Date: Friday, May 13, 2005
Time: 1:30 P.M.
Place: The Brennan Court House, 583 Newark Avenue, Jersey City, New Jersey

The Fund for a Better Waterfront (FBW) and Stevens Institute of Technology are back in court again. On Friday, Superior Court Judge Hector Velazquez will listen to arguments from FBW’s attorney, Michael Garofalo, that the 18 variances granted by the Hoboken Zoning Board far exceed the Board’s authority. For the past two years, Stevens forced FBW into court on numerous occasions defending itself against charges of defamation and harming the school. FBW attorneys have called this a SLAPP suit which is an acronym for Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation. In other words, it is a frivolous suit designed to suppress the defendants’ free speech right and to stifle an open public debate of the issues.

Earlier this year, the Superior Court Judge Frederick Theemling dismissed the final count of Stevens claim against this nonprofit organization. Undeterred by Stevens agressive tactics, FBW is now on the offensive, charging that the garage proposal does not conform to Hoboken’s zoning ordinance, should not have been approved by the Zoning Board and that an impermissible conflict of interest fatally tainted the Board hearings.

The conflict issue arose last year when FBW challenged Zoning Board Chair Joseph Crimmins, after three hearings on the garage application, claiming that he could not serve on the Board because his brother George, the former Business Administrator for the City of Hoboken, had been hired by Stevens Institute as a consultant. Joseph Crimmins recused himself but FBW attorney Michael Garofalo argued that the hearings had been tainted and must begin anew. The Zoning Board attorney disagreed and proceeded with the hearings which continued for another six months.

Initially, Stevens attorney Timothy O’Neill agreed to produce George Crimmins for a deposition. But on May 2, O’Neill, in a conference call with Judge Velazquez, argued that the time to depose Crimmins had elapsed. The Judge disagreed and ordered the deposition to proceed. George Crimmins then eluded numerous attempts to serve him with a subpoena. Thus, this issue will also come before the court tomorrow afternoon.

Above photograph of site shows plans for garage superimposed on image. Babbio Center, still under construction, is above right, McLean Hall on left, viewed from Sinatra Park looking west.

The Hoboken Zoning Board approved this four-story garage application on August 17, 2004 after 8 months of protracted hearings. The proposed building extends nearly a full city block, 386 feet from Fifth Street to Sixth along Sinatra Drive, directly across the street from Sinatra Park along Hoboken’s waterfront. More than a year prior to obtaining these approvals, Stevens partially constructed the portion of the garage that is situated directly underneath the Babbio Center, also known as the Center for Technology Management. The Babbio Center is nearly completed.

FBW’s legal challenge claims that only the Hoboken City Council, not the Zoning Board, has the authority to amend the code, and it cannot be done by variance. In other words, the Board’s granting of some 18 variances represented a de facto rezoning of the property that is not permitted by New Jersey law. Hoboken’s zoning provides a special district, R-1(E), just for Stevens Institute. For this zoning district, the code requires 50% of the land be open space; the garage project has 6% open space. Buildings can be only 200 feet long; this structure extends 386 feet along Sinatra Drive and 297 feet along Sixth Street. One principal building is allowed per lot; this lot already has McLean Hall and the Babbio Center. A public parking garage must also be set back from residential districts by at least 100 feet; this garage is just 31 feet from the R-1 residential zoning district.

FBW attorney Michael Garofalo has stated that the conflict issue has fatally tainted the hearings and will force the court to reverse the Zoning Board approval. In a January 30, 2004 news story, George Crimmins told the Jersey Journal that his yearlong consulting job with Stevens Institute included work on the university’s 725-car waterfront parking garage.

According to Garofalo, the Appellate Court decision of Care of Tenafly v. the Zoning Board of Adjustment, 307 N.J. Super, 362 (App. Div. 1998) required the Zoning Board hearings to begin anew. In this case, the lower Court found that a Zoning Board member whose mother and sister owned property fifty feet from the applicant’s site had an absolute, disqualifying and impermissible conflict of interest. In the Appellate Court decision, the judges found that the decisive factor is not actual conflict but whether there is potential for conflict. The potential for psychological influence could not be ignored, according to the ruling, and the Board’s approvals had to be invalidated.

For the past three years, FBW has been a vocal critic of a number of proposals put forth by Stevens Institute for the Hoboken waterfront, in addition to the parking garage. Stevens Institute’s other waterfront proposals, one for the Maxwell House property that it did not own, another, a large athletic facility at the Union Dry Dock site and a third, the 400-foot long Center for Maritime Systems, proposed between Sinatra and Castle Point Parks, have all fallen from their own weight.

Craig Whitaker, an urban planner and architect who developed FBW’s plan for the Hoboken waterfront in 1990, described the proposed garage as “a grossly inappropriate use, which will degrade the quality of the waterfront. Stevens wants to take a premier piece of real estate and erect an exposed, oversized parking garage, blighting the only truly public waterfront along New Jersey’s gold coast.”

The primary mission of FBW has been to complete Hoboken’s proposed continuous waterfront park that the group first proposed in 1990. From 1997 to the present, about 75% of this park has been built and much of the remainder is in the works, putting Hoboken far ahead of other Hudson River waterfront communities in terms of developing the waterfront in a manner that serves the public’s interest.

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