High-price studies to help select site for JCIA and DPW

Tuesday, October 21, 2008
By PAUL KOEPP
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

It may cost Jersey City nearly $700,000 in settlement funds from the chromium cleanup on the city's West Side just to decide where to relocate the city's Incinerator Authority and Department of Public Works.

Step one will be deciding where to build the new combined facility as the departments leave their current contaminated digs on Route 440. The JCIA and DPW will need about 10 acres and access to major roads.

With the city's original plan to move them up the street to the PJP landfill site under the Pulaski Skyway held up by litigation with that site's owner - and by the opposition of Councilwoman Mary Spinello, who says it would create too much traffic and pollution in her ward - attention has turned to three other sites.

The Jersey City City Council will vote tomorrow on whether to pay $346,000 for Urbahn Architects, of Newark, to do architectural and engineering studies of the PJP property and an industrial tract on East Linden Avenue.

The latter includes two existing buildings totaling 200,000 square feet that could be refurbished to house the departments.

Stantec Consulting Services, of Rochelle Park, could receive $100,000 to do traffic studies of those two sites.

Also up for consideration will be a $200,000 contract for Malcolm Pirnie Inc., of Fair Lawn, to do environmental investigations at the PJP and East Linden Avenue sites, as well as other possible locations on Linden Avenue and Commercial Street.

And T&M Associates, of Middletown, could get $46,000 to study the landscaping that would be required for a proposed park on the western side of the PJP site, along the Hackensack River.

All of these contracts would come out of a $13 million relocation fund established by Honeywell International as part of the company's development plans on the West Side, officials said.

City Corporation Counsel Bill Matsikoudis said the City Council would have to go into executive session at one of its upcoming meetings to decide which site it wants to pursue.