Hoboken City Council unanimously approves hospital redevelopment zone

The Hoboken City Council unanimously approved (8-0) a hospital redevelopment zone at last night’s marathon meeting that lasted just over four-and-a-half hours.

By John Heinis/Hudson County View

” … I am not clear why we need redevelopment and I’m just concerned with the 3rd Ward in general and the changes: We have a viable hospital that needs work, we need a great hospital, but I was really coming here to ask for transparency on what might happen with the garage because we need the garage for the businesses,” began Dr. Linda Cappiello.

“For the people, for the safety of the neighborhood – even if you have a spot in Church Towers, you have visitors – it will change the quality of the neighborhood. Secondly, I’ve been to planning board meetings and just the few I’ve gone to, there have been many, many promises with developers … that the only reason they got approvals of their project within that three blocks is they were going to provide parking to their tenants.”

Cappiello, whose medical office is at 400 Grand St., continued that quality of life is suffering and the public has not been informed on why this level of development is necessary.

” … We can’t find parking and we need a good hospital and I don’t really understand why we need all of this, and I do know you’re doing an appraisal and I’d like an update, i think the neighbors deserve that,” she stated.

Nearly four hours into the meeting as the governing body prepared to vote on the measure, Council President Jim Doyle sought to provide clarity on what had happened to date.

” … In May, the city council and the administration asked that an area of redevelopment analysis be performed. We hired Topology for four different properties associated with the hospital and this is a step that is just to determine whether the four properties are appropriately designated as an area of redevelopment,” he said.

He continued that the site includes the MidTown Garage, the hospital property, a CarePoint Health Neighborhood Health Center, and 307 Willow Ave., a building that is directly across the street from the hospital.

“Three of the buildings are owned by the same owner: The hospital square block, 307 Willow, and this 122 Clinton are all owned by one owner and the owner is not the operator of the hospital, it’s somebody who owns the land for all three of those. The fourth parcel is a municipal garage, which is owned by the City of Hoboken.”

Doyle further stated that if designated a redevelopment zone, the council would be able to formulate a plan to save and improve both the hospital and municipal garage.

He also noted that the planning board voted 6-2 for redevelopment of three of the four properties at Tuesday’s meeting, with the exception being 122 Clinton St.

HCV first made note of the plan in March and the council opted not to vote on the measure until last night, pulling it from the agenda several times.

” … Tonight, out job is to either reject it all together and say ‘we don’t think it should be a redevelopment zone,’ we can agree with the planning board and say ‘we think the three of the four properties should be designated but the fourth shouldn’t’ or we could say ‘thank you very much planning board, but we think that all four properties are necessary …”

2nd Ward Councilwoman Tiffanie Fisher agreed with Doyle’s assessment, adding that she felt that the planning board was voting to determine if the properties met the criteria for redevelopment or if they ended up in this condition due to neglect.

The vote to include all four properties in the redevelopment zone failed by a tally of 4-4, which led to the 6-2 vote to approve the zone without 122 Clinton St.

” … We’re solving for a deal to be struck with the operator of the hospital that importantly, and this was one of the questions last night that the planning board struggled with, that the operator doesn’t actually own the land,” Fisher said.

“And all of the color that we’ve heard so far is that they’ve not come to an agreement with the actual property owner. The property owner is Avery Eisenreich, we were in a lawsuit with him when we modified our zoning to make sure that this would be a hospital in perpetuity.”

Fisher concluded by saying that she would support the initial step despite the complicated situation.

Shortly thereafter, Councilwoman-at-Large Emily Jabbour made a motion to acknowledge the planning board’s decision, but still move forward with a redevelopment plan that includes all four properties.

3rd Ward Councilman Mike Russo seconded the motion, which passed unanimously (8-0).

In a statement, Hudson Regional Health, who runs the Hoboken University Center, praised the council’s decision.

” … We are grateful for today’s City Council action adopting a redevelopment designation for the hospital property, which sets in motion a planning and design process that could allow us, in partnership with the Mayor and Council, create a facility that provides the community with the highest-performing healthcare available,” they said.

“In the interim, Hudson Regional Health will continue to provide the best possible care to the Hoboken and broader Hudson County community through continued investments into the current facilities, restoring critical services, and much more.”

The council’s agenda, which spanned over 1,400 pages, also included a resolution for an interim cost and conditional designation agreement to have Skylight Residential Group Acquisitions be the redeveloper for Garage B.

However, that item was removed from the agenda prior to a vote (the council went against the planning board’s recommendation and approved the redevelopment plan 5-3 in March, as HCV first reported).

Editor’s note: This story was updated with a comment from Hudson Regional Health.