With the awarding of a $100,000 planning grant, Jersey City was named the state's 15th "Transit Village" yesterday - a designation that puts the city in line to receive additional funding for economic, housing and commercial projects in and around the Journal Square transportation hub.

"The designation brings us attention," said Mayor Jerramiah Healy, who was handed a cardboard replica of a check by state Department of Transportation Commissioner Jack Lettiere and Department of Community Affairs Commissioner Susan Bass Levin. "It will bring investment . more state aid."

Begun in 1999, and underwritten by $1 million a year in state funding, the Transit Village program encourages municipalities to develop housing and various commercial enterprises around transportation depots to reduce traffic congestion, air pollution, and other problems arising from poorly planned, sprawling communities. Later in the day, New Brunswick was also named a Transit Village.

Noting the revitalization of the Loew's Jersey Theater and a new housing complex rising within a quarter mile of Journal Square, Healy said he would like to see the Square "cleaned up a bit" and "maybe have a little more police."

Even as new families have moved into the area, helping to stabilize housing stock in the community, the Square itself remains a haven for panhandlers and is a shadow of its former self, when three local theaters attracted residents and visitors to the center of town each night.

During the event, just around the corner, workers were removing goods from a corner store at 22 Journal Square - one of 10 establishments put out of business in November when city inspectors found the building unsafe.

Rep. Robert Menendez, D-Hoboken, and state Assemblyman Vincent Prieto Prieto, D-Secaucus, also attended yesterday's press conference.

"Transportation is about economic development, quality of life . the air we collectively breathe, creating new jobs as we create new businesses," said Menendez, a senior member of the House Transportation Committee. "It takes transportation as a catalyst to achieve all these things."