That's good news. While I believe we should have a balance of businesses downtown and should do our best to make it easier on smaller operations to open up and stay competitive, this mish mash of a law was too heavy handed and not the way to go. It's important to keep a neighborhood with as local a character as possible though and not become like Manhattan or too many areas in Brooklyn, just chains and big boxes. There simply wasn't anything close to a problem warranting the kind of concern that necessitated having any kind of law limiting chains. Especially when this law was so haphazardly drawn, so random and unfair in application. At the time it was a poorly thought out solution in search of a problem that hadn't formed yet and thankfully, though it's taken more than awhile more reasonable heads have prevailed in its rescinding.

This is the wrong thread for this subject as it pertains to KRE's Journal Squared, NOT KABR's One Journal Square.

Thanks, Monroe.. appreciate it! I really want to hear what the whole concept entails but as long as the motor cross stadium that was part of the original vision is NOT included, I am hopeful this project is doable. I'm not crazy about proliferating casinos but right now building one in the Meadowlands(where you still have the ill fated Xanadu project, now under new management so you might as well build around it all the money being wasted keeping it in limbo) and Jersey City at the location being discussed which would be mainly higher stakes and not a true competitor to AC, well with the condition AC is in proceeds from the profits from both can help at least stem the bleeding it's taking. Also the hotel/condo/casino would be the tallest outside a main city in North America at a height that rivals One World Trade Center and with 95 story, 990 ft 99 Hudson give our city two supertalls at the very least. With everything in the pipeline and till some significant developable land our skyline, fifth in the Northeast and 14th overall in the US, a top 5 skyline. I do hope that as more projects get built a number of units get put aside as affordable units, at least a quarter.

Would the area used for the casino/ hotel condo development be the same site that was to have three sail shaped towers developed in conjuction with the building of Liberty National goif course... a
project that was never built?

What we should want to be is an alternative to ridiculous rental prices in Manhattan and Brooklyn.. not hell bent on matching them.

Typical conservative oversimplification. Once the landlords smell big rents and the big boxes who will gladly pay them move in if unchecked, the free market doesn't exist anymore. It becomes who has the most money and those who don't have the reserves that big chains have simply can't even get on the playing field to compete. Real free markets don't exist for too long when the incentives to make as much money as you can trumps considerations of what's better for the community.

Is the current proposal the best to limit homogenization of retail options and prevent downtown Jersey City from looking like "Anywhere, USA"? Maybe not... and Yvonne couldn't be more wrong. Small businesses that might have a few locations doesn't constitute the kind of corporate chain Fulop is trying to limit. Again, it's not banning all chains and choices... it's trying to keep the big pocketed corporations who can afford to pay sky high rents from taking over downtown. That's what the landlords want... big$$$ and the whole concept of let the free market choose is bogus because powerful people inevitably do their best(both landlords and companies) to maximize their bottom line whether it benefits the consumer or not. When the residential market goes up it shouldn't price out the community.. nobody does anything about it. "Choice" is a very limited reality in the market as it goes... you get upscale or brand friendly middlebrow but you don't have the individual investment a community where more of the businesses don't have remote corporate headquarters that only wantto get bigger and fatter on your dime even if they don't even pay their workers all that well. They don't have a skin in the game except as that "Anywhere, USA" cash cow. Fulop's solution may need work but the intentions are in the right place.