First time poster here.

I live in HP pretty close to the tunnel. I have friends in Hoboken and I walk past this area frequently (in addition to when I walk to A&P and Best Buy). It has always kind of puzzled me that that area, aside from 700 Grove and the Zephyr remains undeveloped.

Maybe I'm just an avid walker, but IMO that area is walkable to the Hoboken PATH. If you can walk from Monroe on west in Hoboken you can walk from Marin/Grove and 18th in JC. I also don't think it's terribly far to Newport.

I guess laziness plus the brownfields are an issue. But IMO, you can walk to the nightlife in Hoboken, the stores in Newport, Hamilton Park, the PATH, and it's great if you drive to work.

You have to expect surface parking when the A&P has it. So I don't see the big deal there.

Overall I think it's a great idea for retail, but I'd like some more condos and apartments too.

I'm curious if the Van Leer redevelopment will actually happen as planned. I was given a couple projects to review that were supposed to use lots of 'green' construction methods and technology.

I have noticed that after each revision, more of the green stuff gets dropped primarily for two reasons:

1. Too expensive / not cost effective
2. Complicates the building management and equipment servicing to the point where the green tech becomes a serious burden.

My best friend is related by marriage to the Valestro Family. She told me when Buddy is supervising or making the treats....it is very good. But since they have gotten so big and busy and hired so many new faces that they just can't control quality.

I wish them luck...and any new development in the area.

Maybe, just maybe, they'll also fix the street in front of this building. The potholes here and on the stretch of Grove approaching the building are among the worst in the city (now that Columbus has been repaved).

?Everybody said I was crazy. They said I was nuts,? laughed the world-famous ?Cake Boss? as he showed off his 51,000-square-foot factory, baking school and TV studio here Monday to a group from the Urban Land Institute.

The Cake Boss ? a.k.a. Buddy Valastro ? was definitely a pioneer when he invested in retooling a part of the worn-out-looking Lackawanna Center, a former warehouse on Grove Street in the part of Jersey City called ?NoHo? (north of the Holland Tunnel) last year.

?But I?m here for the long haul,? says Valastro, whose only retail shop remains at the 900-square-foot Carlo?s Bakery on Washington Avenue in Hoboken founded by his father. ?This neighborhood is where I invest my money.?

Cake Boss Dreams Big in NoHo

Not only that but the glut of tourists in such a congested area makes it difficult to go about one's local business -- i find exactly this in Hoboken, which I lived in for 13 years so have a good basis of comparison of "before" and "after." Boo

TV baker contestant plans to open up shop in Jersey City

Monday, January 17, 2011
By ASHLEY STRAIN
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Eliminated from "Cake Boss: The Next Great Baker" two weeks ago after his solar system cake sent Earth crashing to the floor, Jersey City's Gregory "Greggy" Soriano said he's still set on becoming a cake-decorating star.

"My next step is to continue to develop my brand by opening a shop in Jersey City with tons of Greggy-inspired cakes," Soriano told The Jersey Journal. "The cakes will be artistic and avant garde."

Soriano was eliminated from the TV show, the latest "Cake Boss" spin-off, on Jan. 3.

The show's host is Buddy Valastro, the star of TLC's "Cake Boss" and the boss at Hoboken's Carlo's City Hall Bake Shop. A special 90-minute season finale airs next Monday at 9 p.m.

Soriano's baking career began in Glendora, Calif., when at 15 he attended baking lessons at a baking supply store.

"I took classes with a bunch of old ladies and I actually loved it," he said.

His parents, aunts, and uncles, would hold "Iron Chef-like competitions," and he and his cousins would be the judges. "I grew up with food and love food, but cakes are it for me," he said.

Soriano, 26, traveled to the East coast after graduating high school to attend The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., and later worked at the Marco Island Marriott in Florida.

He started out preparing salads and worked his way up to baking pastries.

While living on the East, Soriano also began to pursue his other passion: performing in musical comedy.

But cake-making tugged harder than Broadway.

After moving to Jersey City, Soriano worked at Dortoni Bakery in Long Island where he constructed high-end cakes that sold for between $800 and $5,000.

"It was an Italian bakery just like Carlo's' Bakery," he said.

It was at there that Soriano heard about the "Cake Boss: The Next Great Baker" contest from colleagues and decided to audition for the show.

"It was so much fun, but it was also so much pressure," he said about the experience.

"My favorite part of doing the show was the first episode because I won that episode for my 'Celebration Cake.' I got along with everyone and made lifelong friends."

Part of the reason for the Jersey Ave Redevelopment Zone's lack of progress, besides some very expensive to abate brownfields, is the lack of public transport. That area might have been further along had they built a HBLR station at Jersey Ave & 18th. I've heard rumors that may be in play.

Note the Van Leer project plans a relatively tiny park for what appears to ultimately include at least 500 homes. That park is slightly over 1/4 Hamilton or 1/2 Van Vorst parks, not really big enough for a dog run so all the dogs there will be coming to HP, unless they climb through a hole in the fence of one of the other brownfields there.

110-114 Hoboken Avenue
What's planned is a residential and retail development with a 1.5 acre public park at the derelict site of the former Van Leer Chocolate factory below the Palisades Cliffs in Jersey City that the builders hope will become an example of how to build greener than green.

The development will be built on two sites totaling seven acres sold by the Van Leer family. The land has been a wasteland since the family ended chocolate production in the late 1980s.

The first portion of the seven-acre development that lies to the north of Hoboken Avenue will create 221 new homes in a six-story building. A second phase to the south of the avenue will provide the balance of the units. The development will include 7,500 square feet of retail space and parking.

The project, aims to reduce energy consumption by up to 90 percent compared to standard buildings and also reduce carbon dioxide emissions, said Daniel Gans who is developing the property with his partner George Vallone of the Hoboken Brownstone Company.

Using heat exchangers reaching 500 feet below ground to harness the constant 55 degree temperature below ground, the geothermal technology would cool the building in the summer and heat it in winter.

Roofs would be covered with solar panels to generate electricity, and solar water heaters would heat water tanks.

Wrapped with thermally efficient concrete, the building would draw energy out of air leaving the building through vents and exhaust fans and reuse it to heat the building.

The new development will be linked to the Hoboken Second Street Light Rail by roughly a half-mile walkway paid for with $4.6 million in federal funds through New Jersey Transit.

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I really wish we could see some smart development between downtown and Hoboken. A nice link between both cities would be beneficial for both. Downtown still has so much area for development.

A little off topic but its kind of strange that the no mans land between Jersey City and Hoboken still remains so valuless in terms of property. It seems that all that can exist there are gas stations, strip malls and vacant lots. You would think there would be a little more desire to build that area up being between two relatively decent urban areas. I guess it has a lot to do with the Holland Tunnel traffic right there.

BUDDY'S NEW HOME
Famed 'Cake Boss' expanding to Jersey City

Wednesday, October 20, 2010
By KATIE COLANERI
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

The Lackawanna Center, an eight-story industrial building outside the Holland Tunnel, was transformed yesterday into the set of a future "Cake Boss" episode as politicos, bankers, developers and real estate agents gathered to welcome the famed baker to his new home in Jersey City.

Last week, Emmes Asset Management, LLC, the building's co-owner, announced that Buddy Valastro has leased 30,000 square feet of the building's ground floor for a new state-of-the-art baking facility, distribution center and office headquarters.

Valastro is the star of TLC's reality series "Cake Boss" and operates, with his family, Carlo's City Hall Bake Shop on Washington Street in Hoboken.

"We've outgrown the space in Hoboken," said Valastro, who arrived at the Lackawanna Center yesterday with a TLC camera crew, producers and three of his sisters.

"It's very exciting," said Valastro's sister Grace Faugno. "It's a prime space in a prime location ... Our dad would have been so proud."

The late Buddy Valastro Sr. started the bakery on Washington Street where 130 employees currently work in 7,000 square feet of space. The Washington Street bake shop will remain open, the family said.

Despite the fame, "I still feel like a baker from New Jersey," Valastro told the crowd that gathered inside the building, which included Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy, U.S. Rep. Albio Sires, and several members of the Jersey City Council.

"We think that somebody like Buddy Valastro ... can be a magnet for other tenants to come," Healy said.

Emmes is also in the initial planning stages of a new project called the "Shops at Lackawanna," which would bring several retail businesses to the ground floor of the building.

Yesterday's welcome event will be featured on an episode of "Cake Boss" Season 4 in March.

Crap. I hope Cobra Fencing Club has a nice long lease on their 4th floor space there. But the overall plan looks like it's mostly still vapor and wishful thinking at this point.

I always thought that building was a wasted opportunity. I'm happy to see it adapted for new use rather than demolished.

Looks like there will be 600 parking spaces on the north side and east (across Grove).

The real problem here is if the city allows them to construct surface parking. Parking lots not only encourage traffic but also anti-pedestrian. This could explain the application(s) for using some of the lots on 18th street as "interim surface lots."

http://lackawannacenter.com/retail.php

combined with other retail - it is a 8-story shopping center (not quite a strip mall) and other commercial businesses.

According to Googlemaps, looks like Fishs Eddy will be moving into that spot also, which is kind a cool I guess.

I thought it's just a facility for them to bake cakes and distribute them. How will this "make JC like Hoboken" or "cause traffic"?

Oh fantastic Jersey City will be even more like Hoboken now!! Stupid.

Oh, goody. Looks like we're getting a suburban strip mall.

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I think he's jumping as we speak.

Not a big fan of their cakes.

This guy hasn't jumped the shark yet?

This should do wonders for traffic.

Jersey City to get its own slice of Hoboken's "Cake Boss"

Friday, October 15, 2010, 4:34 PM
Katie Colaneri/The Jersey Journal

Reena Rose Sibayan/The Jersey Journal


Buddy Valastro of the reality TV show, "Cake Boss, " in Hoboken, arrives in Bayonne to deliver the cake to Buon Appetito Restaurant in Bayonne where reality series "Jersey Shore" star Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi is holding a belated Mother's Day celebration for her mother, Helen.

Jersey City will soon be getting its own slice of Hoboken's "Cake Boss."

Sometime next year, Buddy Valastro will be expanding his century-old family baking business to the Lackawanna Center, an 8-story industrial building outside the Holland Tunnel on Grove Street in Jersey City.

The "Boss" will take over 30,000 square feet on the ground floor of the Center in order to build a state-of-the-art baking facility and distribution center. A larger headquarters for the bakery's administrative offices is also in the works.

The storefront at Carlo's City Hall Bakery on Washington Street in Hoboken will remain to serve customers and of course, for tapings of the TLC reality series now in its third season.

"It's exciting...," said Jonathan Ratner, Vice President of Emmes Asset Management, LLC which co-owns the Lackawanna Center. "He now has international demand and he's basing his business expansion out of our property."

It is not yet clear when the Valastro's will be moving in, but construction has already begun on their new digs.



A rendering of the Shops at Lackawanna, a new retail project that could bring several new businesses to the Lackawanna Center in Jersey City.

"Cake Boss" is one of several new tenants who could be moving into the Lackawanna Center in the coming years. Emmes Asset Management is in the planning stages of a new project called "the Shops at Lackawanna" which aims to revamp the ground floor of the building with 200,000 square feet of new retail businesses.

The plan will have to go through the Jersey City Planning Commission before construction can begin, which could take some time, according to Ratner.

The building owners have also begun a four-phase capital improvement project. Phase one has already started with infrastructure and elevator improvements. Next up, construction will begin on two new parking lots with room for 300 spaces each.