Residential projects dominate landscape

 

Jersey City's office market boom has hit a wall, making way for a surging housing market that will change the face of the city's Downtown for decades to come, city officials and experts say.

While the 1980s and 1990s saw financial companies such as Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan Chase transform Jersey City's shores into the Gold Coast, today's market is dominated by housing giants like Toll Brothers, K. Hovnanian and Donald Trump.

More than 15,000 residential units are expected to flood the Downtown area over the next several years, putting pressure on municipal services, according to the city's Division of Planning. Though more than seven million square feet of office space was developed from 2000 to 2005, planning officials say the current office market is very sluggish and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

"There are currently no office projects under construction, and none planned," says a planning report authored by Planning Director Robert Cotter earlier this year. Those two opposite trends have prompted at least one expert to declare that "the job growth era is over in Jersey City."

From 1992 to 2000, the state created 243,000 high-paying office jobs, driven by Jersey City's growth on the waterfront, says James Hughes, dean of Rutgers University's Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy.

But since 2000, there has been a net loss across the state, thanks to increases in the state income tax and other business taxes, said Hughes.

"New Jersey has become an unfriendly place to do business," Hughes said.

The most recent sign of this trend is 77 Hudson St., where Hartz Mountain Industries just scrapped plans to build a 32-story office tower because the

company believed that Jersey City cannot absorb the new space.

The company sold the land for $65 million to K. Hovnanian, which now plans to build two 48-story towers, with more than 1,300 condo and rental units combined.

City officials and experts say Manhattan is driving the housing trend, as it previously did with the growth of the office space market in Jersey City.

The high costs of buying a home and living in Manhattan, combined with the market demand for luxury condos in the region, has created such high demand for housing in less costly Jersey City.