My apologies jcaro28, I must have misunderstood your previous quote:

"FYI for all those novicves out there...."

What did you mean by "novicves"?

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can someone please clarify this, i am still confused. Is the tax based on a variable mortgage payment? Ie if you pay more mortgage, you pay more tax. Or is it based on a fixed amount?

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oh, and that unprofitable venture I told you about, the one I need my tax deal sweetened for?

You might have read something in the papers about me actually recently *expanding* it - I know that might not sound very logical since it's been so so unprofitable, but that article's misleading, they took everything out of context - pay no attention to that.

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hey could I do that too? I took on a few business ventures that haven't worked out as well as I hoped this past month... So if the city could just revise the tax commitment I previously agreed to, I *might* manage to find enough change under the couch cushions to pay maybe .003 percent or so of the difference. Would that be ok? Great, thanks. I can meet the council in the parking lot behind city hall - I'll be the guy with the brown paper bag. -- 20's ok?

Chances are this is just a case of smart business people trying to squeeze every cent they can out of a corrupt, short-sighted and stupid municipality. A Russian company should know how to do that better than anyone. They are passing the cost of lowering prices on to the city (in the form of reduced taxes) rather than lowering prices because they can. Because the weak market gives them an excuse.

I'm not the biggest fan of abatements (especially since they're not really abatements (but a way for the city to get money that would otherwise go to the county and school board), but the article is misleading about how abatements work.

The 16% amount in the article is actually 16% of ownership costs based on a 20-year mortgage for the entire sale amount of the home (so 16% of 12 monthly payments for that theoretical mortgage plus 12 months of condo fees). In the end this works out to 1.6% to 1.7% of the purchase price per year. This is not much less than an unabated property would pay in taxes. If CanCo's rate is reduced to 10% it wold be more like 1%-1.1% of the purchase price, which is much less than average.

The difference is that the city gets 95% of property taxes (as a change a few years ago based on complaints from the county and schools gave them this small amount) rather than the county and schools getting a much larger share (about half) under regular taxes. So the city gets more money, and additional one-time payments from developers to plug the budget holes that develop every year, and the county and schools lose money.

Coalco is a pretty well-heeled international firm. They appear to have eight or nine massive developments in the New York area alone and a bunch more in Russia. One of their co-owners is #260 on the list of the world's richest people and is worth in the range of $4 billion.

I don't think they're going to run out of money. I think they can "weather the storm" just fine.

Oh and Macellen, i never said anyone is a novice and I was NOT condesedning to any memeber...so get off your trip and get over yourself!!!!!!!

Canco has run out of funding to complete the project. they need to sell alot more units to complete the project. Instead of lowering prioces, they are lowering the taxes. this is alos a sign that they need every cent for completion.

they assumed that the units would sell fast and the $$$ would be there for completion. there is still demand out there...Check out Maxwell Plaxe in hoboekn and A condos downtown JC...differnce is that these developers can afford to complete the project with their own funding.

what happens to the 60 units that were sold if the remaining units are NOT sold?? Those people are screwed.

KHovanaian or Haliburton or Toll Bros...they are taking the hit, but can weather the storm.

I don't think Coalco is going to "run out of money" anytime soon...

a Russian oligarchy/conglomerate and JC municipal government


...not much chance for corruption there....

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I just want to thank you for bringing your real estate experience and savvy to us "novicves". If they decrease prices, it will increase demand?

What exactly makes you think Coalco has run out of money? (being a novice I am having trouble following). I was under the impression that the real estate group was a part of the broader Coal and Aluminum mining group out of Russia - not a group likely to be facing a liquidity crisis in the near term.

Also, while I am not in real estate, I would imagine sales have slowed for most condos coming on line in this market - that does not exactly mean the sky is falling...

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Does anyone know what the plans are for the area? They recently razed everything on the south side of St Pauls west of the tracks to James plus more on the north side of St. Pauls and on other streets nearby. It seems like they're getting ready for something.

There are also a few large lots in the area being detoxified. I'm not sure how long that takes but there's an awful lot of space opening up.

With the PSE&G powerplant, oil tanks, and the street level railroad crossing (mandatory horn blast) I don't see the potential but if someone can make it work then best of luck to them.

Not even THIS City Council would be so stupid as to base a charge on a mortgage payment. It would mean that those who bought an apartment for cash (yes, it DOES happen) would pay almost no taxes for 30 years.

I think the article's author got it wrong.

yep, that's only $1800 year - but maybe more importantly than the dollar amount is the fact that it's locked in for 10 years, at which point it only rises 2% for the next 10, etc etc...

plus - if you're lucky enough to be able to finance less, your payment would be even less - in other words, the cost basis has nothing at all to do with the value of the property itself - it's insane - I mean, if you pre-pay down the principal and get a lower monthly mortgage payment, your abated tax payment will track that? ridiculous.

What's in it for the city government is that with abatements they can get their grimy little fingers on the money directly, rather than have it flow through the state and fund the schools - they're addicted to years of the state funding the schools through JC being classified as a distressed city.

Jersey City is like a relative who just won the lottery (all the development) but still expects to borrow money from you for groceries (the schools).


In the future, a perfect storm: the very same development that's getting all these abatements is rightly expected by Trenton to be lifting the city up, so the state tries to pull distressed city school aid and to get JC to stand on its own two legs, but all these low-dollar abatements are locked into place, so there's no local funding available for the schools. End result? Jersey City one way or the other will have to remain a distressed joke of a city for another generation.

the abatements are a perversion of the system, and (I think) nothing less than governmental malpractice

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what does this mean exactly? If i make a big down payment for example and only pay say $1000 a month for mortgage and $500 for maintanence. Does that mean my monthly property tax will only be $150? $1500 * 10%(the new rate).

Is this for real?

Lipsi is a waste. He bends over for the devleopers...I wish Fulop was our councilman.

anyway...i looked at Canco...great ideas...nice space..area is not that bad...but prices are wayyyy toooo high and the mainteneice , prop tax are allso way tooo high. Lower your prices by $50,000, reduce parking fees and maybe you will sell more.

FYI for all those novicves out there....I am in real estate...when a devloper committs to a project like this...the legit ones have the financing up front...regardless of the mkt...they can afford to finish the project and whatver doesnt sell, they will rent. It obvious Coalco ran out of $$$$ and sales are horrible...so they have no $$$ to finish project. This is not a good sign!!!

I don't think its unlikely that they would expand, I think though that 2011 is an unrealistic time frame. Also, rental units and retail might be profitable whether or not condos are selling.

I think the expansion to 1,100 units is a total lie.

They are having problems selling existing units because there is no neighborhood to speak of in the immediate vicinity, so in order to sell the units they claim they will create a new neighborhood in the future.

Yeah, and I have a bridge in Brroklyn for sale (complete with a waterfall).

Ambitions Expand at Canco Lofts

New York Times
By ANTOINETTE MARTIN
Published: June 29, 2008

Jersey City

As the first 200 condominium units at Jersey City?s Canco Lofts approach completion, with 60 of them already sold, the project?s developers disclosed last week that they plan to create an entire new neighborhood encompassing the site of the former American Can Company factory.

The development by Coalco New York is to expand to more than 1,100 units ? about half of which will be new construction, and the rest lofts in the converted factory buildings, which closed in the 1970s ? according to Coalco?s president, Mikhail Kurnev.

Retail shop space and a public park are also part of the plan to revitalize a 10-acre site that Steve Lipski, a local councilman, said once ?looked like Dresden after the war.?

Coalco, a division of a Russian-based company with diversified interests, will invest a total of about $350 million in the project, said Mr. Kurnev in an interview last week. He detailed expansion plans even as the city moved to grant an improved tax abatement to jump-start sales at the Canco Lofts.

Mr. Kurnev said the sales pace at Canco had been slowed by a number of factors: construction and permit delays, the soft market, and the need to educate buyers about the neighborhood?s potential and the city administration?s commitment to it.

Moreover, he added, the project is attracting younger people ? so far, 80 percent are under 35 and unmarried ? who typically would be first-time buyers, ?and they are insecure about it.?

The retro-modern look of the apartments, which have soaring ceilings and enormous windows, along with the high-tech-inspired design of the lobby (by Lot-Ek of New York) are creating intense interest, several brokers said. At least a couple of buyers agreed.

?Honestly,? said one of them, Dan Moore, ?I have not seen a single thing that even remotely compares to how cool these spaces are.?

Mr. Moore, a designer himself, is moving from an 800-square-foot apartment in Midtown Manhattan with his partner, Shawn Cox. They have been searching every weekend for three and a half years, Mr. Moore said.

They recently signed a contract for a two-bedroom penthouse at Canco that has 14- to 17-foot ceilings and more than 1,500 square feet of living space. The price was $710,000, which seemed like a bargain, Mr. Moore said.

?I don?t think we?re pioneers,? he said of living in a once-run-down neighborhood. ?We know the neighborhood is going to get better and better, but no matter what happens, we wind up with this incredibly perfect space.?

The lofts are nine blocks from the Journal Square PATH station, but whether they walk there or ride on the free shuttle bus for residents, Mr. Moore and Mr. Cox said they expected to have the same 30-minute commute to work in Manhattan that they do now, living on East 57th Street.

The units will start to be ready for occupancy in late summer or early fall, Mr. Kurnev said.

The first 202 condos are being created in two center towers of the can factory, which has five towers. They range in size from one to three bedrooms, and in price from above $300,000 to about $750,000.

More than 300 condos will be created in the second phase of construction, along with about 10,000 square feet of retail space, which will house a day spa, a dry cleaner, a cafe and automated teller machines, the developer said in an interview last week.

A separate powerhouse building adjacent to the complex will most likely be turned into a minimarket, he said, adding that two new condo buildings would then be built across Dey Street from Canco Lofts.

The final, and recently announced, phase of construction ? to be completed by 2011, according to Mr. Kurnev ? will include the neighborhood park, between the new condo buildings, and a rental building with ground-floor stores, which will be built on the site of a vacant warehouse.

?This neighborhood is going to serve as sort of a bookend to the Beacon on the southeast side of the square,? said Mr. Lipski, the councilman whose ward encompasses the Canco property.

At the Beacon, the eight Art Deco buildings of the former Jersey City Medical Center are being converted to create 1,100 residential units along with stores and restaurants.

Two years ago, the City Council established a program under which Canco buyers would pay 16 percent of their annual mortgage and maintenance payments for 30 years rather than normal property taxes. But in a shifting real estate market, that turned out to be less than a great deal for buyers, Mr. Kurnev said.

Last Wednesday, the council approved Coalco?s request that the alternative payments be reduced to 10 percent for 10 years, 12 percent for the following 10 years and 14 percent for the last 10 years of a new 30-year-agreement. Similar terms have been granted to other new developments over the past year.

Stacked wooden planks and video monitors in the CanCo lofts lobby in Jersey City.


Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano are fans of shipping containers and the industrial landscape.

The Architecture Issue
A Lot-Ek Solution

New York Times
By PILAR VILADAS
June 8, 2008

When you meet Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano, the partners in the New York architecture firm LOT-EK (pronounced low-tech), the first thing you notice about them ? apart from their Italian good looks ? is their enthusiasm, a trait that many of their peers in the profession conceal beneath a facade of chilly reserve. But Tolla and Lignano, who came to this country in the early 1990s after completing architecture school in Naples, can?t help themselves. There?s just too much great stuff out there waiting to be turned into architecture: shipping containers, scaffolding, truck backs, ductwork, plastic mesh. Huh?

In fact, LOT-EK ? which was a finalist in this year?s National Design Awards ? has been making architecture out of industrialized society?s detritus for more than 15 years, turning the drum of a cement mixer into a media lounge, or the tank of an oil truck into the bedrooms and bathrooms of a loft apartment, or recycled shipping containers into mobile clothing stores, offices and apartments. Unlike architects who envision a perfect world of jewel-like buildings in meticulously planned settings, Tolla and Lignano love the messy layering of ad hoc, incremental urban growth; they?ve described their aesthetic as being more ?Blade Runner? than ?2001: A Space Odyssey.? Olympia Kazi, the director of the Institute for Urban Design, a New York nonprofit, says of LOT-EK, ?The way they deal with urban reality is just to accept it.?

Since founding their firm in 1993, the architects have acquired a kind of alternative renown as a little firm that does small, arty projects. Indeed, their biggest U.S. commission to date is a 3,000-square-foot house for Lawrence Weiner, the artist, and his wife, Alice Zimmerman, which is nearing completion in Greenwich Village. But the fact that LOT-EK doesn?t do slick doesn?t mean they can?t do big. Mark Robbins, the dean of the school of architecture at Syracuse University, argued that ?it would be a disservice to trade only on the novelty? of LOT-EK?s work. ?They are very much architects,? something Robbins said will serve them well as they get bigger commissions. In fact, they recently had a chance to prove this in an extremely competitive arena: Beijing.

The Chinese capital is filled with mind-boggling projects, by superstar architects, that are going up at breakneck speed: Herzog and de Meuron?s ?bird?s nest? Olympic stadium; Rem Koolhaas?s enormous, cantilevered CCTV towers; Steven Holl?s two million-square-foot-plus Linked Hybrid development; Norman Foster?s Terminal 3 at the Beijing airport, which will be the biggest building in the world. This would not normally be the kind of playing field on which you?d expect to find a firm of LOT-EK?s size and style. But then, more than one architect has called China the Wild West of architecture today, and in the Wild West, pretty much everybody had a shot. Indeed, while the big boys were designing their supersleek megabuildings, it was Tolla and Lignano?s container fetish that got them not one job but two.

Tolla and Lignano were contacted by the well-regarded Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, who was commissioned by a Chinese development company, Guo Feng, to design the master plan and some of the buildings for a mixed-use development called Sanlitun North, not far from Beijing?s version of Embassy Row. Kuma admired the store that LOT-EK designed, featuring recycled shipping containers, for Uniqlo, the Japanese clothing manufacturer, and invited Tolla and Lignano to try something similar in Beijing for a 97,000-square-foot retail and office building. Ultimately, the developers decided that containers weren?t the right look for the upscale Sanlitun North, but the building does have elegant metal-framed windows that angle out from the building?s facade like ductwork, a prized element of LOT-EK?s vocabulary. And the developers liked the container idea enough to bring Kuma and LOT-EK in on Sanlitun South, a retail project they were planning nearby. (SHoP, another young, edgy New York firm, also designed buildings for both projects.)

In contrast to the North project, Sanlitun South was aimed at a younger market ? which, presumably, would be much more receptive to LOT-EK?s industrial-funk aesthetic. LOT-EK?s design for the four-story, 250,000-square-foot Sanlitun South, which uses 151 shipping containers, orange-painted stainless-steel mesh and steel scaffolding, was based on the layout of the traditional Chinese hutong, the densely packed neighborhoods punctuated by alleys and small courtyards. The result looks like a kind of retail beehive. ?It?s a huge-scale jump for us,? Tolla said. ?We could never build like this in Europe or America.?

The notion of a frontier waiting to be explored is central to LOT-EK?s vision, and in all cases, that frontier is an urban one. Tolla and Lignano, who are in their mid-40s, grew up in the same Naples neighborhood but did not really know each other until they were university students. After graduation, they spent three months traveling around the United States and were bowled over by what they saw ? especially in contrast to Europe?s ?untouchable history,? as Tolla put it.

And as if America?s size and relative newness weren?t enough, the two were particularly awed by its industrial landscape, which would ultimately shape their design vocabulary. ?We were like two kids in a candy store,? Lignano said. They longed to return to New York. ?It had the same chaotic energy as Naples,? Lignano explained. So in 1990, the pair (who are not a couple) got a postgraduate fellowship at Columbia and found an apartment in the city. They waited on tables at night, did their work by day, began a never-ending love affair with hardware stores and started ?making things out of what?s out there.? They also began recording in notes and photographs the chaotic, random and banal elements of the man-made landscape. This giant database became what the architects call the Urban Scan, which is their bible and which is also the title of the book on their work that was published by Princeton Architectural Press.

Tolla and Lignano embraced the idea of low-tech, of operating on the small scale as well as the large, like a workshop, and thus invented their firm?s quirky name, which is also influenced by Jamaican patois and computer language. (It?s still a puzzle to many; Lignano once got a letter addressed to Mr. Ek.) They didn?t want to shun technology; on the contrary, they use it in many of their projects. But, as Lignano said, their work goes ?against the grain of thinking that you have to design every single thing.? They discovered the display windows at Barneys and wrote to Simon Doonan, now the store?s creative director, who came to visit them. ?We were like, wow, this really is America!? Tolla said. Doonan put some of LOT-EK?s work in Barneys? Madison Avenue windows in 1993, and the firm was off and running.

A number of art-world commissions followed, including interiors for the Sara Meltzer Gallery, Henry Urbach Architecture and the Bohen Foundation, a nonprofit organization that shows art it has commissioned. In 2001, Urbach ? for whom LOT-EK had designed several innovative art-fair installations, including one called SURF-A-BED, in which 16 television screens were suspended above a bed ? commissioned LOT-EK to design ?MIXER,? the cement-mixer/media cocoon, for his gallery. Urbach, who is now the curator of the architecture and design department at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, admires Tolla and Lignano?s commitment to installation-scale work, their passion and the fact that their found-object fixation is recycling in the most fundamental sense. He loves ?their inventive spatial sense ? the idea that TV light makes space, for instance,? and the fact that their design is humane without being sentimental. Moreover, Urbach said, ?I don?t find a trace of cynicism or nihilism in their work, and those things are not in short supply these days.?

For the Bohen Foundation, which is housed in a former printing plant in the Meatpacking District, LOT-EK turned eight recycled shipping containers into discrete modules that function as offices, meeting rooms or video rooms and which move on tracks set into the concrete floor. Walls interspersed among these modules pivot out to create flexible exhibition spaces. For the Weiner house, a former bakery, Tolla and Lignano gutted the interior, moving the staircase to the back of the building, and inserted metal ductwork vertically through the building to house not just ventilation but storage, bathrooms and an elevator. Truck-container backs, with glass instead of a pull-down door, were inserted into the facade, creating a modern version of bay windows, and the architects added a penthouse and a green roof. The industrial elements are tough yet elegant; there?s no trace of conventional domesticity in the house, save for its open kitchen, which takes up much of the first floor, a decision that in itself is unconventional. The master bathroom has no door ? something the owners insisted on.

LOT-EK?s design for the lobby of the CanCo lofts in Jersey City (a former American Can factory) includes stacks of Douglas fir planks that become upholstered benches on the floor and that contain lighting when suspended from the ceiling. A wall of electrical conduit forms the backdrop for rows of video screens. The idea was to create a place where residents would congregate, not simply pass through. Mikhail Kurnev, the president of Coalco New York, the company that developed the project, described LOT-EK as an unorthodox but appropriate choice for a project that was aimed at young professionals. ?We wanted to position ourselves as up and coming, not like every other building,? he said. LOT-EK?s design, he continued, ?definitely put the project on a different pedestal? and got the firm the commission to design the apartment interiors for the development?s next phase.

Tolla and Lignano?s coming projects include an 11,000-square-foot traveling pavilion for the footwear and clothing manufacturer Puma?s entry in the Volvo Ocean Race. The design has not yet been made public, but it?s safe to say that it?s consistent with the vocabulary of two people whose idea of a good time is to photograph stacks of shipping containers in the New Jersey Meadowlands. ?The spontaneous built environment is really our master,? Lignano said. ?This stuff makes up a much bigger percentage of the environment than architecture ever will.? He cites highway overpasses and airplane graveyards (two unbuilt LOT-EK proposals involved recycling airplane fuselages as buildings) as examples of ?the infrastructure that?s in your face all the time.? And grungy as it is, Tolla added that ?it?s about the idea of abundance ? like the hardware store, but at a bigger scale. It can be in the desert of Namibia, in Los Angeles, or Tokyo. You can see this layering everywhere, because it?s about the way we really operate as human beings.?

www.nytimes.com

got it thanks, very nice building relatively good area. i see 1br listed for 350k now.

St. Johns is about three blocks away from Canco - if you're walking straight up St. Pauls Avenue (which Canco borders).

Canco is closer to the street and the traffic noise from Tonnelle Ave - Charlotte Circle, depending upon where your unit is located. There is also a railroad in back of Canco with active train traffic.

St. Johns seems to be a bit more isolated and quieter. I take my kids to the little playground they have on-site. Their pond garden is also pretty when in-season.

Brunswick Towers is on 75 Liberty Avenue (a block away from Canco) - nice condos with an indoor pool, fitness center, concierge, green spaces, pet friendly, indoor parking, etc. There are some exceptional deals right now in this building vs. what they were selling for a few years ago. I think some are noted on Craigslist.

address is 50 dey street.

does anyone have the exact address for canco loft? How close is it in relation to the saint johns condo (225 saint pauls & 10 huron )?

you are basically trading a 2bd/2ba in an old high rise building for a 1bd/1ba with top luxury amenities. If location are the same.

No offense taken Petey. I understand what your saying. But I just feel the need to speak out about my dislike for comments like the one I stated before that Olive made. I just dont like that kind of attitude. As far as getting mad when people call a neighborhood sketchy I dont get mad at all because chances are the area is sketchy.

Nothing against you personally, Crush, obviously I don't know you, but I find your posts opinionated--yet inconsistent and not well thought-out. You have discouraged people from planting roots in neighborhoods that are not "downtown"--calling most every other neighborhood that is not downtown "sketchy." Yet you claim you are troubled by the renewal efforts in JC (which are mostly in the downtown area). And you seem offended if someone else speaks of these neighborhoods you think of as "sketchy" in a derogatory manner.

It just seems inconsistent, like certain people are ok to move downtown, but others aren't, and certainly nobody who is not sketch-tested should live in the other JC neighborhoods. I like the attitude that others have expressed recently in different threads about this concept: that many JC neighborhoods are actually improving because lots of different people are moving in--even the "naive" folks that buy/rent in the Heights/JSQ/Greenville/Bergen-Layfayette. Unless maybe you are just one of the "old-fashioned" JC types that likes knowing where the crime and bad neighborhoods are, and keeping it that way.

That olive guy pretty much sums up why I cant stand whats happening to JC. Did he or she really just tell someone "thats why you still live in the ghetto"? And thats why he dosnt want to move to the heights or JSQ?Do us all a favor and dont move there. I never heard a more pretentious comment in my life. Please find another city.

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I too have read about the massive roadway improvement of the Tonnelle Circle, and Truck Route 1-9 area. The improvements are certainly needed. Currently the they have started acquiring nearby land and demolishing all of the buildings, and removing toxic soil and the like. I believe they are going to start first with the replacement of the Whitpenn drawbridge (RT-7), near where the old Exxon station was recently torn down.

Here is a link to the NJDOT website, and a image of the preliminary plan.

NJDOT 1-9 Project

Has anyone heard of an update on the proposed PATH stop near Canco between JSQ and Harrison stops? Or was that just talk?