The latest dispute over the Union Dry Dock property was resolved last night when the Hoboken City Council approved a settlement agreement between the City and the Fund for a Better Waterfront (FBW). On October 3, FBW filed a motion to intervene in the eminent domain action, City of Hoboken vs. Port Imperial Marine Facilities, being heard by Superior Court Judge Jeffrey R. Jablonski. The pending resolution of the eminent domain action has allowed the City to acquire the former Union Dry Dock property for public purposes; but as part of the resolution of that action, to permit NY Waterway (DBA Port Imperial Marine Facilities) to occupy a significant portion of the property for a three to five-year period while the ferry company rebuilds its maintenance facility elsewhere.

Following the City’s approval of the lease that was part and parcel of the settlement between the City and Port Imperial last February, FBW wrote to the Mayor and Council stating its position that the City must comply with its Open Space Trust Fund (OSTF) ordinance. The OSTF ordinance requires that the sale or lease of properties acquired with OSTF funds be approved by the voters of Hoboken in a referendum and that language must be added to the deed stating that the property was acquired with OSTF monies and thus restricted for use as public open space.

Last November, the City of Hoboken deposited $13.36 million from its OSTF with the court in accordance with eminent domain law. Before a Consent Order for Final Judgment is filed by the court, the $18.5 million, the agreed upon purchase price, will be paid to NY Waterway from the $13.36 million, the balance coming from a bond ordinance passed by the City of Hoboken.

Renée Steinhagen, the Executive Director of New Jersey Appleseed Public Interest Law Center, represents FBW in this matter. Shortly after filing the Motion to Intervene, the attorney representing the City in the eminent domain case, Kevin McManimon of McManimon, Scotland & Baumann reached out to Ms. Steinhagen to discuss terms for a potential resolution of our demands that would result in FBW withdrawing its Motion to Intervene.

Pursuant to the settlement, the City and FBW agree that the lease agreement is valid and enforceable. NY Waterway (Port Imperial) has also signed a separate letter addressed to FBW acknowledging that the lease is valid and enforceable. This means that once the lease term has expired, Hoboken has the authority to enforce the lease, and Port Imperial will not turn around and say that it is not enforceable against them.

The settlement with the City, however, goes further. It acknowledges that once the cloud on title is clear (i.e., final judgment is entered) any future sale or lease of the property is subject to the terms of the City’s OSTF ordinance. Thus, the City acknowledges that if a future administration decides to issue a new lease or sell the property that a referendum is required to approve such sale or lease of this property. In addition, the declaration of taking will be amended to specifically include a recognition that the property was purchased with OSTF funds and thus is dedicated parkland.

Some have claimed that NY Waterway will never leave the Union Dry Dock site now that they have a lease on 68 percent of the property. The Consent Order for Final Judgment clearly states if the ferry company refuses to leave at the end of its lease, the City may evict NY Waterway after serving a warrant of removal.

For the former Union Dry Dock property,  people have advocated for passive green space, a new skate park, an accessible, eco-friendly shoreline, a pier for docking historic vessels and a civic space that can tell the story of Hoboken’s maritime history. At the October 25th unveiling of a final park design, Aaron Campbell from Dattner Architects and Nans Voron from Scape Studio presented plans featuring all of these elements and much more.

Most of Hoboken’s shoreline has a hard edge, consisting of a stone or concrete bulkhead with few opportunities to get near the water. This latest park proposal includes a living shoreline, expanded beach area, a one-acre tidal marsh and several stepped edges accessing the shoreline. Two rebuilt piers include pile supports that encourage wildlife habitats. Images depict shore birds that would be attracted to this eco-friendly shoreline. The northern pier includes a viewing platform overlooking the marsh area and an outdoor classroom.

The proposed new skate park covers 18,900 square feet, representing a 60 percent increase in the size of the existing, deteriorated 20-year old skate park located directly south of the Union Dry Dock site. The new facility provides concrete ramps, stairs, mounds, curbs and bowls to accommodate beginner to advanced skaters.  

The central portion of the park consists of an expansive lawn available for both passive and active uses surrounded by rows of trees and native plantings. Throughout the park there is green infrastructure for stormwater management in the form of swales, rain gardens and subsurface storage. No information was provided as to recommended tree species or planting techniques to be employed.

Living up to its name — Maritime Park — the park includes one pier that will provide a docking area for historic vessels. And a 3,800-square-foot, one-story civic hub will accommodate an exhibition area to tell the story of Hoboken’s storied maritime history. Rusted carbon steel and wood decking from the existing piers will be repurposed and used for the stairs, roof deck and pedestrian bridge.

The building also includes a glass-enclosed elevator that rises  up to a 4,220-square-foot observation deck on the roof. From the roof deck, a pedestrian bridge spanning Sinatra Drive connects to Elysian Park. This civic hub also provides space for environmental education, a cafe and restrooms.

Additional features in the 3-acre park include a nature play area, picnic grove, overlook plaza, hammock grove, shade structures and maritime amphitheater. 

Respondents to the second public survey overwhelmingly favored the Waterfront Promenade Approach and a Hudson River Waterfront Walkway contiguous with the shoreline. This approach was ranked first by 44 percent of respondents. 28 percent of respondents preferred the Habitat Terraces Approach and 27 percent favored the Civic Pier Approach. The final design unveiled last week located the walkway along the coastline but also included the building from the Civic Pier Approach. This building received mixed reviews in the survey with more than half saying it should be excluded or be smaller.

Following the second public meeting conducted in July via Zoom, the design team for the park at Union Dry Dock conducted a second survey. 869 people responded. Of the three approaches proposed by the design team, the clear winner was the Waterfront Promenade Approach, ranked first by 44 percent of respondents. The Habitat Terraces Approach garnered 28 percent and the Civic Pier Approach was third with 27 percent.

Hoboken has the good fortune of being very close to its waterfront. 67.4 percent of the survey respondents said they would access this park at Union Dry Dock by walking or running. Another 24.5 percent indicated that they would come on foot or by bike.

The City of Hoboken granted a $1.1 million contract to Dattner Architects to design the park. Dattner’s design team — Scape Studio, landscape architects; Indigo River, marine engineers; Kimley-Horn, civil/transportation engineers — will unveil a final concept design this November.

The alignment of the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway at the water’s edge was favored by 58 percent of the survey participants, with only 13 percent favoring the walkway along Sinatra Drive. Choosing this waterfront route would eliminate a potential problem with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), whose regulations require the walkway to be built contiguous with the Hudson River shoreline. FBW recently consulted with the Hudson River Waterfront Conservancy, the nonprofit that works with the NJDEP to oversee the completion of the 18-mile state-mandated walkway; they advised that the Waterfront Promenade Approach was the only option they could support.

The Waterfront Promenade Approach includes a large, “flexible” lawn area surrounded by trees and “forest trails,” both ideas strongly supported by the survey respondents. The new skate park is also included in this approach. All three approaches expand the beach at Maxwell Place Park into the north end of the Dry Dock site, more than doubling the size of the existing beach area.

Nearly 70 percent of the Dry Dock property will be leased to NY Waterway for the next three to five years, part of an agreement that allowed the City of Hoboken to acquire the site. But Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla has said that the park at Union Dry Dock could be built beginning in 2025 on the unleased portions of the site. In fact, both the skate park and the expanded beach could be included in this initial park build. A 25-foot wide strip along the western portion of the Dry Dock property will be given over to the Sinatra Drive Project that includes several rows of trees, a widened sidewalk and protected bicycle pathway. The Sinatra Drive Project is scheduled to begin construction by the end of this year.

The Dry Dock property consists of 3.15 acres on land and another 5 acres over water. Subtracting the area for the Sinatra Drive Project (0.432 acres) and the Waterfront Walkway (0.519 acres) leaves just two acres of land, a long and narrow strip, for the park design. Obviously, there is a limit to how the design team’s many ideas — such as a 2-story civic hub, food trucks, picnic areas, an art pavilion, a pollinator meadow, immersive marsh boardwalks, sports courts, programmed adventure forest, etc. — can fit into this relatively small space. Early on, the City named it Maritime Park with the understanding that Hoboken’s former working waterfront would be recognized, yet how this will be accomplished has not been clearly defined. A rebuilt pier used for docking historic vessels or a barge museum could go a long way to solving this problem.

If you are seeking to get out on the Hudson River via kayak, standup paddleboard or sailing dinghy, beware of the swift currents and shifting tides. Launching your boat also poses a problem as most of the river has a hard edge — bulkheads of concrete, steel or wooden cribbing. Fortunately, part of Hoboken’s waterfront has provided the answer to these problems.

The natural sand beach in Maxwell Place Park at Hoboken’s north waterfront is the only beach on either side of the Hudson River south of the George Washington Bridge. The protected inlet is bounded by an earthen peninsula to the north and a long pier to the south, making for a safe, manageable area for human-powered boating. Today, it is a hub for paddlers eager to access the Hudson River. Each weekend during the summer, scores of people line up for their turn to venture into the river via kayak, stand-up paddleboard or outrigger canoe.

The nonprofit Hoboken Cove Community Boathouse was founded in 2004. In that year, they offered just a few weekends for free kayaking near the beach in the protected inlet. By 2008, the boathouse was built just above the beach where kayaks, paddles and life-jackets could be stored. 

Today, the Hoboken Cove Community Boathouse, Ke Aloha Outrigger and Resilience Paddle Sports provide boating opportunities each weekend throughout the summer for thousands of people who come from near and far. The Hudson River’s water quality has come a long way since the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972, and its rich ecosystem is thriving, making the boating experience even more appealing. 

With the ever-growing popularity of these programs, the boathouse is far too small to hold all the kayaks needed. Also, there is not enough room in the boathouse to store the invaluable outrigger canoes, weighing hundreds of pounds and measuring up to 45 feet long. Currently, they sit outside in the open at risk to damage and vandalism.

Yet, Hoboken has another protected inlet, an expansive 22-acre water area, that could accommodate all of these programs and more. It is the Weehawken Cove. This year, construction is slated to begin on a new park on the cove’s western shoreline, an integral part of the Hudson River Rebuild by Design Project. Original plans for this park included a second boathouse.

This could also provide an opportunity for a new group, the Hoboken Community Sailing Center, which is promoting outings on small sailing dinghies. They have used the Weehawken Cove for sailing their boats but due to lack of access, launching there has been difficult. 

“Ours is the largest free paddling program in New Jersey,” remarked Oscar Hernandez, a Community Boathouse board member. “It has been growing each year and the opportunity to expand into the Weehawken Cove would meet a pressing need.” Hernandez suggested that the City could build a dock at the Weehawken Cove designed specifically for launching kayaks and other non-motorized craft. 

At a July 11 public meeting, conducted via Zoom, Hoboken moved a step closer to having a park at the Union Dry Dock site — one of the final uncompleted portions of the city’s continuous, public waterfront park. The professional team led by Dattner Architects and SCAPE Studio unveiled three alternate concepts.

The first public meeting took place on April 4 and was followed with an online survey. A remarkable number, over 1700 people, responded to the survey. Eighty-four percent considered flexible open space for passive recreation (picnics, reading, nature watching, flying kites, etc.) to be “very important” or “important.” Seventy-five percent responded that natural habitats on the site, such as living shorelines, nesting habitat for birds and pollinator habitat for birds and bees are “very important” or “important.” Trees and green space were heavily favored as was walkability and preservation of views to the river and Manhattan skyline.

All of the three concepts — the Civic Pier Approach, the Habitat Terraces Approach and the Waterfront Promenade Approach — embraced this community input. All three also proposed to expand the beach at the north end to accommodate a growing kayak program and access to the water. Two of the three concepts included a renovated skate park that would replace the popular one that has been at Castle Point Park for the past twenty years. 

The landscape architects from SCAPE Studio, who have worked on scores of park projects around the world, cited numerous examples to illustrate what could be done. They showed two new skateparks, one in Denmark and another at Riverside Park in New York City. For the habitat islands, they provided images of Clippership Wharf in Boston and Marin Islands in California. For lawn areas, they mentioned Brooklyn Bridge Park and Governors Island. Wetland Park in Hong Kong was an example of an elevated walk over a marshland. Pier 26 in New York City was an example of a newly renovated, multi-use pier. And Tear Drop Park in Battery City Park in New York City was cited as a water feature.

Dattner Architects proposed a number of structures including a two-story “civic hub” with a bridge over Sinatra Drive connecting to the Elysian Park. The proposed civic hub raised questions about blocking views from the waterfront walkway and the appropriateness of such a large structure in a relatively small park space. The Waterfront Promenade Approach included several smaller structures: a rec pavilion, an art pavilion and a two-story beach pavilion. Conducting the meeting via Zoom rather than in person, limited the ability of the public to ask more questions and examine these buildings more closely.

In its analysis, Indigo River, the engineering firm that is part of the professional team, concluded that the three existing piers, supported by wooden pilings, are not viable and need to be removed. The Civic Pier Approach proposes to rebuild one of the piers for docking vessels, including event barges. This could provide an opportunity to dock boats that reflect the maritime legacy of Hoboken’s waterfront. The Habitat Terraces Approach proposed habitat islands on deconstructed piers. All of the concepts included restored marshlands, living shorelines and opportunities to access the water’s edge, compensating in part for the loss of the piers.

Each approach provides a different route for the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway, a state-mandated 30-foot public walk that follows an 18-mile route from the Bayonne Bridge up to the George Washington Bridge. The Civic Pier Approach would shift the walkway away from the river, bordering Sinatra Drive. The Habitat Terraces Approach proposes the walkway following an undulating path through the middle of the site. The third concept, the Waterfront Promenade Approach situates the walkway at the water’s edge which conforms to the state’s Waterfront Walkway regulations. The Union Dry Dock site is the only portion of the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway in Hoboken yet to be built.

It was past midnight on Thursday, June 8th, when the Hoboken Planning Board called for a vote on NY Waterway’s (NYWW) application for site plan approval of its ferry maintenance facility at Union Dry Dock. Despite listening to hours of testimony from community members expressing grave concerns over the impact of NYWW’s facility on the area, including safety, environmental, and quality of life issues, the board voted unanimously to approve the application.

“Well, I think one of the things that should mitigate some of the concerns is the fact that this is — the application itself is a temporary application for a temporary use,” Hoboken City Councilman and Board member Jim Doyle explained.

However, the members of the human-powered boating community were not so sanguine, and worried that Hoboken was courting danger by allowing a busy industrial facility to operate adjacent to the Hoboken Cove – home to the largest paddling program in New Jersey – without proper safeguards. Oscar Hernandez of the Hoboken Cove Community Boathouse lamented that NYWW had a history of not responding to paddler’s concerns. “There has to be a way to communicate, to make sure we’re safe, to make sure the captains actually answer their radio calls all the time. We’re answered by pretty much every ferry operator in the New York Harbor except for NY Waterway.”

NYWW was applying for permission to build a ferry maintenance, storage and refueling facility at Union Dry Dock. This approval was required as part of a settlement agreement between the City of Hoboken and NYWW, allowing the City to acquire the Union Dry Dock property from NYWW for future use as a public park. In February, the City approved a three-year lease with NYWW that potentially can be extended for an additional two years while NYWW rebuilds its facility in Weehawken.

Planning Board Chair Frank Magaletta made clear at the beginning of the meeting that NYWW’s unpopular lease with the City would not be discussed, and instead warned the audience to keep their questions focused on land use issues. Donald Liloia, a NYWW Vice-President, provided the bulk of the testimony during the evening, answering questions from board members and the community about the company’s plans for the site.

The questioning revealed the scope of the operation, including:

• NYWW will store 20 ferries on the site, with no more than 5 boats active on any given day, and ferries leaving at approximately 5:30 AM and returning between 9 and 11:20 PM.
• After significant debate, NYWW confirmed that they will not dock boats or use the northern side of Pier 1, the northernmost pier.
• Maintenance crews will work 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, with much of the maintenance taking place on a travel lift barge out on the water.
• Refueling operations will remain in Weehawken until that facility is being replaced, which Liloia estimated would occur sometime in the 2nd or 3rd year of the lease. However, refueling may occur in Hoboken during unforeseen emergencies.
• Refueling will take place on land via a tanker truck that Liloia characterized as “a home fueling truck you would see on Hudson Street.”
  Ferries are required to sound their horns while exiting the site, which will generally occur at 5:30 AM.
• NYWW will remove the existing trees in the parking lot, creating 63 parking spots, which will be reduced to 45 after the Sinatra Drive Project begins and reclaims a 25 foot area along the roadway for a protected bike path and expanded sidewalk.

Paddler safety was a major theme of the evening. Carter Craft, an “occasional Waterway commuter and Boathouse board-member” said “the biggest things I worry about is that there will be an incident in the future between motorized vessels and other users of the cove or the beach, not unlike something that happened at Pier 79 in Manhattan in 2016, 2017, [where] eight kayakers got run over by a backing ferry.”

“Couldn’t we set a higher standard here when we’re reactivating a maritime industrial district next to a recreational park right up against a very treasured beach?”
Carter Craft, speaking about potential for fuel spills in the Hudson

Again and again, community members stood up to express their specific concerns, including what residents considered a perfunctory Neighborhood Impact Report. Indeed, NYWW was returning to the Board after having its application deemed incomplete because the ferry operator had failed to provide this report measuring the impact the maintenance facility would have on the surrounding area. The resulting report, produced and presented by Sean Delany of Bowman Engineering, was a disappointment to many of the people who spoke at the meeting.