Rockefeller office tower is latest in series of controversial high-rise projects in Hoboken

In 2008, the Rockefeller Group bought up a three-block area in north Hoboken that has traditionally been an industrial zone. On two of the blocks office buildings are a permitted use but limited to eight stories. They had big plans: a two million square foot project centered around a 40-story office tower that would be Hoboken’s tallest building.

The project is now mired in controversy. Heavy-handed pressure from lobbyists at Wolff & Samson may have been coupled with strong-armed tactics from the governor’s people in an attempt to force Mayor Zimmer and the City of Hoboken to endorse the project. David Samson of Wolff & Samson is joined at the hip with Governor Christie who appointed him Chair of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey (the Port). The Port provided a grant to the City of Hoboken to create a redevelopment area for north Hoboken. Remarkably the study only found three blocks out of 19 qualifying for designation as a redevelopment area. Those were the three blocks owned by the Rockefeller Group.

The Rockefeller proposal for an office tower is unlikely to garner much support in the Hoboken community. For the past 25 years, development proposals for high-rise projects have been fought tooth and nail. Having been in the midst of most of these battles, I can relate the history.

In the 1960s and 1970s, urban pioneers came to Hoboken snatching up brownstones at bargain prices. Those early renovations planted the seeds for Hoboken’s renaissance. By the 1980s, the redevelopment of Hoboken was in full swing. And some developers began to think big.

In 1986, a development group proposed the Presidential Towers at the south end of town where a plumbing supply and scrap metal yard operated. The project consisted of two 32-story towers in a zoning district limited to five-story heights. Neighbors were appalled at the proposal as were community activists. Opponents hired an attorney to represent them before the Hoboken Zoning Board of Adjustment. After a series of contentious hearings, the Zoning Board approved the project granting a slew of variances.

I was part of the opposition to this project. We appealed the approvals and prevailed in court with Superior Court Judge Maurice Gallipoli declaring the Zoning board’s management of the hearing, “a nightmare.”

Up to this point, most of Hoboken’s redevelopment took place within the town’s existing housing stock, renovations of 3 to 5-story walk-ups, built originally at the turn-of-the-century. Hoboken is densely populated and densely built but these were rows of low-rise buildings at the front lot line, short and squat, on small lots. It was this human scale and the turn-of-the-century ambience, the cheap prices plus easy access into New York City that first made Hoboken so attractive. And it was people’s love of this historic Hoboken character that caused many of us to recoil at the prospect of high-rise towers in our midst.

Later, I helped to organize another group, Downtown Residents for Sane Development. We went into court to oppose a series of 17 story towers proposed by Applied Companies on a 3-block stretch of Observer Highway at the south end of town. The site fell within the I-2 Zoning District limited to 2-story industrial uses. The City of Hoboken proposed to create a redevelopment zone to pave the way for this project. After one of the sites was found to be contaminated with mercury, the project was limited to one block and the building height scaled back to 11 stories.

Based on my recent experience, I found myself in the midst of the next major battle being waged over Hoboken’s South Waterfront. In 1989, a number of us formed the Coalition for a Better Waterfront (CBW) to oppose a 3.2 million square foot project proposed by the Port and the City of Hoboken. The project included a 32-story office complex on Pier A and a half-million square feet of residential development on Pier C. We collected sufficient signatures to place the City’s agreement with the Port on the ballot, based on New Jersey’s Initiative and Referendum statute. The campaign was hard-fought and by a small margin, in July of 1990, the voters of Hoboken rejected the agreement.