After years of discord, Weehawken’s Mayor Turner and Planning Board pave the way for a rebuilt ferry maintenance facility

In 1981, Arthur Imperatore, Sr., who died four years ago, acquired 370 acres of land at the Weehawken/West New York waterfront below the Palisades Cliffs from a bankrupt Penn Central Railroad. Imperatore’s grand real estate plans collapsed. Other developers took over, capitalizing on the building boom that followed, but Imperatore’s ferry company, NY Waterway, established in 1986 and designed to support the new residential development along New Jersey’s so-called gold coast, has survived.

In 2001, NJ Transit invested $44 million to build a new ferry terminal on Weehawken’s waterfront. Several hundred feet to the south, NY Waterway operated its own maintenance facility where their ferry fleet has been stored, serviced and refueled. The 25.8-acre property, mostly water area, is owned by one of Imperatore’s companies, Romulus Development Corp. The fate of this facility has been in question for the past 15 years as it has fallen into disrepair and attempts to locate elsewhere have failed to materialize.

Last night, Weehawken Mayor Richard Turner and the Weehawken Planning Board appeared to have solved the problem. The Board unanimously approved the building of a new maintenance and docking facility at its current location. The public hearing lasted over four hours. Don Liloia, the Senior Vice President of Facilities and Business Development for NY Waterway, testified at the start of the hearing, He was followed by an engineer, architect and landscape architect who provided a detailed description of the plans.

Several years ago, nearby property owners, mostly from a series of townhouses, called the Brownstones, protested plans for a much bigger maintenance facility. In March of 2023, Mayor Turner threatened to condemn the 25.8 acre property owned by Romulus Development to prevent the project from moving forward.

The berthing capacity of the new facility has been reduced from 30 vessels to 20. The facility would operate mostly on a 500-foot long pier with concrete piles supporting a concrete deck. A modest 2-story structure on the pier would be used for storing materials but one of the conditions for approval will explore the possibility of reducing the structure to a single story. The pier will move the operation to the north, further away from the Brownstones. The existing tanks for storing diesel fuel would be replaced with new tanks with greater storage capacity, reducing the number of delivery trips required. There is a long-range plan to replace diesel-operated ferries with electric ones. A public plaza and rebuilt Hudson River Waterfront Walkway will be included as part of this project.

Property owners from the Brownstones spoke out at the public hearing, asking questions of those testifying and complaining of negative impacts the project might bring. They were also represented by an attorney who inquired about presenting her own expert witnesses. The Board responded that objectors had missed their opportunity to do so.

Mayor Turner, who sits on the Planning Board, stated that this is the only site where the facility could be located, reading from a letter the Township received from New Jersey’s State Commissioner of Transportation. The Mayor played a major role in scaling back the project and pushing for electric ferries, thus helping to mitigate community concerns.