In a letter to the editor, Fund for a Better Waterfront Executive Director Ron Hine gives his take on why Hoboken’s proposed Blue Eyes lease would violate the state’s walkway rules and regulations.
Dear Editor,
In the 1980s, as maritime industries abandoned the Hudson River coastline, the State of New Jersey adopted Coastal Zone Management regulations that required a 30-foot public easement at the water’s edge — the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway — running 18 miles from the Bayonne Bridge up to the George Washington Bridge.
These regulations required developers to build their portion of this walkway as a condition of a NJDEP waterfront permit. The regulations specify that a 16-foot width of the easement be paved and accessible to the public for walking, running, sitting, etc.
Most of this state-mandated public walk has been built from Jersey City to Fort Lee. The first portion of the walkway in Hoboken was constructed in 1994 when the City built Sinatra Park on City-owned land with a grant from the NJDEP Green Acres program.
The park included the Sinatra Park Cafe which originally served as a concession for people using the park.
10 years ago, in violation of state Green Acres requirements, the City of Hoboken leased the cafe for use as a restaurant.
Subsequently, the lessee added an “improvement,” an enclosed patio to the front of the cafe building, blocking about ten feet of the required 16-foot paved portion of the walkway.
The Fund for a Better Waterfront has brought this infraction to the City’s attention as has the Hudson River Waterfront Conservancy.
Nevertheless, on Wednesday night, September 4, the City Council is scheduled to take a final vote on the new lease that perpetuates this walkway violation.
This bottleneck for the throngs of people traversing the walkway in Hoboken will remain if the council approves the lease ordinance.
The new lease will resolve the Green Acres issues. The cafe will revert to its original use serving as a concession for park users. Seating and tables will be accessible to the public.
But the city’s failure to comply with the state’s Coastal Zone Management regulations turns a blind eye to its legal obligations.
The solution is a simple one: remove the enclosed patio. This also greatly improves the appearance of the cafe, showing the structure, designed by local architect Dean Marchetto, as originally built.
Ron Hine
Fund for a Better Waterfront executive director
Doesn’t this Ron guy live in Pennsylvania? There’s plenty of room for people to move about with that huge open space below the restaurant.
Pretending that the restaurant patio is blocking access is looney. It’s one of the widest points along that area near the river. There’s plenty of actual inaccessible, unconnected areas on along the river from Hoboken to Fort Lee. There’s barely several feet access on a small walkway from Hoboken to Weehawken. Go fix that!
Isn’t this the same guy with his pal in their waterfront group tried to swindle the WWII monument into being moved? Claimed that the Hoboken Veterans voted in support of moving the WWII monument as part a proposed Sinatra Drive update.
Hoboken Clerk Jimmy Farina could stomach none of that fabrication and spoke up in a City Council meeting as a US Veteran that no such vote approving the removal of the WWII monument had been passed by Hoboken Veterans.
Ron and his waterfront pal aren’t elected to anything. Tell them to cram their fake regulatory authority and take a walk.
@walkOnBy Your reply is silly. Dont be so dismissive of a key player that actually got that Waterfront access in the first place.
Well, go work on access up to Fort Lee. There’s a ton of work to do there.
And keep your grubby hands off the Hoboken WWII monument.
Dismissed!
I second @walk on by, the walkway around blue eyes when factoring in the round is one of the widest on the water. Commerce on the water and in parks, when done properly, can result in a safer and cleaner environment given the additional foot traffic, as well as the business’s incentive to keep their storefront and the surrounding area as such. And so if the trade off of having one of the nicer, European style restaurants in town is that we need to allow them 5 feet of room to expand their seating so that they can be economically viable, I’d say that’s a fair trade off.
Dear Mr Hine, worry about something that matters to the residents of Hoboken, this is definitely not one of them, and the prior concession was an eyesore.