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By Ken Huber, Ed Geibert and Ken Friedman |
Four hundred years after Jersey City was first settled, its waterfront has
been reborn as a new business hub. Long gone are the old rail yards, wharves
and piers that had become a 34-acre brownfield site. Instead, high-rise offices,
retail facilities and promenades for the 21st century have revitalized the beleaguered
waterfront.
Nowhere is the value of brownfield properties in higher demand than in New Jersey.
Recent controversial legislative and regulatory initiatives in New Jersey underscore
the struggle to preserve the balance between land preservation and ever-increasing
demand for land development.
Despite the long history of industrial use and resultant environmental toll to air, soil and water, brownfield sites are key to economic revitalization thanks to their proximity to urban centers and often the waterfront. Jersey City has become the definitive example of the realized potential for brownfield redevelopment to support smart growth in New Jersey.
In the 1800s, the city’s waterfront grew into a great rail terminus. There, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, Lehigh Valley Railroad and New Jersey Central moved raw materials, machinery, freight and passengers to and from ocean steamships, riverboats and inland waterway barges.
Around the city’s waterfront grew big companies like Lorillard (then the largest tobacco company), American Sugar and Refining Company and Colgate-Palmolive. There were also iron and steel works, silk manufacturers and other industries. But eventually, hundreds of years of transportation and industrial use ended, leaving little more than accumulated remains awaiting rebirth.