Art House Studios in Journal Square and Monty Hall near Exchange Place sometimes host comedy.

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How did you find out that the center building was not included in the wider complex and was being developed separately?

The Jersey City Redevelopment Agency actually put out a Request for Offer to Purchase for the complex a year ago. It seems in the doc that the entire complex was for sale under the condition that a percentage of the units be set aside for affordable and workforce housing. Here is the file: http://www.state.nj.us/dca/hmfa/media ... _whitlock_mills_rfotp.pdf

Claremont Construction Corp seems to be working on the construction. They indicate on their website that they were brought on to restart the 10 year old project and are building 330 units. This likely encompasses the entire complex rather than the single center building.
http://www.clarecon.com/index.php/pro ... 3/item/105-whitlock-mills


The Request for Offer to Purchase's due date passed a year ago, but the doc figures prominently on the JCRA's webpage. My guesses are:
a) The complex was purchased and is being redeveloped by Claremont Construction but the JCRA website hasn't been updated

b) The complex has not been purchased, but somehow the JCRA has brought on Claremont Construction to see construction through in hopes of attracting a buyer.

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This. Limiting subsidies for parking and drivers commits residents and commuters towards other transit-options. We should have the goal of making getting around more equitable for everybody, especially those that do not or cannot own a car or drive. As it stands currently, we are subsidizing the ownership and usage of a private good.

That's not to mention all of the additional tax revenue that would be generated if new developments were not required or restricted from building parking garages. A floor of private condo parking does not generate as much tax revenue as an additional floor of livable space. This is true even if taxes are excluded from the equation, and we're just considering another floor of people contributing to the local economy.

In the long term, higher demand for mass transit options will only improve quality, frequency, and speed of service. As a complement to this, the expansion of next-gen transit like ZipCar and Uber will continue to lower costs for shared auto usage and make private car ownership completely unnecessary, expensive, and inefficient for most people in JC.

The quote below from a NYT article discussing the book "The High Cost of Free Parking" sums this up.

"Legally mandated parking lowers the market price of parking spaces, often to zero. Zoning and development restrictions often require a large number of parking spaces attached to a store or a smaller number of spaces attached to a house or apartment block.

If developers were allowed to face directly the high land costs of providing so much parking, the number of spaces would be a result of a careful economic calculation rather than a matter of satisfying a legal requirement. Parking would be scarcer, and more likely to have a price ? or a higher one than it does now ? and people would be more careful about when and where they drove.

The subsidies are largely invisible to drivers who park their cars ? and thus free or cheap parking spaces feel like natural outcomes of the market, or perhaps even an entitlement. Yet the law is allocating this land rather than letting market prices adjudicate whether we need more parking, and whether that parking should be free. We end up overusing land for cars ? and overusing cars too. You don?t have to hate sprawl, or automobiles, to want to stop subsidizing that way of life."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/bus ... /economy/15view.html?_r=0

Let's not forget the benefits of better multi-modal transit in the form of increased pedestrian/driver safety, economic development (especially around permanent stations), individual savings on transportation costs (no gas, finance/lease payments, car insurance, repairs, wear and tear maintenance, tolls, registration, inspections, tickets, parking fees), lower municipal expenditures as a result of fewer potholes/road damage (from decreased usage), emergency personnel deployed to accidents, etc., and environmental benefits.

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Agreed that light rail would be ideal, but it would likely be cost prohibitive as there would not be the same land value capture as there has been with the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail (i.e. where the construction of the transit system increased the value of vacant/derelict land around the stops and the increased economic activity/population increase/taxes justified the investment in transit)

A fully-integrated, true BRT system, though, would improve transit quality and speed at a fraction of the cost for a corridor that is already mostly developed with lower rise buildings but justifiably deserves better transit options. When I say fully-integrated, true BRT I mean "surface subway" and NOT the MTA's Select Bus Service, which is barely a half-measure. See the article below for more info on what comprises fully-integrated BRT and how an implementation as close as Hartford, CT is inspired by successful global executions.

https://medium.com/@transitapp/is-this ... a-b40b7bb4115d#.smmjou7nj

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A feasibility study was done examining best routes for Bus Rapid Transit from Bayonne/Greenville to Journal Square. The results found Kennedy Blvd to be the most appropriate thoroughfare for BRT. Not sure what the current status of this project is, but I'm sure it could use further support.

http://www.njtpa.org/planning/subregi ... -boulevard-brt-study.aspx

https://www.facebook.com/Bayonne-Jersey-City-BRT-273211032777631/