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View Larger Map Jersey City toxic site cleaned up after 50 years will not be used for City Hall Annex, officials say Monday, July 26, 2010 By MELISSA HAYES JOURNAL STAFF WRITER The Jersey City-owned contaminated site at the southern end of Monmouth Street is clean and ready for development, but don't expect to see a City Hall Annex there. The Jersey City Redevelopment Agency announced last week that the brownfields site, contaminated with heavy metals including arsenic and lead, has been remediated. The 10-acre site near Jersey City Medical Center has been vacant for about 50 years. Once surrounded by industrial buildings, the site became a dumping ground called the New Jersey Turnpike Dump Site, for its proximity to the state toll road. "This is the first step in the process of reclaiming this important redevelopment area from years of environmental abuse and neglect," JCRA Executive Director Robert Antonicello said. But despite city officials discussing plans to build a City Hall Annex with 120,000 square feet of office space, 1,200 parking spaces and 50,000 square feet of retail on the site as recently as last month, Antonicello said plans have changed. "That is permanently tabled at this point," he said of the annex. Antonicello said the economy and a push to shrink local government contributed to tabling the idea for an annex that would have occupied two acres of the site. Ward E Councilman Steven Fulop, whose district includes the site, has said the land is prime real estate and should be sold to a developer. The city already has a developer for eight acres of the 10-acre site, which is called the Grand Jersey Redevelopment Area. The investors building Monaco Towers on Sixth Street have plans to build Harbor Place, a mid- to high-rise apartment and condo complex with retail space, on the majority of the site, Antonicello said. The clean-up of the site, which took about there years, was funded through a $5.8 million state grant. In a statement, Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy commended the JCRA, state Department of Environmental Protection and the federal Environmental Protection Agency for their efforts. "Now we can move forward with our redevelopment plan for the area," he said.