http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/30/ny...=nyregion&_r=0
How Pressure Mounted for Development in Hoboken
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Though a developer tried for years to gain approval for a billion-dollar office complex, the area near 14th Street and Park Avenue remains dormant.
By PATRICK McGEEHAN and CHARLES V BAGLI
JAN. 29, 2014
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Last May 8, a severe rainstorm left the streets of this city flooded once again, causing the mayor, Dawn Zimmer, to recall the inundation from Hurricane Sandy. So she dashed off a letter to Gov. Chris Christie, imploring him to help with Hoboken’s “ongoing flooding emergency,” and attached photos of cars in water up to their hoods. She was due to meet the next day with officials of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, when she hoped to talk about protecting Hoboken from the next catastrophic deluge to come.
But according to newly obtained emails sent among the participants, the first topic of discussion on the agenda was “review of concepts for flood control measures at Rockefeller property,” a reference to a billion-dollar office complex proposed at the north end of town. The developer, the Rockefeller Group, which had long been trying to gain approval from local officials, sent two executives, two lobbyists and an engineer to the meeting.
Mayor Zimmer, through a spokesman, said on Wednesday that she went to the meeting but refused to discuss the project, feeling it was premature to do so. The next day, the mayor has said, she received a call telling her that Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno would visit Hoboken the following Monday. Ms. Zimmer, a Democrat, has alleged that during that visit, while in the parking lot of a Shop-Rite supermarket, Ms. Guadagno, like the governor a Republican, told her that the Rockefeller project was important to Mr. Christie and that the mayor needed to “move forward” with it if she wanted Hoboken to receive the flood protection money being distributed in the wake of the hurricane........
But whatever the outcome of the inquiries, the emails and interviews make clear that the development-wary mayor was coming under increasing and repeated pressure from politically connected lawyers working for Rockefeller Group and from the Christie administration.
The company had laid out about $100 million to buy up property in a forsaken section of town littered with bus lots and long-dormant factories, property that was zoned for low-slung industrial buildings but blessed with a stunning view of Manhattan. Though the plans have never been made public, in discussions with local officials they described a project that would dwarf anything that Hoboken had ever seen.
Rockefeller Group, a national developer, began prowling Hoboken for construction sites in 2007. (The company built Rockefeller Center, but has not had a relationship with the Rockefeller family since the late 1980s.)
At the northern end of Hoboken, not far from the mouth of the always congested Lincoln Tunnel, Leslie E. Smith Jr., Rockefeller Group’s executive vice president overseeing development in the region, envisioned a vast, $1.1 billion complex that included a 40-story office tower, 300 condominiums and parking for 1,400 cars. Another developer, Larry Bijou, had spent two years and upward of $70 million buying land in the north end, for a residential and retail development of 14-story buildings.
By late 2007, with the economy starting to flag, Mr. Bijou agreed to sell most of the property — roughly 4.9 acres on three adjoining blocks — to Rockefeller Group, for about $100 million. Mr. Roberts, the mayor, did not dismiss Rockefeller Group’s concept out of hand. There was, after all, the promise of 5,000 jobs and millions of dollars in state and local taxes. But he had questions about putting a large office complex on the north side of Hoboken, instead of closer to the city’s transit hub at the south end.
.....Privately, representatives of Rockefeller Group say they were taken aback by the mayor’s accusations, especially after their cooperation with the city on flood planning. And just a few days before she first discussed her meeting with Ms. Guadagno, on Jan. 18 on MSNBC, Ms. Zimmer met with company representatives in her office. They presented their latest plans, scaled back to 1.5 million square feet of office space, down from 1.8 million, with a possible future apartment building and no buildings taller than the W Hotel.
Last week, the mayor invited the public to view plans for protecting Hoboken from floods should it get the necessary funding. City officials said it was merely a set of ideas, not concrete plans. But the Rockefeller Group representatives could not help thinking that the proposal was sending a message. In the drawings, one of the company’s three blocks had become a retention pond.
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