Dear residents of downtown Jersey City:

Last year on December 20, 2013, I posted an open letter to you regarding the City?s refusal to allow the Planning Board to hold a hearing on our development application. In that letter, I cautioned the City that it was:

? . . . taking a significant risk by not allowing the Planning Board to hear our application on a timely basis. It is our belief that our application has been complete since October 4 when the Planning Division directed us to submit plans for agent review and that the Planning Board?s statutory 95-day period for making a decision on our application expires on January 7, 2014."

I went on to state that:

? . . . if the Planning Board fails to reschedule the hearing that was to have occurred on December 17, then there is the very real possibility that our project will be approved by operation of law.?

You can access a copy of the entire letter at:

http://jclist.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=334876

As it turns out, that is exactly what happened. On August 29, 2014, Judge Turula of the Hudson County Superior Court ruled that the Planning Board failed to act within the statutory time period and granted our request for an automatic approval of the development application, which is the remedy provided in the statute. You can access a copy of the Judge?s opinion at:

http://www.brightandvarickcourtdecision.com/decision.pdf

Since then the City filed a Motion for Reconsideration, which was denied; and the parties consented to the Van Vorst Park Association?s request to intervene. The City and VVPA have until January 2, 2015, to file an appeal (the City stated at a recent court hearing that it did not intend to file an appeal).

Despite our having won the lawsuit, we have continued our efforts to resolve this matter through compromise with the City and VVPA.

1. On September 11, 2014, our attorney wrote to the City regarding the possibility of reaching some sort of compromise.
2. On October 28, 2014, I met with the JCRA and proposed a framework for compromise that would have sharply reduced the number of units at Bright and Varick, changed them to conventional units and included some on-site parking. In return, the City would have reimbursed us for certain development and legal expenses and sold us an alternative site(s) elsewhere in the city for our micro-housing project.
3. On November 25, 2014, I wrote to the Van Vorst Park Association offering to implement a package of mitigation measures including putting a cap on the number of neighborhood parking permits that could be issued to residents of our project.

To date none of our efforts have borne fruit, but we remain open to meaningful discussions with the City and VVPA regarding the offers we have made. As we have pointed out to both parties, there is little likelihood of either being able to overturn Judge Turula?s lengthy and carefully reasoned opinion. Rather than continue to waste time and money on a lawsuit that as Councilwoman Candice Osborne correctly predicted in November 2013 that ?we are guaranteed to lose?, the VVPA and City should focus their attention on seriously considering our offers to compromise.

http://candiceosborne.com/updates/wee ... ment-on-bright-and-varick

Both the City and VVPA have repeatedly passed up opportunities to have us make significant modifications to our proposed project. In retrospect, it is easy to see that doing so was a mistake. We are giving them a final opportunity to erase that mistake and work with us to minimize the impact of our project on the neighborhood.

One other thing has happened during the past year - micro-housing is no longer an ?experiment? as some of the project?s opponents have alleged. Thousands of micro-units have been completed or are under construction or are moving through the approvals process in cities such as Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, Boston, New York, Washington, DC, Vancouver, and Toronto. Public officials in these cities see micro-housing as an important means of addressing high housing costs, minimizing the environmental footprint of new construction and attracting the kind of workforce that is critical to future economic development. Our project offers Jersey City the opportunity to join the ever-growing ranks of cities that recognize the contribution micro-housing can make to their residents and their economies.

Over two years ago, the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency Board asked us to help them address the issue of workforce housing by constructing a market rate micro-housing project. We remain committed to moving forward with our project so that the residents of the City will have an exciting new and relatively affordable housing option available to them as soon as possible.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to read this update.

Dear residents of downtown Jersey City:

I am writing to explain why the City reneged on its commitment to have the Planning Board hold a public hearing on December 17 on the site plan application for our Bright and Varick Street project. I also want to alert you to the very real possibility that if the City persists in blocking the Planning Board from taking action it will not only result in an approval of the project by operation of law but will preclude opponents of the project from presenting their arguments to either the Planning Board or a court of law.

As some of you are undoubtedly aware, for the past 17 months our firm, RushmanDillon Projects LLC, has been working on an all studio apartment project that would be located at the corner of Bright and Varick Streets. At a November 12 meeting he requested, Mayor Fulop made a personal promise to me that the Planning Board would hold a public hearing on our application for site plan approval in December. On November 25, the Planning Division wrote to remind us that 14 sets of our final plans had to be submitted by December 2 so they could be distributed to Planning Board members prior to the December 17 hearing. We submitted those plans on December 2 as requested.

Then on December 11, we were provided with a copy of the Planning Board?s agenda that did not include the promised hearing on our project. The City has conjured up some flimsy legal argument for doing so ? an argument that was originally brought to its attention on October 9 and which it rejected. In fact, Mayor Fulop met twice with a delegation from the Van Vorst Park Association during October to inform them that after exhaustive research the City had determined that it had no legal basis on which to block or disapprove the proposed project. Mayor Fulop made the same points to a well-attended town hall meeting he convened on November 4. The local press reported extensively on his remarks and statement that ?the City?s hands are tied?.

Even though Planning Division staff and other City officials had regularly described our project as being ?as of right?, we expressed our willingness to make modifications to improve our project. During the six-week period between early October and mid November, I met regularly with senior City officials including the Mayor, former Deputy Mayor Thieroff and Corporation Counsel to explore ways to address concerns raised by some neighborhood residents. I offered to reduce the number of units in the building by up to 17+/- units, to eliminate one floor of the five-story building, and to make other changes to minimize the impact of the project on the publicly subsidized on-street parking that many current neighborhood residents enjoy. I did, however, reject the Mayor?s offer to provide a 20+ year tax abatement to the proposed project or to tap the City?s Affordable Housing Trust Fund if we agreed to substitute an affordable housing project at that location because I thought his offers raised thorny legal and/or political issues.

Exactly why the Mayor has reversed his position on this project and what his next step will be is not at all clear. What is clear, and what we have cautioned the City about in writing repeatedly, is that it is taking a significant risk by not allowing the Planning Board to hear our application on a timely basis. It is our belief that our application has been complete since October 4 when the Planning Division directed us to submit plans for agent review and that the Planning Board?s statutory 95-day period for making a decision on our application expires on January 7, 2014.

If we are correct and if the Planning Board fails to reschedule the hearing that was to have occurred on December 17, then there is the very real possibility that our project will be approved by operation of law. This will happen despite the Planning Board never having had a public hearing and will deprive the opponents of the project from making their views known at such a hearing and from appealing an approval that the Planning Board might have given after such a hearing. I have no doubt City officials will try to reassure you of the wisdom of their recently adopted strategy despite Councilwoman Osborn?s statement in her November 1 Weekly Blog that the Mayor, Councilwoman Coleman, the City Law Department and she had spent many hours looking for a legal loophole to no avail. She said then that it would be ?irresponsible to the tax payers of Jersey City to put ourselves in the path of a contract lawsuit we are guaranteed to lose.? We agree and are left wondering why the Mayor is so afraid of allowing the Planning Board hold its normal public hearing and instead risk an automatic approval of the project?

While we would certainly like to have an approval in hand and be able to move forward with our project, we do not believe it is in anyone?s best interests for us to obtain that approval automatically by operation of law because local elected officials prevented the volunteer Planning Board from operating in its normal fashion. We believe strongly that our project addresses the largely unmet needs of one and two person households that make up three-quarters of all households in the downtown area. These households deal every day with the challenge of finding suitable housing both in terms of size and price in a market that is woefully short of studio apartments. For example, in the Van Vorst Park neighborhood, there are 2,000 one or two person households and only 145 studio apartments. This leaves many with no option but to rent a larger and more expensive apartment than would be ideal or to share three or four bedroom apartments and townhouses with a group of roommates. We believe we have designed a project that meets the unique needs of one and two person households, especially those who do not own cars (it is worth noting that in Van Vorst Park a one person household is almost twice as likely not to own a car than a larger household - 63% v. 34%).

We do recognize that some who live in the neighborhood feel threatened by our proposed project. They have a vision that the neighborhood should cater exclusively to families with children (currently only 1 in 5 households living in the neighborhood actually are families with children). They want to be able to continue to enjoy paying only $30/year for the publicly owned on-street parking spaces that have a market value of $2000 - $3200/year. They apparently want to live a more suburban lifestyle in an increasingly urbanized area. While we do not believe these viewpoints represent the majority of those who live in either Van Vorst Park or downtown Jersey City, we recognize the right of residents to hold and express those views. More importantly, just as we believe we have a right to present our case for the project to the Planning Board, we believe both the supporters and opponents of the project also have a right to voice their opinions to the Board.

If you feel as we do, that everyone deserves a right to make their views about the proposed project known to the Planning Board and that the project should be approved (or disapproved) by the Planning Board rather than automatically approved because the Planning Board is prevented from complying with a statutory deadline, then you ought to contact the Mayor and the Chairwoman of the Planning Board to urge them to let the public be heard on January 7.

Thank you for taking the time to read this report.

Contact information:

Mayor Steve Fulop
(201) 547-5200
FulopS@jcnj.org

Roseanna Petruzzelli
Chairwoman
Jersey City Planning Board
(201) 547-5010