Rail Yard Redevelopment: Jersey Edition

Perhaps you may recall what now seems a lifetime ago, the fight over what to do with New York's West Side rail yards in the dirty thirties. Local residents there wanted nothing to do with redevelopment fearing high rise buildings would ruin the character of the local neighborhood. Meanwhile, its still the dirty thirties.

Well now according to Hoboken411, its New Jersey's turn to have a go at redeveloping rail yards.

"There is great concern that Mayor David Roberts has given the unofficial green light to the construction of high-rise office and condo towers running from the train station straight up Observer Highway."

Even if Roberts did green light development along the rail yards, we assume there will be a long a protracted fight to stop it. One only needs to look to the Jersey City side to see what we're talking about: Back in early 2001, there was a plan to build the Millennium Towers on the Jersey City side of the rail yards. That met with community opposition and the proposed 45 story towers are now nothing but artist's renderings in an architect's portfolio.

We're for high rises along the rail yards for several reasons. Building over railroad tracks costs quite a bit of money, and money is after all what drives development. If it won't be profitable to redevelop the rail yards, the rail yards will remain an eyesore and will prevent a contiguous urban landscape from forming.

Second, the entire neighborhood north of the Holland tunnel exit and south of Observer Highway is essentially a wasteland, just like the dirty thirties on Manhattan's West Side. The only way to begin to revitalize these areas are a few high rise towers to act as anchors.

Third, fighting these sorts of things only puts off the inevitable, which means in the interim, housing shortages (leading to higher rents) and parking shortages (leading to road rage) and underused mass transit (less incentive to increase and improve service).

Finally, there really isn't a neighborhood that would be disrupted by high rise towers along and above the rail yards. Observer highway does a great job of amputating Hoboken from Jersey City. If you've never walked from Hoboken to Jersey City as we have, you have no right to talk. Take a stroll from Washington Street to say the Newport Mall, and you'll understand what we mean about a vast wasteland. Pedestrians can easily meet with death along the route, not to mention the rather ominous empty lots on the Jersey City side of the rail yards.

In the end of course, the money will talk. If developers can find a way to turn a profit redeveloping the rail yards, then they will be. And if they can't, then they won't.