HOBOKEN — Late on a windy Wednesday night, the Hoboken City Council voted unanimously to rescind a previous vote to use eminent domain to take northern waterfront property owned by NY Waterway and turn it into a park.
NY Waterway bought the longtime Union Dry Dock ship repair property in November to use as a place to repair its commuter ferries. But Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla wanted to buy it or take it by eminent domain to turn it into a park.
Not so fast, said Waterway, who also would add some public space, the company said. NJ Transit took steps to buy the property so that it could lease it back to Waterway for its commuter ferries.
After NJ Transit planned to meet Thursday and vote on the matter — and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy indicated that he wasn’t fully on board with Bhalla’s eminent domain idea, preferring parties work together — the council voted to back off.
Instead, they will wait for solution that makes all happy.
Pictured at the Wednesday council meeting is Mary Ondrejka, a local public space activist who’s nevertheless been speaking out against the pitfalls of using eminent domain in this case (activists 1, pols 0?)
For the more in-depth version of this story, keep reading hudsonreporter.com and pick up your Hoboken Reporter this weekend. Come back to this site Sunday for all the news from the print edition, too.
