The Domino Sugar plant is not a powerhouse, but very similar too:

http://curbed.com/archives/2008/02/06 ... back_to_drawing_board.php

Something needs to be done with our Power House. People need to stop fighting redevelopment with that site. Percrastination will have that site empty and ugly and abosrbing tax money for the next 15-20 years. LETS FIX NOW.

As of right now the power house is an eye soar that is a negative impact on Jersey Cities balance sheet. If we could approve development at this site we can achieve a few things (i) clean up the site (its a beautiful building that currently looks like a crackhouse) (ii) create positive tax revenue (iii) attact people who think negatively about Jersey City as an industrial city to finally see what is happening here. (remember most people outside of hudson county think JC is an industrial land fill).

This is a prime site located between Inside A and Trump, the demographic that will be living within a block of the powerhouse will rival some of the best area's in NJ and parts of NY. (I would love to see what the average purchase price between those two building is, if i had to guess it would be around ($850k)) Lets also remember all these people will be voting as well.

Lets stop fighting development at this site and get something done.

I would personally love to see a Live Performing Arts theater, with a movie theater and restaurants at the power house. I think that would open the eyes to everyone that JC is place to desire. But really i just want to see something there.

God forbid they turn our powerhouse into a hideous monstrosity like the one in the photo.....

Wow FOUR years to relocate the substations. Unbelievable.

JOLTS FROM 1909 A Long Island City, Queens, condo first designed as an electrical plant.

Powerhouses to the People

The New York Times
By C. J. HUGHES
Published: March 9, 2008

AS long as lights go on when switches are flipped, most people don?t think much about where power comes from. But what if you lived, shopped, or sipped drinks inside a former power plant?

Developers have recently taken an interest in reusing these large-scale industrial relics, even if converting them may require cleaning soil, adding floors and removing smokestacks.

The PowerHouse Condominium at 50-09 Second Street in Long Island City, Queens, for example, will have 447 units on the site of a structure designed by McKim, Mead & White in 1909 to provide electricity for trains.

The $200 million project, which is being developed by the Brooklyn-based CGS Developers and Zigmond Brach, is going up in three phases.

The first, to be completed in August, offers 177 units, from 500-square-foot studios to 1,500-square-foot three-bedrooms, with walnut floors and washer and dryer hookups. They are priced from $500,000 to $2 million, and 30 percent have sold since October, says Cheskel Schwimmer, a CGS principal.

These first apartments are also the only ones to be contained in actual sections of the former plant, which retained its tall arched windows but lost its four 275-foot chimneys.

It came close to losing a lot more than that. The original proposal was to raze it, which would have saved $40 million. But the community outcry forced Mr. Schwimmer to alter his plans, he said.

Preserving at least some of the building may work to his advantage. ?People like history and want to live in historic businesses,? he said.

The restoration might also spur a neighborhood revitalization, as is hoped in Jersey City, which has already coined the name Powerhouse Arts District in honor of a plant yet to be converted on Washington Boulevard and First Street.

First, an attached substation for the PATH subway needs to be relocated, a four-year process that will begin in April, according to Robert Antonicello, the executive director of the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency.

His group also recently hired the architecture firm Beyer Blinder Belle as part of a $3.2 million effort to stabilize the water-damaged 1908 structure, Mr. Antonicello said.

By 2013, the plant is to have 180,000 square feet across five floors, filled with galleries, restaurants and offices, under a $90 million plan from the Cordish Company, a developer that has transformed plants in Baltimore, where it is based, and Richmond, Va.

The progress in Jersey City may be welcome news to the Athena Group, a developer that has three residential projects at various stages of development nearby.

The first, which has been completed, is A Condominiums, with 35 stories and 250 units ? from 515-square-foot one-bedrooms to 1,366-square-foot two-bedrooms ? priced from $300,000 to $1.2 million. Ninety percent have sold since November 2006, said Eugene Cordano, an agent at Halstead Property.

The fate is less certain for an 80,000-square-foot power plant on the Hudson, in the Glenwood section of Yonkers.

The REMI Companies of Manhattan had planned to build 400 units there until a few weeks ago, when talks fell apart with the seller, Kenneth Capolino, a contractor based in White Plains, said Erik A. Kaiser, REMI?s chief executive.

The new plan has been scaled down by $100 million, to $150 million, and calls for 250 units, he said.

Although the plant would lose its two chimneys, Mr. Kaiser says, the bulk of its design won?t be compromised ? an aspect essential to marketing.