New parks, plazas and safer Loew's paid with $25 tax

Monday, September 29, 2008
By PAUL KOEPP
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

What can $25 buy you these days? How about parks and historic preservation projects in nearly every town in Hudson County?

The county Board of Chosen Freeholders voted last month to allocate $8.4 million from the county's open space trust fund for 19 projects ranging from soccer fields at the Peninsula at Bayonne Harbor to new floating docks on the Hackensack River in Secaucus.

The trust fund is filled each year by a one-cent tax per $100 of assessed valuation, or about $25 for an average Hudson County property owner.

The tax brought in $5.8 million last year, according to Stephen Marks, head of the county's Division of Planning. The remainder of the money allocated this year comes out of unused funds from previous years and bonding of about $1 million, he said.

The largest chunk of open space change this year will be $3 million for the $12 million acquisition of six acres at the former Cognis chemical plant site at the foot of the Palisades in Hoboken, planned for a park.

Another $1.2 million will help acquire more land for the new 15-acre Berry Lane Park at the former Steel Technologies site at Communipaw Avenue and Woodward Street in Jersey City.

Hudson County Community College will receive $600,000 for its new Culinary Arts Plaza, which is under construction on a triangular piece of land next to Sip Avenue.

And nearby, the Friends of the Loew's secured $180,000 for safety code improvements at the Loew's Theatre in Journal Square.

Proposed projects are ranked according to a formula that considers which towns in Hudson County have the greatest deficit of park land.

Accordingly, Guttenberg, which currently has no parks, was able to garner $400,000 for a waterfront park after the town blocked a developer's plan to build condominiums along the Hudson River.

Marks said the trust fund is not intended to be the sole funding source for any project.

The focus of the program in such a densely developed county should be the recycling of abandoned industrial sites, he said, noting: "We have to think about reusing land and reusing brownfields."