Photo by Stephen Marks/Hudson County Division of Planning

The Jersey City Reservoir Preservation Alliance and the city are hosting a public meeting this Wednesday to give residents an update on the progress at the urban oasis that calls the Heights home.

Specifically, the meeting is designed to give an overview of a project, begun two years ago, that aimed to develop a preservation plan for the site, nominate it to be included on several Registers of Historic Places, develop a preliminary design concept to improve the site and analyze the overall conditions there.

As the project nears completion, the principals involved want to update the public on what they’ve found, and the way forward from here.

THE DETAILS

Public Meeting on the Reservoir; Wednesday, August 10 at 6:30 pm; Heights Vietnam Veterans Center, at Pershing Field.

- Sister Carmela Marie Cristiano Dies: Cristiano, a nun who once locked horns with top Jersey City officials after her dismissal from a now-defunct city ward for orphaned children, has died.

- Port Authority Police: The Port Authority Police Department has promoted 38 officers as part of a restructuring intended to reduce the number of senior officers.

- Did You See Friday’s Hit-and-Run? Jersey City police are appealing for witnesses to help them identify the driver of a black pickup truck that struck and killed a 47-year-old Bayonne musician and father of two in a hit-and-run collision Friday night.

- Former Cop Sentenced in Mortgage Fraud Case: A former Jersey City cop was sentenced to six months in prison and six months home confinement yesterday for making fraudulent statements on an application to obtain a mortgage to buy property in Jersey City.

- JC Boy Attacked by Black Bear: A 12-year-old Jersey City boy and another camper were injured early Wednesday when they were attacked by a black bear at Stokes State Forest in northwestern New Jersey.

Today’s Best Bets:

- David Cedeno performs a free concert at the J. Owen Grundy Pier as part of the Jazz for Lunch series (noon). Barcade hosts back to back events tonight, with the official grand opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony slated for 4 pm, followed by the New Holland Brewery and Oyster Night at 5 pm. And 58 Gallery hosts an opening reception for Apocrypha, a new exhibition featuring paintings and drawings from Joe Velez (7 pm).

In Statewide News:

- Open Space: Gov. Christie has signed three bills that direct $157 million toward open-space acquisition and environmental protection across the state.

- School Bus Advertising: There are four pages of regulations for the new school-bus advertising bill, defining how the ads should be attached to a bus, what the ads can contain, who would handle the transactions, and how it all would be tracked.

- Solar Power: New Jersey’s solar industry is thriving, so much so that it may undermine the business model designed to ensure its success.

The survey will help guide planners as they undertake a formal reexamination of the county’s Open Space Plan.

To take the survey in English, click here.

To take it in Spanish, click here.

Festival organizers at the Central Avenue Special Improvement District (CASID) hope to best last year’s turnout of about 23,000 (and are clearly praying for good weather, since the event is rain or shine). The free daylong event features four stages along a half-mile stretch of Central Avenue that is filled with more than 200 artists, artisans, crafters, nonprofits and food vendors, as well as sidewalk sales from many avenue businesses and other special entertainment areas.

“CASID is proud to share an annual day full of positive experiences and lasting memories with the residents and community members of the Heights, Jersey City and Hudson County,” CASID president and festival committee chairman Michael Yun says. “We have worked very hard and taken great care to create an event that epitomizes what we love about Jersey City and we look forward to sharing that with our neighbors, friends and families.”

The kid-friendly festival includes pony rides, a petting zoo, a rock-climbing wall and other cool stuff for youngsters, as well as live performances and demonstrations from the Hope Center for Performing Arts, NJCU’s Actors Shakespeare Company and Family Fitness Martial Arts.

This year’s music lineup looks to be the most diverse yet, with plenty of homegrown talent filling most of the bill.

WKTU host and Heights resident Judy Torres once again headlines the festival (5 pm on the Congress Street stage); she’s joined by local faves The Black Hollies (4:40 pm on the Hutton Street stage) and Stephie Coplan and The Pedestrians (noon on the Congress Street stage), as well as local performers Catch Wild, BuzzUniverse, and CHOICE. In a very Heights-centric twist, Ed Solomon of Hauptman Floor Covering on Central Avenue will also perform with his rock band Go Falcon!. These local acts will be joined by out-of-town performers like Leah Le Grace, Ray Rodriguez y Swing Sabroso, Woodfish and Rumba Con Son (a full band schedule can be found here).

There’s also a new green tinge to the festival this year, with several groups coming together to create a pop-up park smack dab in the middle of everything.

“Street festivals are fun, but there is little to no open space,” Washington Park Association (WPA) president Mory Thomas explains. So the WPA, along with the Riverview Neighborhood Association, the Jersey City Parks Coalition and St. Anne’s Church and school, will create that space as a welcome respite from the hustle-and-bustle of the festival.

“We will be bringing in sod, trees, understory symbiotic plant guilds and a park bench, inviting people in to lay on the grass and relax in our green zone,” Thomas says. “Our partners in running our Permaculture Learning Garden in Washington Park, Green Collar Futures, will also be offering demos on glass making and be on hand to talk about principles of permaculture,” the ecological principle of creating sustainable living. The groups will also have sunflower seeds for kids to take home and plant.

“The goal is to highlight how refreshing, inviting and vital our precious open spaces are in this dense urban environment. We want to protect these spaces from over-development,” Thomas says. “Us urbanites need to learn once again to interact with our environment so that it can nourish us and protect us for years to come.”

If the pop-up park isn’t enough open space for you, the Reservoir Preservation Alliance will be offering tours of the nearby reservoir, which is just a few blocks away from all the action on Central Avenue.

The festival is one of the largest projects undertaken each year by the CASID, and it comes at a time when funding for the CASID and other SIDs around Jersey City is in jeopardy, due to state cuts to the Urban Enterprise Zone (UEZ) program. The CASID, like other groups in Jersey City, has pushed hard to preserve the UEZ program; last year a petition drive to “Save UEZ Funding” was a prominent component of the main festival sponsors’ meet-and-greet tent.

But all the urban lobbying hasn’t done much good yet. In February, the governor announced his intention to shutter the program, after a state-commissioned report found the “outmoded” and “ineffective” program “deliver[s] a limited economic impact” to local economies, and produces “a negative return on state investment.”

The CASID’s president says the festival’s growth and success is just one of the many examples that proves that wrong.

“The Urban Enterprise Zone program is a partnership between the public and private sector,” Michael Yun says. “The Everything Jersey City Festival is an exemplary example of what these partnerships make possible.”

Photo of 2009′s festival by Irene Borngraeber

THE DETAILS

Fourth Annual Everything Jersey City Festival; Saturday, May 21 from 11 am to 6 pm along Central Avenue in the Heights (between Hutton and Congress Streets). As a sponsor of the event, JCI will be there in the main sponsors tent — drop by and say hi. The event is free, and it will go on, rain or shine.

- ’100 Steps’: The long-delayed “100 Steps” restoration is one step closer to completion now that Jersey City officials have completed a deal with a developer to pick up the tab for most of the project’s cost.

- Tax Protest: Nearly 300 people gathered in Journal Square yesterday for a MoveOn.org-sponsored rally to urge big banks to pay more taxes.

- Abbey’s: The owner of Abbey’s Pub and Grill on Monmouth Street is furious at the city for tearing out the wheelchair ramp that led to his pub. Ironically, the ramp was demolished as part of the city’s efforts to make the neighborhood more handicapped-accessible.

- New Statue in Lincoln Park: Last week saw a new addition to Lincoln Park: an 18-foot statue commemorating the victims and survivors of the Great Irish Famine.

- NAACP: Dozens of members of the NAACP Jersey City chapter streamed into the Metropolitan AME Zion Church on Bergen Avenue last night to nominate and vote for officers of the organization, but results are apparently not yet known.

In Statewide News:

- Medical Marijuana: State employees tasked with monitoring the state’s medical marijuana program, as well as the state-licensed dispensaries of the drug, could face prosecution under federal law according to recent letter issued by U.S. Attorneys in Washington State.

- Education: As testing drives state education policy more and more, New Jersey has formally signed on with a national group developing the next generation of standardized tests, ones that take place over the course of the school year and could have computers asking the questions.

- Power Providers: For the first time in a decade, there are options for customers looking to cut their electricity bills, a trend retail energy suppliers hope will spur the state to make it easier for ratepayers to switch power companies.

- Carl Lewis: An administrative law judge will hear arguments on whether to allow Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis to continue to run for New Jersey Senate.

- Pulitzers: Star-Ledger reporter Amy Ellis Nutt was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing Monday for “The Wreck of The Lady Mary,” an exhaustive investigation into the mysterious sinking of a fishing boat off the coast of Cape May.

- Open Space: New Jersey is spending nearly $28 million to preserve 1,900 acres of land as open space in Monmouth, Mercer and Burlington counties.

- Small-Biz Lending: The number of U.S. Small Business Administration-backed loans to New Jersey businesses rose 13 percent in the first half of the fiscal year, while dollar volume rose 48 percent, despite an end to federal SBA incentives that fueled lending in the past.

A rendering of the future Marion Greenway Park

Jersey City will soon add another former Superfund site to the list of open space parks along the city’s bordering waterways, as it once again reclaims land — this time the old PJP landfill — once thought lost to an industrial past.

Marion Greenway Park will eventually consist of 32.5 acres of restored land, with Phase One of the remediation to be completed by late August of this year and open to the public by summer 2012, according to a representative with Malcolm Pirnie, the consulting firm overseeing the project, who spoke to the City Council at Monday night’s caucus meeting.

Including soccer fields, walking and jogging trails, the development of grass meadows and an elaborate landscape plan, the future parkland, which Jersey City purchased last year for $12.4 million, will be surrounded by a highway, a trucking corporation and other urban industries. The purchase price — payable over three years — has so far been offset by $4 million from the Port Authority and $2.125 million from the Hudson County Open Space fund. The city bonded up to $8.7 million to pay for the remainder, but it continues to pursue additional grant money to cover the cost instead.

The former landfill was made toxic by the mismanagement of dangerous chemicals, but according to Malcolm Pirnie senior associate Gerard Spiesbach, it has already proven to be in better environmental condition than originally thought, with more vegetative growth than expected and significantly less need for venting noxious underground gas buildup.

This is in stark contrast to the site’s toxic history, as outlined by a 1993 report by the New Jersey Department of Health, which called the site a “potential public health concern” and outlined the extent that the contaminated land had been allowed to essentially fester.

“The PJP Landfill was operated as a commercial landfill, accepting chemical and industrial waste, including drums, from about 1968 to 1974. An unknown quantity of hazardous substances were disposed at the site during and after these dates,” it reads. “From 1970 to 1985 subsurface fires, which were attributed to spontaneous combustion and decomposition of landfill materials, burned almost continuously at portions of the landfill. These fires were known to emit large amounts of smoke. All fires at the site were extinguished by 1986.”

The initial remediation plan for the site, as approved by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), called for Waste Management, which is responsible for the first phase of cleanup, to fence the site off to the public, creating what corporation counsel Bill Matsikoudis calls a “no-go zone.”

He says the city “intervened to change the plan” by modifying the grading at which the landfill will be covered in an effort to create a passive, recreational park.

“Jersey City stood up and was aggressive to take this property and make it from a ‘no-go zone’ to a beautiful park,” Matsikoudis said Monday night. Reached on Tuesday, Spiesbach filled us in on the details of how that will be done.

“Large level areas allowing passive recreational uses were created by modifying the grading plans for the landfill closure,” Spiesbach says, adding that this can be done “without any compromise to the environmental protection provided by the approved remedy,” which includes installing a geo-membrane layer with a passive gas collection and venting system, a soil layer and a final vegetative soil layer.

“This approved remedy is an extremely effective method to isolate any historic contamination and is a method that has been successfully utilized throughout the country for former landfill closures,” he says. “The passive gas venting system is provided to collect and vent any gas, primarily methane, formed in the underlying landfill as a result of the decomposition of waste material.”

While Malcolm Pirnie and city officials expect little additional gas to form in the landfill once it is capped, they will take samples and report the findings to the DEP; Spiesbach says “it is likely that the frequency of sampling and reporting will be significantly reduced over time.”

As progress continues on the park’s first phase, the City Council is set to vote this week on three items related to the park’s development. One resolution increases the initial engineering contract with Malcolm Pirnie from $250,000 to $370,000; another resolution authorizes a $121,000 contract to the same company for construction services and air sampling services. And a first-read ordinance would authorize the granting of a 10,000-square-foot permanent easement to JC Broadway, which owns a warehouse business in the area, for $120,000. All three will be on the agenda when the council meets tonight.

A much-needed 15,000 square feet park in a mostly industrial area near Journal Square will officially open to the public Thursday after a formal dedication and Veterans Day ceremony. The park, which was built by the developers of the CANCOlofts across the street (who have dubbed it CANCOpark), will include open green space, landscaping and seating.

“Local businesses, neighbors, residents — everyone is anticipating the opening of this park,” CANCOlofts sales/marketing director Jodi Stasse says. “We are proud to be introducing this beautiful, quiet space to the neighborhood on a day of such importance and reflection.”

At tomorrow’s public ceremony, which will be led by Mayor Healy and is expected to include other local officials, a permanent plaque in the park dedicated to the memory of fallen veterans will be unveiled.

The creation of the park came after the City Council earlier this year revised the redevelopment plan for the area (known as the Marion Works Residential/Office Overlay Zone District), allowing greater density for new construction when a developer builds a new park for the neighborhood.

THE DETAILS

CANCOpark Dedication Ceremony; Thursday, November 11 at 11 am; 50 Dey St.

- Open Space Projects: Hudson County executive Tom DeGise has recommended 17 projects likely to receive $6.3 million in Hudson County Open Space Trust Fund money this year. Here’s a partial list.

- Vega’s Replacement: The Insider takes a look at the replacement process for the At-Large council seat formerly occupied by Mariano Vega.

- Chiappone Sentenced: Former Assemblyman Anthony Chiappone was sentenced to one year of probation and fined $5,000 Friday for filing false campaign finance reports with the state. Chiappone formerly represented the 31st District, which includes Bayonne and part of Jersey City.

- Heights Stabbing Death: A 45-year-old Jersey City Heights woman was stabbed to death in her home Thursday and investigators have not determined the motive, but they have learned she was to have flown to her native Guyana early Friday.

- Man Found Dead in LSP: A 50-year-old Fairview man was found dead on his yacht in Liberty State Park Wednesday night; emergency responders say the death is not suspicious.

- ARC Tunnel: State and federal political leaders held a press conference Friday to oppose Gov. Christie’s 30-day suspension of work on the mass-transit ARC Tunnel to NYC.

- Second Man Charged in Murder: A 21-year-old Jersey City man is the second second person to be charged in the September 4 killing of a Bayonne man who was shot in the head during a robbery as he walked to the Light Rail in th Lafayette neighborhood.

- Suspects in Grand Banks Beating Arrested: Two Jersey City men who fled to Vietnam after an assault that left a man paralyzed and in a coma were arrested at Newark Liberty Airport Thursday night after stepping off a flight from Saigon. The victim of the August beating outside of Grand Banks remains on life support.

- Cunningham & Menendez: According to The Auditor, there has been a “peaceful resolution” to the longtime hostilities between Sandra Cunningham and Bob Menendez.

- Heights Fires : Two families were left homeless after a fire ripped through a Carlton Avenue building Friday, while another family was displaced by a one-alarm fire on South Street yesterday.

Today’s Best Bets:

- Casa Dante hosts a fundraising dinner for Dress for Success Hudson County (6:30 pm), and author Renee Gatz is at the Five Corners library branch for an author discussion (6:30 pm).

In Statewide News:

- Dems Will Subpoena Race to the Top Docs: Senate Democrats plan to invoke subpoena power to force top members of Gov. Christie’s administration to testify on the state’s bungled Race to the Top application, including documents the administration did not provide in response to an Open Public Records Act request. MORE from NJ Spotlight.

- Family Planning $: The ongoing battle to restore $7.5 million to family planning clinics in the state will continue today in Trenton as Senate Democrats hold what’s being called a “longshot vote” to restore the funding, and a handful of women’s groups hold a rally in support of Loretta Weinberg’s bill that would override Gov. Christie’s July veto of restored funding to Family Health Care.

- Christie on the National Stage: Gov. Christie kicks off a monthlong national political tour designed to boost the candidacies and campaign treasuries for GOP gubernatorial candidates in nearly a dozen states this week. But as Josh Margolin points out, “the real benefit could be to the governor’s own status.”

- Police Salaries: An investigation by the Ledger finds that New Jersey’s police officers have the highest median pay in the nation, that the average municipal cop here is paid 80 percent more than the average resident and that they tend to be paid the best in small towns with little crime. In Jersey City, the median salary is $88,904, according to the paper.

- New Investigations Officer in Comptroller’s Office: The Office of the State Comptroller has hired a new director of investigations, former federal prosecutor John Jay Hoffman.

- Another Fish Die-Off: Thousands of menhaden — an oily baitfish also known as bunker — were found Saturday on the beach at Hereford Inlet in North Wildwood. Public works crews then worked for most of the day to clear the rotting fish. Low oxygen levels apparently caused the latest die-off.

- Swine Flu: State health officials are urging everyone over the age of 6 months to get vaccinated for H1N1 as soon as possible.

- Emergency Notification Registry: New Jersey may soon create a voluntary registry that would be used to notify family members when a person is involved in a serious auto accident.

The original Park(ing) Day in San Francisco. Photo: Rebar/Andrea Scher

Tomorrow is Park(ing) Day, that annual global event in which alternative-transportation advocates temporarily transform street parking spots into temporary public parks and other social spaces. The event, initially created by a San Francisco art and design collective in 2005, has grown tremendously over the past five years, with scores of temporary parks popping up in large cities all over the country.

Last year was the first time any Hudson County organization participated, with the county’s Division of Planning reclaiming a parking spot on Newark Avenue in front of the Brennan Court House. This year, there are two Park(ing) Day events in Hudson, one in Jersey City and one in Hoboken.

In Jersey City, the Hudson Transportation Management Association (TMA) will convert two parking spaces on Town Square Place (aka Pavonia Avenue) near the Newport PATH station into a park, with the help of the Actors Shakespeare Company of NJCU. The “Shakespeare in the Park” event, which runs from 10 am to 4 pm, will include actors in Elizabethan costumes performing scenes from a number of the bard’s plays.

“We hope that a little drama and a rapier fight will bring some attention and give people the opportunity to think about the amount of land currently used for parking that could be devoted to other purposes such as parks,” Hudson TMA director Jay DiDomenico says, adding that the event is a “perfect fit” with the TMA’s policy goals.

“Any effort to get people to consider using their cars less — reducing vehicle miles traveled — is within the scope of our work program,” he says. “It’s all about congestion, our environment and health. We also support more open space, which is a priority for Hudson County.”

However, DiDomenico says Park(ing) Day shouldn’t be seen as an outright indictment of curbside parking.

“That is not the case,” he says. “The Hudson TMA embraces this program because it is simply a fun way to get peoples’ attention to think about how they travel and that there can be better choices to make. Who knows, possibly fewer cars in use can translate to better land use in our beautiful county.”

Meanwhile up in the Mile Square City, Hoboken officials have teamed up with local transportation consulting firm RBA Group to set up two temporary parks between 9 am and 3 pm.

“Ped Paradise” will be located on Newark Street between Washington and Court Streets, and it will include seating, reading materials, board games, hula-hooping and jump-roping (JenniHoops will be providing custom hula hoops).

Meanwhile on River Street between Hudson Place and Newark Street, “Cycle Haven” will provide helmet fits and safety checks for cyclists of all ages and experience, in addition to a “bling” station for anyone interested in custom-decorating a bike. No bike? No problem, as Jersey City’s Easy Riders JC will be on hand to provide free bike rentals for the day.

Easy Riders co-founder Damian Wieczorek says once RBA Group approached him, it was a no-brainer to participate. He says he hopes events like this continue to highlight the need for bicycle, pedestrian and mass-transit infrastructure and improvement in the area.

“Hudson County is one of the most densely populated counties in the nation. For that reason alone, we need to offer an alternative to cars as public transport is limited,” he says. “The government is broke and should look into cheaper ways to provide an alternative to driving in an urban environment, while promoting more green space.”

In Jersey City, Wieczorek specifically points to the potential of the contested 6th Street Embankment as a spot for both bicycle lanes and open space, and potentially even a mass-transit extension.

While Hoboken’s official support of Park(ing) Day is just another reason that city is “on the right track to become the most bike-friendly city in New Jersey,” according to Wieczorek, he says Jersey City is also ripe for transportation transformation, though he admits it “has a lot of catching up to do.”

Still, pointing to the efforts of advocacy group Bike JC (of which he is a board member), and this year’s inaugural Ward Tour, which “about 10″ different city agencies and departments worked on with advocates, he says there is certainly hope for Jersey City. But like many others who work for change in the city, he says a “toxic environment” in City Hall continues to hold up reforms.

He pointed to a tale of two City Council meetings taking place last night as an example.

“Hoboken has an ordinance that is up for a vote that deals with the designation of bicycle lanes and with bicycle rules,” Wieczorek says. “Prior to [the] Jersey City council meeting, there was a rally being held to recall the current administration. At least the organizers requested the attendees to bring their bikes.”

TDR is a planning device used to preserve historic structures while continuing to allow a certain amount of growth in an older urban area. According to Eastern Michigan University’s Urban and Regional Planning Program, TDR programs “allow owners of buildings in zoning districts where more intense development is permitted to sell that development potential to owners of other sites.” TDR concepts implemented in Philadelphia, San Francisco and other cities have been deemed to be successful. (For more background on TDR, check out the fact sheet embedded below, from the American Farmland Trust.)

The three public meetings are an effort “to obtain feedback to guide the preservation and enhancement of the city’s most critical community resources, as well as to create a vision for the redevelopment projects that they are located within,” according to the city.

Discussion of Citywide Preservation Needs (Open Space and Historic)
Thursday, August 12, 6 to 9 pm
Hudson County Community College’s Culinary Conference Center
161 Newkirk St.

Jersey Avenue (between 10th and 18th Streets) Neighborhood Revitalization
Thursday, August 19, 6:30 to 9:30 pm
Golden Door Charter School
180 9th St.

Gregory Park Neighborhood Revitalization
Thursday, August 26, 6 to 9 pm
City Hall
280 Grove St.

To RSVP to any of of the meetings, email Ivan Freire at freirei (at) jcnj.org.

TDR Fact Sheet from the American Farmland Trust