The Jersey City Independent "

Embankment Preservation Coalition coordinator Maureen Crowley and attorney Michelle Donato
(photo by Steve Gold)

At the special meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission held last night, attorneys for developer Steve Hyman and Conrail argued their case for demolishing the 6th Street Embankment in order to proceed with the construction of townhouses, while scores of supporters turned out to oppose demolition and support making the abandoned rail relic a park. It was “probably our best attended commission meeting ever,” Historic Preservation Officer Dan Wrieden quipped.

Conrail sold the embankment site to Hyman for $3 million in 2005, and currently negotiations are continuing between Hyman, the city and the Embankment Preservation Coalition over the fate of the 100-plus-year-old structure. In August 2007, the federal Surface Transportation Board determined that Conrail never properly abandoned the site; city lawyers contend that might mean Hyman doesn’t legally own the property, and that they have to be given the option to buy it. That fight is currently tied up in the courts.

However, that was all beyond the purview of last night’s meeting, which had a very narrow focus: Does Hyman have the legal right to demolish the embankment? After denying the developer a hearing on the same matter in December 2007, a Hudson County judge ordered the commission to hear Hyman’s applications to demolish. A consent decree worked out by the city and the developer says the commission must issue a ruling by April 20.

In her opening remarks, attorney Michelle Donato, who represents the developer, couched the fight in Constitutional terms, saying that property rights trump a rationale for preservation that is “weak at best.”

She said that the local activists fighting the demolition and development of the embankment were acting out of fear, and, noting that many of the members of the volunteer commission are preservation advocates, Donato reminded them that their “advocacy must be tempered” by their obligation to apply the law “fairly to its terms.”

Still, Donato acknowledged to the commission that her client was facing an uphill battle.

“Our crystal ball tells us there’s not likely to be an approval,” she said.

The developer and Conrail presented three witnesses who argued for the right to demolish the structure, and Embankment Preservation Coalition coordinator Maureen Crowley corralled 15 speakers, including herself, to rebut the claims that the embankment was ripe for demolition.

As the witnesses spoke, their images were projected on the City Council chambers’ big screen, where they were often surrounded by white “Save the Embankment for a Park” signs being held up by supporters in the crowd. (Later in the meeting, Hyman himself playfully got into the act, holding up a sign on screen — upside down.)

Arguments from both sides revolved around the city’s ordinance governing demolition of “an individual landmark building, structure, site or object or any structure contained within a historic district.”

Among the considerations when hearing a request for demolition are the site’s “historic, architectural and aesthetic significance,” if “its removal would be detrimental to the public interest,” and “the extent to which it is of such old, unusual or uncommon design, craftsmanship, texture or material that it could not be reproduced or could be reproduced only with great difficulty.”

Witnesses for the developer and Conrail argued that the embankment’s architectural characteristics are “not unique,” pointing to similar structures in New Brunswick, Newark and New York City. The embankment “is by no means unusual or uncommon,” Burgis Associates planner Steve Lydon said in testifying for the developer.

That argument was countered later by several supporters of the coalition, including Harsimus Cove Neighborhood Association president Eric Fleming. He spoke of visiting Europe and admiring architecture that could likely be found in many old European cities, saying their “ordinariness” did not make them any less significant.

“It’s our piece of history,” he said of the embankment. “Let us keep what we have.”

Another major thrust of the argument to demolish was that the embankment’s association with the city’s industrial past is “grossly overstated.” This association was one of the reasons the structure was placed on the state Register of Historic Places in 1999. The witnesses for the developer said that the embankment wasn’t significant to the city’s industrial past, since there were more than a dozen rail lines coming through the city and terminating at the Hudson River, and Donato made an ill-fitting analogy. If the embankment could be considered a remnant of our industrial past, she wondered, why not the oil tank farms that line the New Jersey Turnpike?

As more than one local resident pointed out during testimony, though, the remnants of most of the rail lines serving Jersey City are gone. The embankment remains the only highly visible reminder of the time when freight came through the Downtown neighborhood to the banks of the Hudson.

The developer and Conrail also argued that those who’ve advocated for using the  embankment for rail purposes are “fooling themselves.” Mayor Healy has stated his wish to build a light rail line along the structure while preserving some of it for open space. But last night, Donato said this was impossible. “[The embankment] cannot be used for rail purposes,” she said.

“We disagree. The embankment absolutely could support the light rail and we’ve had discussions with NJ Transit about that,” Mayor Healy tells JCI. “The embankment should be preserved to support a greenway and the light rail through the Bergen Arches to the Lautenberg train station [in Secaucus], which would take thousands of cars off of the Jersey City streets.”

In her closing statement, Donato warned that the activists vying to preserve the park were giving “the principles of preservation a black eye” by simply blocking development for little reason. But most of the testimony given by the coalition’s supporters went beyond mere NIMBY-ism and reflected a shared experience around a community landmark.

The requests for permission to demolish “should be denied on their face,” Crowley said. “[The embankment] is a landmark in its own right.”

* There will be another hearing on these applications later this month or early next month. The next hearing on these applications was originally scheduled for March 23, but conflicting schedules are forcing the commission to set a new date. It will occur either later this month or in early April.

* Since the commission limited the number of public speakers due to time constraints, interested citizens are invited to email Historic Preservation Officer Dan Wrieden with any comments they may have. Email danw (at) jcnj.org with “Embankment Comments” as the subject line.

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