Analysis of Design in Urban Areas 

For a group project in one of my graduate courses, I visited Newport and Hoboken to as an exercise in assessing the value of design in urban areas.  My observations and analysis of the Newport development in Jersey City follows.

FIELD NOTES: NEWPORT

From Hoboken, a short walk along the riverfront path delivered us into Newport, Jersey City.  Signs along the walkway provided facts about the historic use of the waterfront, its native and colonial histories, environmental cleanup efforts, and information about the aquatic life in the Hudson River Estuary, referred to as “A Nursery Extraordinaire.” 

While these signs touted the city’s attention to the natural environment, we took immediate notice of a couple of stray shopping carts that had settled in the rocks along the shore.  Also detracting from the message of environmental awareness was The Laguna, a luxury high-rise building with a faux beach (a sand pit in the park with white beach chairs and umbrella) on the northern tip of Newport.

Walking a bit further west into Newport along a wide and four-lane street, we saw a gated park with a carousel flanked by metered parking (which accepted Visa, Discover and American Express in addition to coins).  We began to take notice that there weren’t many pedestrians on the sidewalks. In fact, most of the movement that we observed was auto traffic on the streets, but it also seemed that the streets were built for a greater volume of traffic than we observed. 

Viewing the Jersey City Target store from Washington Boulevard, with its vast parking lot, we felt that we could be standing in suburban Boston, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, or a number of other towns in the country.  The nearby Staples store (also accompanied with ample parking), and the presence of plenty of parking garages in the area strengthened this feeling: Newport is clearly a city for motorists.

In the heart of Newport, we craned at the towering office and residential buildings creating canyons along the six-lane boulevard.  Notably, there was little traffic. The waterfront residences were gathered into seemingly exclusive gated communities with parking lots, filled with cars.  Wide sidewalks and large plazas outside the buildings offered plenty of seating—chairs and benches shaded under small trees—but there were no pedestrians in sight.  Quite surprisingly, Washington Boulevard was lined with benches set very close to the curb, facing the street with only a view of the traffic and the apartment towers on the opposite side. 

Some of the office buildings had restaurants and retail stores on the first floor, but we also saw many vacant spaces, with branded signage from Newport Centre, announcing, “something big is happening at Newport.”  We observed many chain stores: Chili’s, Cosi, Massage Envy, among others. We did see an occasional jogger and or couple out and about, but it seemed like the number of people was entirely out of proportion with the scale of the development.  Whereas Hoboken was welcoming and accessible, in Jersey City we felt that were observers of the structures, rather than participants in the life of the city.  Compounded by the fact that we were three of very few pedestrians in the area, we felt a bit like intruders.

While we were in a waterfront community, the river wasn’t visible from Newport, and much of the riverfront walkway was closed to the public. Many of the buildings along the waterfront were strikingly new, with a clean and streamlined aesthetic, although some of the residential buildings were composed of red brick.  The JP Morgan Chase building in particular looked very modern, even futuristic—like other buildings in the area, the buildings exteriors were illuminated by the sun’s reflection on the myriad of windows. 

One building that seemed to be from an earlier era in Jersey City was the H&M powerhouse.  The brick building was gated off from the sidewalk with a sign that announced a stabilization project to “preserve Jersey City’s past for its future generations.”  The site appeared to be a work-in-progress, but we noted that large inset sections of the façade had been painted bright green, blue and orange.

BACKGROUND

Further research on the Newport area revealed that the waterfront had previously been a large rail yard for the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad (a precursor of today’s PATH), which began running passenger service in 1908.  The map below, dated 1919, shows a significant portion of the city’s waterfront occupied by railways (Bayonne Plat Book).  The canal at the right side of the image denotes the city’s northern border with Hoboken. 

As other means of transport into Manhattan were introduced from the 1920s to the 1940s (namely the George Washington Bridge, Holland Tunnel and Lincoln Tunnel), ridership and shipping activity decreased and the rail system began to struggle, much like the shipyards of Hoboken.  The H&M Railroad went bankrupt in the 1950s, though the service continued to operate.  In 1962, the Port Authority Trans-Hudson was chartered, taking control of the H&M Railroad in exchange for the World Trade Center being built on the west side of Lower Manhattan. 

According to Robert Cotter, Director of the Division of City Planning in Jersey City, the city experienced “despair” in the 1960s, left with “the rusted, rotted remains of 19th and 20th Century shipyards and rail yards” after the railroad went bankrupt and the shippers left for other ports.  In an open letter to the editor of Jersey Journal in 2008, Cotter tells of how the mayor at the time, Tom Gangemi, had a vision for the wasteland back in 1962: “Wall Street West.” 

However, the city struggled through the 70s and 80s, as the city saw a surge in violent crime, and residents fled the city for the suburbs, taking jobs with them.  (Jacobs, A. 2000). 

According to the Jersey City Master Plan (2000) from the city’s Department of Housing, Economic Development and Commerce, a $40 million Urban Development Action Grant was approved in 1982 to contribute to the first phase of development on the tract of land along the Hudson River between Hoboken and Hudson Exchange.

While developers Richard LeFrak and his father, Samuel, saw a gold mind in the rusting rail yards in the early 80s, it wasn’t until ‘86 that they commenced the $10 billion redevelopment project, a 600-acre urban mixed-use community on the Hudson waterfront.

Over the years, the LeFrak master-planned development has made slow progress, with several years passing between completing one building and starting another.  The project entered its final phase in April 2012.  Currently, it boasts thirteen apartment buildings, eight office buildings, two hotels, the Newport Centre Mall, and a marina, as well as shops, playgrounds and a waterfront walkway (Hughes 2012; Bagli 2012). 

Businesses are drawn to the area by lower-than-Manhattan rents (while still being close and well-connected to New York City), and in some cases, tax deals and credits.  CitiGroup, UBS, Fidelity Investments, and Bank of America have all established offices in Newport. According to Cushman & Wakefield, as of 2012, Hudson waterfront property was renting for $38 a square foot for “state-of-the-art office space” (compared to $70 for a comparable space in Manhattan) (Hughes 2012).  New Jersey’s Urban Transit Hub Tax Credit program can further reduce rent costs for some tenants; the program offers significant tax credits to businesses near specified transportation hubs in nine cities in the state, according to the New Jersey Economic Development Authority’s website.  Today, the city’s transit offerings include the Light Rail, PATH, NJ transit and private buses (as well as easy access to the Holland Tunnel). 

Residential buildings have names like “Shore Club,” “Aquablu,” and “Laguna,” intimating a beach-resort-like community along the waterfront.  In the most recent quarter, average price per square foot for a home in Newport was $632 (Trulia 2012).  This is over 20% higher than the average price per square foot for homes in Greater Jersey City, but significantly lower than waterfront property in Hoboken, which sells for $1,139 per square foot, on average.

Per the Jersey City Master Plan, one of the city’s objectives for land use is to improve the interaction of residential and commercial buildings, and to “clarify the relationship of residential uses to commercial uses” in targeted areas.  At this late stage of development in Newport, this request for clarity suggests that the mixed-use development plan may not have been very successfully implemented. Further, the main issues noted in the Plan are improving waterfront access (including the completion of unfinished segments of the riverfront walkway), and promoting development with a more urban design style to encourage “connections between the various uses and elements.”   

After conducting some research on the H&M powerhouse that we observed on our trip, I found that the Romanesque Revival structure previously supplied coal-generated electricity to the Hudson and Manhattan railroad.  According to Steve Strunsky of the Star-Ledger, the building “has been largely abandoned, a colossal eyesore amid luxury skyscrapers” in recent years (2011).  However, plans are underway to revitalize the building.  After the Port Authority chartered its 55% ownership to the building’s co-owner, the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency, in 2011, the latter launched a project to turn the Powerhouse into an anchor of the city’s planned Powerhouse Arts District.  The building will be a mixed-use cultural centerpiece for retail, entertainment and the arts (echoing some of the integration-oriented language used to describe Newport itself).  The plan envisions the growth of an arts district in the area surrounding the Powerhouse, supported by the introduction of a performance space, green space and pedestrian-friendly attractions, according to the agency.  The city anticipates that the revitalization of the building into a hub for the arts will increase foot traffic in the surrounding area and bolster commercial activity.

Currently, the building is in the process of stabilization, which will take several years – it has undergone masonry and structural repairs, and the smokestacks have been removed.  The deteriorated roof was recently demolished in order to prevent damage to the infrastructure of the building.

The revitalization of the Powerhouse is one of the historic preservation objectives outlined in the Jersey City Master Plan.  The Powerhouse redevelopment falls under the objective of encouraging “adaptive reuse of obsolete buildings, especially industrial facilities.”  There are similar plans for the former Jersey City Medical Center complex, which may have a mix of affordable and assisted-living housing, and possibly a museum.   

Has Mayor Gangemi’s vision in 1962 – of Newport as “Wall Street West” – been realized in modern Newport? Robert Cotter thinks so: “The wasteland that was the waterfront back then has been transformed, as if by magic, into an emerging metropolis. It is a work in progress, but while incomplete, it is still pretty spectacular” (2008).

EVALUATION

While Newport is certainly visually spectacular, and it does embody the aesthetic of a so-called Wall Street West with soaring, glittering buildings, it lacks a true community.  (Perhaps this is where Cotter’s work-in-progress disclaimer comes in.)  It is as if the Newport developers looked across the river to Manhattan to define their vision for the area, rather than considering the culture and demographics of Greater Jersey City, the natural environment of the Hudson waterfront, or the designs that work for their neighbors along the New Jersey coast (namely, Hoboken).  While Hoboken and Jersey City both struggled after the decline of their rail and shipping yards in the 60s and 70s, Hoboken evolved organically, retaining its historic architecture, unique charm and sidewalk life, while Newport’s drastic modernization resulted in an imbalance between the community life and the architecture of the city.

Along the waterfront, the architectural aesthetics are impressively consistent – there is visual harmony from a sidewalk perspective.  But what value is there in the aesthetic of a city without a community to admire and take pride in it?  The imposing scale of Newport seems entirely out of proportion with the activity on the street.  The sidewalk, Jane Jacobs’ measure of a city’s health, shows few signs of life. 

Considering the dichotomy that Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck put forth in Suburban Nation –neighborhood versus suburban sprawl—allows a closer examination of Newport’s development and function.  The authors introduce two ways by which urban areas grow: through neighborhoods and through suburban sprawl.  While a neighborhood evolves organically as a response to human needs, a suburb is an invention, conceived by architects, developers and engineers, an idealized artificial system.  Being a “master-planned” development, Newport, by definition, falls into the latter category.  Neighborhoods are “mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly communities of varied population,” a description that matches much of the marketing language describing Newport, but not one that is supported by our observations and research.  It seems that the Newport development was intended to function as a neighborhood, but instead it shows many symptoms of suburban sprawl as defined by the authors; there are shopping centers and big-box retail stores, office parks and business parks, subdivisions with names that pay tribute to the natural resources they have displaced (“Shore Club”), and wide roadways to serve motorists.  It ignores human precedent and human experience in favor of a grand aesthetic to emulate its idol across the river.

I would make the following suggestions to the city to improve upon the development:

1) Support the redevelopment of the Powerhouse Arts District, allowing local and regional artists to participate and find a home in the artistic community, rather than hiring outsiders to populate the stages and galleries in an attempt to stimulate growth.

2) Introduce a park into the area, and make the waterfront walkway more accessible to the public.  Views of the waterfront are currently only available to high-rise residents—the riverfront should be well connected to the pedestrian life of the city.

3) Offer a variety of housing options to enable a more economically diverse population.

Newport is not a lost cause.  As master-planned developments go, Newport has a good mix of residences and businesses—they not zoned entirely separately.  And, unlike a suburb, Newport is very dense and accessible to pedestrian traffic.  The integrated design and dense layout mean that there is potential for a livelier streetscape, but, the developers will need to turn their gaze from Manhattan to take a closer look at their own city.

REFERENCES

Bagli, Charles V. “Jersey City Development, Begun in ’86, Enters Final Phase,” New York Times, April 30, 2012, accessed September 27, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/nyregion/for-newport-in-jersey-city-last-phase-of-development-begins.html.

City of Jersey City.  “Jersey City Master Plan.” Accessed October 3, 2013. http://www.cityofjerseycity.com/uploadedFiles/City_Government/Department_of_Housing,_Economic_Development_and_Commerce/1-Jersey%20City%20Master%20Plan%20%202000%20Vol.%201%20of%202.pdf.

Cotter, Robert. letter to the editor of Jersey Journal, Jersey City Redevelopment Agency News, October 23, 2008, accessed September 27, 2013, http://www.thejcra.org/index.php?p=news&nid=95.

Duany, Andres, Lizz Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck. Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. New York: North Point Press, 2010.

G.M. Hopkins and Company. Plat book of Jersey City and Bayonne, Hudson Co., N.J. Philadelphia: The Company, 1919.  Accessed September 28, 2013. http://mapmaker.rutgers.edu/HUDSON_COUNTY/JC_BayonnePlatbook/JC_Bayonne_8_plt6/index.htm.

Hughes, C. J.  “In Jersey City, a LeFrak Office Project Awaits a Tenant,” New York Times, April 17, 2012, accessed September 27, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/realestate/commercial/lefrak-office-project-in-jersey-city-awaits-a-tenant.html?pagewanted=all.

Jacobs, Andrew.  “A City Whose Time Has Come Again; After Years of Deprivation, Jersey

City, an Old Industrial Powerhouse, Is Remaking It,” New York Times, April 30, 2000, accessed September 27, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/30/nyregion/city-whose-time-has-come-again-after-years-deprivation-jersey-city-old.html?pagewanted=4&src=pm.

New Jersey Economic Development Authority. “Incentive Programs – Urban Transit Hub

Tax Credit Program.” Accessed September 27, 2013. http://www.njeda.com/web/Aspx_pg/Templates/Npic_Text.aspx? Doc_Id=888&menuid=1295&topid=718&levelid=6&midid=1175

Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. “History.” Accessed September 27, 2013. http://www.panynj.gov/path/history.html.

Strunsky, Steve. “Jersey City’s Washington Street Powerhouse May Become New Retail,

Entertainment Space.” Star-Ledger, September 30, 2011, accessed October 3, 2013, http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/09/jersey_citys_washington_street.html.

Trulia.  “Newport Market Trends.” Accessed September 27, 2013. http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/Newport-Jersey_City/4597/market-trends/.