Interesting comment from Jersey Digs on St. Peters
Quote:
Sal G November 15, 2017 at 12:09 pm
Asked a similar question out a community meeting where Mayor Fulop attended regarding the multiple empty lots that are fenced off and have been in approved status for years, and he looked at me like I insulted his mother. Not sure why it’s such a touchy subject but clearly something going on behind the scenes.
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My completely uneducated guess is it's a financing issue leading to the delay. The developer is probably seeking more subsidy from the university to get this built, but the university believes it's already contributed enough, leading to the impasse. The developer looks somewhat on the smaller side based on the website. Not sure what kind of New Jersey work they've done. So I wonder what kind of experience they have to pull something tricky off like this.
The hint that tells me something is up is the underground parking. 717 units worth is a lot on such a small site like this! It's the right planning thing to do since it doesn't have as bad as a negative impact like an above grade garage, but underground parking is extremely expensive! No one does it due to the costs, which is close to $55,000 a space in a normal environment. North Jersey is anything but normal, so the costs are much higher. It's hard for a project to be financially feasible for low-income student housing, higher-end retail in an economically-distressed area, and to provide 717 parking spaces in multiple stories underground at $75k a pop.
My conclusion based on my completely uninformed opinion is this gets redesigned as it's currently unfeasible.
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