Hey, I have an idea. Since conversion of high rise housing into lower density mixed income housing is such a GREAT idea, why not do the same with the Beacon? Perhaps a 30-30-40 income mix would be a good balance.
Maybe the same would get Trump Residences filled up too.

Alas, one always has to JOIN Facebook before taling a peak.

Maybe my perspective on the issue is wrong, but why, if the major problems at the organization stem from the basic dichotomy TO KILL, or NOT TO KILL based on the inability to house too many animals, are not the animals given to suitable petlovers totally free. Perhaps even with a couple free cans of pet food.

If the goal is to have fewer animals in captivity, giving them away seems to make sense... to me anyway.

Again, unless all the money goes to salaries and there are people in it for the money, then giving away pets makes sense. Someone might take in a stray for free who would not for $100 and that might be one less animal at the pound.

Just read that a liquor store was just robbed downtown for the SECOND time recently. Is the solution to tear down Grove Pointe? Of course not.
Housing does NOT commit crime.

If someone WANTS to say "blacks and Hispanics are committing crimes so let's tear down their homes and throw them out of the city" then SAY it. Stand up for your racist beliefs, but please don't talk in terms of "evil housing."

If there are criminals living somewhere, anywhere, then let the cops get off their asses and arrest and prosecute them...that's what they are overpaid for. But to blame HOUSING is preposterous.

If you want a safe lily white community, then move to Mahwah.

Remember, the families living in Mongomery Gardens were there LONG before anyone moved into the Beacon.

Jersey City is a poor town, with poor leadership and poor planning. Not to blame Healy, this goes to Cunningham, Schundller, McCann, Smith, all incompetent greedy political hacks.
The City is also suffering through the worst economy since the 1930's.


So never forget the immortal line of Willie Sutton when asked why he robbed banks..."becasue that's where the money is." Coincidentally most of his bank robberies were during the OTHER Depression.

Notice there aren't many bank robberies in Upper Saddle River or Alpine.

I've been a victim of several crimes, one of which could easily have cost me my life, so I know JC can be dangerous.

But on a lighter note, since banks have been robbing us blind and ransacking the U.S. treasury, who CARES if the occasional bank gets taken for a few grand...we gave them TRILLIONS very recently.

ROFL...and what a difference between Sherman PLACE and Sherman Ave., eh?

I sometimes regret not renting a huge 6 room apartment in the big building on Sherman Place a quarter block West of Summit. After 20 years of rent control I'd have the best bargain in the city.


There's also a River DRIVE, the very pretty main street in Newport parallelling the Hudson, and a River Street which is basically the one block long entrance to the Wilzig Hospital (Medical Center.)

They always couch racism and money-ism with terms like "HOPE!"
And you are correct SHEP, it is occurring nationwide. During the 50's and 60's when whites were fleeing to the suburbs, blacks and Hispanics were kept in the cities with cheap housing, and rotten scools, and OUT of the suburbs with mortgage redlining. Now Joe Exec decided he hates the 3 hour commute daily so he wants BACK into the cities...so he has to throw the blacks and Huspanics OUT of the inner cities so he can remake them. See, Joe Exec cannnot live in a lovely ivory tower if there are THOSE people next door so he must get RID of them. Joe Exec wants Jersey City Newark, Camden and Philadelphia.

Throwihng the poor out of their homes, whether on a city-wide level or a country-wide level may be CALLED "Hope", but it is anything but.

It most reminds me of the Reagan-era emptying of the State Hospitals that were "cruelly warehousing those poor sick people." The solution: throw them out, redevelop the valuable land, let the patients walk the streets until they died an ugly early death.

HOPE, indeed!

Being poor is bad enough...being poor and homeless by state decree is despicable. There is nothing wrong with Montgomery Gardens other than poor people live there. So lets haven some honesty: instead of calliing it PROJECT HOPE call it ETHNIC CLEANSING.

Only New York City has kept the balance somewhat correct but that took a LOT of planning. Jersey City, an old mob town run by crooks on the take, doesn't know how to spell a single letter of the word PLANNING.

And please DO remember, we are in the worst economy since the Great Depression...losing your job, perhaps forever, AND your home is perhaps a double blow that few can tolerate.

It is impossible to see the Perseids or the Leonids (of November) anywhere near New York...the light pollution is overwhelming. Probably the CLOSEST we got was the great blackout of August 14, 2003 but they got the power back too early, around 10PM.

I was in the Catskills one year in August and the display was very good. This year the peak was Thursday and Friday and was reported as less than dazzling, but I'm sure if you can jump into your car and spin off to Provincetown or Montaulk today you can still see some
pyrotechnics after midnight...look Northeast. Maybe even Cape May?

For us it is lucky if the moon, 3 or 4 stars, and a planet or two are visible even on the clearest night. Astronomically speaking, we are probably in the deadest zone on Earth.

The only thing of note I've ever seen locally was comet Hale-Bopp several years ago.

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Did you also know that HUNDREDS of the apartments (no exaggeration) are being used as student dormitories with waves of young people crowding in each semester.
These rentals are made to a couple schools who deal directly with the Landlord. Not only does the population change with every semeseter, but with every break, out go a thousand suitcases to points unknown and come back a week or two later with CONTENTS unknown.

It is TRANSIENT populations that bring bedbugs, whether hoboes, students, Visa workers, or new immigrants. People living for 20 years in a single family homes do NOT get bedbugs because the bugs do not travel well without human assistance.

Alas, I do not think that there is a more transient population in Jersey City than Newport, perhaps St. Lucy's Shelter.

Let me double check on that Heights. The road I am referring to is NOT one of the ringroads but rather a straight road down here that runs 2 or 3 blocks and has private metering for a couple years.

Yes, I know North Street in the Heights...I lived only a few blocks away.

Okay, I Googled and MapQuested it. They both show it called NORTH BOULEVARD (preposterous for a street that runs from 12th to 14th Streets.) I KNOW it used to be called North Street but this "boulevard" designation must mean they have plans to extend it Northwards when they build new towers in the Northeast Quadrant. Or else the City just changed the name to avoid the TWO North Streets. (I'll double check the street sign when I next walk by.)

Newport's North whatever actually has no actual buildings on it...just the entrances to a couple big garages.

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Maybe you remember a guy at Newport...great apartment. He was dealing in weaponty from UZI's to STINGER MISSILES selling weaponry from manufacturers to Mid-East terrorists. He's currently in custody. Did they propse tearing down his building? NO!

Here's a good one:
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Any wrecking balls spotted on 5th Ave heading towards the dangerous Trump Tower?

Any chance of razing all of Bergen Avenue because of weekly shootings?

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Single family home on Monticello 2 weeks ago...gonna destroy Monticello Avenue?

Here's a list of 29 murders in Hudson County last year...can't find a single one for Montgomery Gardens, can you. Any recommendations to carpet bomb the county?
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF ... source=embed&ll=40.734299,-74.06461&spn=0.01117,0.01929&t=h&z=16

Does anyone tthink that there is ANY good reason to destory Montgomery Gardens other than to increase the real estate prices at the beacon?

The Newport Waterfront Association has thoroughly become for all intents and purposes what it always was, a non-elected non-entity representing nobody.

It's a shame because so large a block of tenants need representation to balance the immense power of a multi-billionaire landlord.

But petty internecine squabbling combined with a transient non-citizen tenant population has made any real tenants' association impossible. Anyone who tries to organize might as well put his head in a buzzsaw.



I also have wondered about the legality of private metering, and even more at the legality of "stealing" someone's car who forgets to pay a quarter for 5 minutes. Reminds me of those movies where towns had tollbooths...if you didn't pay, you were arrested, jailed and forced to appear before the judge, the brother of the guy who arrested you. Frontier justice, ala Jersey City.

Alas,

Mr. Halliburton Cheney-Bush has made city involvement, state involvement and even federal involvement in energy issues "sorta cute" but totally a waste of effort. Energy companies have been removed from all rules inbolving local zoning, environmental concerns, and even safety concerns.

"Local input" means nothing more than meetings where the energy companies sit and snooze while it SEEMS that the public is inputting information.

Remember too that all the Bush lack of regualtions of energy is still the Obama lack of regulations.

I guess what we can hope is that Spectra's financial evaluation of alternate roputes shows that an intra-harbor route is not TOO expensive for them. Maybe is enough noise is made and the differential in cost is small, we MIGHT avoid a pipeline thought the city...a BIG "might!"

In truth I must admit when comparisons are made about seeing a glass half full or half empty I usually scream that someone has stolen the glass. Assuming worse than the worst I haven't been wrong too often.

Heights, PBW,

Ringroads at Newport are the large circular driveways surrounding a usually large lovely garden giving access to 3 or 4 towers each, sort of a private drive if you will. Each ringroad is about 5 or 6 city blocks in circumference and has a security station at it's opening to a "main road" like River Drive South or Newport Parkway. They are a nice amenity and allow you to look at a rarely travelled road and a pretty garden instead of constant traffic.

You drive clockwise around the road to drop off groceries or pick up passengers. So now each ringroad has about 20 ugly parking meters, soon to be operational so the landlord can collect some quarters. This from the richest private real estate fortune in America. I guess you get your billions by collecting quarters (and being given huge tracks of land by cities Scot FREE and freedom from taxes.)

North Street is the couple block road that runs between the Thomas Jefferson and the Shore condos...sorta behind Morton Williams and parallel to the Hudson River. (I THINK it's still called that)

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Amen to that. It is sad but the United Ststes has lost all imagination for innovation. The only thing innovative is the decision about which country to invade next... where we are going to fight the next war.

And as for requriements for subsidized housing, who is more heavily subsidized than Lefrak? The first two towers with a total pv somewhat over 600 apartments pays a real estate "in lieu" totalling a bit less than $200,000 per quarter or $800,000 per year. That is about $1300 a YEAR for each apartment with an apporiximate market value if sold EASILY in excess of $300,000 each (if you wanterd to sell 90% of them in a couple months.) SInce HUD and NJMFHA comes round regularly one can assume generous mortgages/grants etc. in excess of this almost nominal real estate tax. Does the city come round and say "time to tear it all down to build some nice 3 story town-homes to stop warehousing 4000 people in a single building?


As for "drugs and crime" they are illegal. Like immigration laws on the books, anyone with a drug conviction is barred from public housing, but like immigration laws, the flabby police system find it easier to sit on their asses, collect a good pay and build up a pension.

I've said it before but I will repeat it: I drove by and watched several times as they tried to knock down CURRY'S WOODS (public housing down near the Bayonne line...almost all black, some Hispanic.) They crashed a huge wrecking ball at floor after floor, interior wall by interior wall for days on end to take the buidings down. I have never seen a crane work so hard, the place was built like STEEL. Had the same wrecking ball attacked my building, it sould have folded like a house of card with the first couple blows.

Buildings like these are among the best built in the County and, just like towers along Park Avenue or Fifth Avenue, will stand for centuries with a mondicum of care. When people start talking about the horrific population density if Trump Tower or the Upper East Side then we can expect honesty on the subject. But when the reference to warehousing is applied only to the poor it is is classicm and racism that art the ACTUAL meanings being bandied about.

"Oh how HAPPY "those people" will be when we dynamite their AWFUL homes." Shades

Johnny,

Lincoln Center is your answer. Jullliard and Fordham (at Lincoln Center) have a lot of stuff that is free or very cheap...and professional. Look into TDF vouchers.

The advantage of living in Jersey City is that Manhattan is close by.

REAL music in Jersey City...forget it.

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I apologize to anyone who was seriously wounded by my reference to Montgomery TOWERS instead of Montgomery GARDENS. They are very much NOT garden apartments but rather high rise towers...and that is the reason goven for the advantages of tearing them down to build a mini mall with a few cheesy apartments for relatives of council members and cops.

In fact, they are far more better described by TOWERS than by GARDENS although had I called them Montgomery MEWS, Montgomery PLACE, Montgomery CLOSE, or Montgomery PLAZA...everyone would have recognized what I was talking about. I particularly like THE MONTGOMERY...or better yet the TRUMP MONTGOMERY!

Not that it would be fair but I have always mused on what might happen to one of these so called "high rise warehouses" if the apartments were GIVEN to the residents as cooperators. I suspect that overnight most would be spiffied up, many would be sold, hallways would be papered, elevators would be fixed, and landscaping would become lovely overnight.

Remember, a building is usually turned into a slum because it is owned by a SLUMLORD. In the case of Montgomery Towers, the slumlords are Jersey City, HUD, and NJHMFA. It becomes dangerous becasue the police are too lazy to do their jobs.

It is institutionalized racism.

Tearing down a solidly built high-rise is just insane. The buildings are as substantial as The Beacon and could be converted into housing as valuable as Stuyvesant Town or Peter Cooper...but for the fact that the city, and the developers (same thing really) want to get rid of the people living there. Developers only get their hands on tax money by tearing down or rebuilding.

Jersey City should shake some sense into itself...it is NOT like Upper Saddle River or Bernardsville but rather much closer to Camden and Newark, both of whom are trying to get rid of their poor...probably to Jersey City. The way to get rid of the poor is to establish a rational government whose goal is something other than to divide society into a plutocracy and the rest of us.

Is anything more arrogant than somebody with chump change like $200,000 looking down on someone with $10,000 or less while there are those accumulating BILLIONS just sitting on their asses laughing at the waste of energy and misdirected ire.

Just remember, their were poor families living in Montgomery Towers LONG before some wanna-be's who cannot afford Manhattan decided to move into the Beacon and scorn "those people" living next door.

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Except for the warm fuzzy feeling of owning, I don't think I agree financially with that statement. Remember that same apartment, at $1500 to rent, might very well cost $3,000+ to own.
In the past go-go years, you could always count on fast capital appreciation but then the bubble went bust. Some say the bubble won't inflate again for decades. If not, then the comparison might be between the $1500 one bedroom vs. the $3500 one bedroom...same place.

If I had MANY MILLIONS I would not consider owning. I would rent for 6 months in Paris, then 6 months in Vienna, then 6 months in Wellington, then 6 months in Rio, then 6 months on cruise liner, etc. etc. Let others worry about who is breaking into their penthouses while they're gone and which neighbor is likely to infect their 5 million dollar penthouses with bedbugs.

But for now, with modest means, it seems the renter is in the more enviable financial position, even if it means putting up with idiot landlords...unless of course you can find the deal of a lifetime.

Thanks moxie...but I think my move will likely be out of JC but who knows? Nothing is rock solid yet.
It's a nice thought that OTHER things will be there for me to love.


Anyhow,
On that Newark Avenue location, I relooked and it seems that the only thing actually ON Newark is the Episcopal Development Corp. Homes are scattered around elsewhere...one on Stegman Ave, which is definitely NOT someplace to live.

The concept of requiring a low income tenant, or ANY tenant, to share your home might be a dicey proposition.

The whole concept is racist, couched in silly illogical real estate jargon.

When they have a well built building with masonry walls between apartments covered with REAL plaster housing 125 apartments they call it WAREHOUSING THE POOR. They make demolition sound like a GOOD thing, although usually more than half of the residents will be displaced with a lucky few getting "low rise quality living."

However, then they build JUNKY towers with thin gypsum board between apartments and house 325 apartments and call it LUXURY. No impetus to destroy Newport, Trump Towers, or the Marbella because they are WAREHOUSING people. WARHOUSING is a term only applied to the poor even if they have more square footage than someone in the SHORE NORTH.

THe difference that cannot be mentioned is that the "WAREHOUSING" is for poor blacks and Hispanics but the "LUXURY CROWDING" is for non-poor whites.

The reason "they" want to get rid of Montgomery Towers is to get the blacks out of the expanding downtown (even if on a hill.) The same thing was done to remove Hispanics who were renting in downtown so that people could remake their million dollar townhomes (after gutting the apartments that housed 3 families and evicting the residents.)

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ROFL,

In all honesty, I was ready to leave Newport the day I moved in...but first I had to find a better financial deal, more convenient location (to Manhattan or San Farancisco,) safer surroundings, or prettier setting surrounded by lovely landscaping and abutting the Hudson River walkway and the most beautiful citiscape view on Earth. I haven't found anything better but I'm onto something.

Not being an owner I am not locked into Newport, but to date, nothing has been as appealing as Newport and the 7 minute walk to the PATH platform. Like all renters, the tug to ownership is exerting some appeal as my neighbors change on a monthly basis. Becoming part of a racial minority and fearing for the inevitable bedbug invasion are not pleasant thoughts. Management is also falling down on its job.

And my NEW apartment isn't quite so new anymore.
But it is still nice to have an easy walk to SHopRite, BJ's, A&P, M&W, Newport Spirits, Best Buy, Home Depot, BuyRite, Target, Modell's, Staples, Duane Reade?, and the Mall with Penney's, Sears, Macy's, Kohl's and 100 more stores all in the back yard...and a nice on-site health club.
With all this around me, giving up the car saves me about $8 grand a year.
It is very easy to live at Newport. WHen a fridge or an AC blows, they give you a new one. Paint look sallow, they'll paint every three years. Drain clogged, pipe leeaking...plumbing fixed in a half hour.

But, I'm definitely looking. When I go there will be many things I will miss.
+++++++++++++++++++++++

BTW, that NEWARK AVE location is the corner of Palisades Avenue abutting Dickenson High School, so yes, there is a bit of pioneering to that location.

Late-morning (10-11AM ish) Friday, August 6. No trains from Newport to WTC...no messages.
Took train to Grove to try method 2. Waited a half hour at Grove. They were holding a train going TOWARDS JSQ in the station but nothing coming towards WTC on the empty track. No messages.

The slimy little pricks even stop the routine boring message, so all you get is silence. That's the way a 2 year old behaves when he knows he's been bad.

Took an hour to get from Pavonia to WTC, a normal 6 minute ride. It seemed longer in this god-forsaken platform heat.

PLEASE save me from this train!

Lefrak has pulled some tacky moves in their day but this one takes the cake.
Bad enough private meters were put up along North Street?? But the ringroad meters just cheapens the area...like penny arcade living.

Does this company even have a clue how to spell even one letter of the word CLASS?

JRestrepo.

That is extremely interesting. For someone who wants to pioneer a neighborhood with a good chance of improvement and meets the financial criteria the deals seem excellent. From the pictures, the homes seem well made/rehabilitated.

Of course, the neighborhoods are all currently pretty iffy.
But that's what pioneering is.

You might be getting an application or two from me.

Yep, it's been a LONG time since weekend service. It ended close to the time that all direct service to both NYC locations from Newport was discontinued.

Guesstimate: 4- 5 years? (If my thinking is sloppy it's because the ferry was always too expensive for me...I'm consigned to the PATH cattle cars.)

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In February 2001, Bush told Cheney (or vice-versa) to hold secret meetings with the heads of Big Energy. This was 2 weeks into the Bush presidency. To this date the governmet has refused FOI requests to release the content of these meetings. The public STILL has no idea of what collusion was planned between the energy companies and the government.
The report was finalized in May 2001.

How coincidental the appointment of Ms. Brownell to head FERC that very month.

In my heart of hearts I believe the only thing that can stop this JC pipeline link is the direct involvement of the president. Call me a cynic. If we are able to fight 2, 3 or 4 bankrupting wars over energy simultaneously, I see little hope for respecting the plaintive cries of a small city. Having the last head of FERC now sitting on Spectra's board does not add much hope that FERC is even vaguely independent.

A possible reason for venturing back there is the need to pee...especially with diuretics.

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You made the right choice. Had you "scolded" the cop you would have risked being handcuffed and arrested for "resisting arrest."

Jersey City cops are nothing if not arrogant.

Had you gone to the precinct to make a complaint they'd all have had a good laugh. I speak from experience. Professional they AIN'T!

Is that the long 5 story beige building with runway terraces reminiscent of an old '60's style Atlantic City motel?

If so, it looks seedy. And Vlad the Impaler doesn't sound like a plus factor.

What are they getting for the apartments? Anything is tolerable for the right price.

Remember too that Jersey City has rent control for buildings like this.