Jersey Realty Advisory Group has given the property a fair market value of $455,000 and that “the agency is authorized to purchase said property” and “has determined it necessary” to do so.
During its meeting on July 30, all present members of the JCRA Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to pass the resolution, which approved the suggested fair market value and allowed four agency officials to enter and sign a contract in order for the acquisition of the property to move forward. Currently, the property is owned by an anonymous firm called 97 Monitor St., LLC that appears to be based in Borough Park, Brooklyn.
The area where 97 Monitor Street is situated is in a state of transition as it goes from being a neighborhood with a large industrial presence alongside moderately priced homes to a community with newly developed and increasingly costly rental units. Much of the development in this part of Bergen-Lafayette can be attributed to its location near the Liberty State Park Hudson-Bergen Light Rail station, which opened in 2000. With construction underway on several new projects in the neighborhood now and plenty of others in the pipeline, the impact on longtime residents and businesses is still not clear, but plenty of locals have expressed concerns over possibly being priced out of their hometown.
The JCRA owns properties in just about every ward but regularly sells tracts that it acquires to private developers and nonprofits. Over the last three years, the agency has sold multiple lots throughout the city to companies and organizations.
