[NYguy]

Newsday

Koolhaas presents design for 52-story tower in Jersey City

By JANET FRANKSTON LORIN
February 26, 2007

JERSEY CITY, N.J. -- In his design for a 52-story tower across the Hudson River from Manhattan, internationally acclaimed architect Rem Koolhaas wants to inspire social interaction, life and energy.

The building's design _ three rectangular slabs stacked perpendicular to each other _ allows for a mix of uses: condos, a hotel, artist lofts and studios, gallery and retail space.

"I am putting together familiar elements in an unfamiliar way," he said in an interview after presenting renderings and models of the project at the Jersey City Museum.

The Dutch architect, winner of the prestigious Pritzker Architectural Prize, on Monday showcased his plans to transform the Jersey City skyline. He said he was conscious of creating the mix of uses to allow for people to interact, which he said is unusual in a high-rise building.

"We are creating something slightly more memorable and slightly more energetic," he said. "What New Jersey lacks is some visible evidence of a new beginning."

The $400 million project, with public spaces on three levels of the structure, will anchor an arts district a few blocks from the water in an booming area.

It will be among the tallest residential projects in New Jersey and will sit diagonally across the street from another high-rise condo with a famous name, Trump Plaza: Jersey City.

Residential construction continues to blossom in Jersey City, which offers lower prices than New York and a quick commute to Lower Manhattan.

The new building will replace a brick 130-year-old former tobacco factory, now being demolished, which was the subject years of legal dispute. The city wanted to create an arts district in the area, and the owner of the warehouse sued saying Jersey City was restricting what could be developed on the site.

The parties settled last summer, allowing developers to move forward with plans for luxury housing as well as the cultural elements.

The settlement required 117 affordable housing units and 120 less-expensive spaces for artists studios and lofts. Another condition included hiring a world-class architect, said Bill Matsikoudis, the city's corporation counsel.

Koolhaas has also designed the Seattle Public Library, the Prada store in New York, the Casa da Musica concert hall in Porto, Portugal, and the China Central Television Headquarters, under construction in Beijing.

Monday's announcement culminated negotiations to build a signature project in Jersey City, Matsikoudis said

"It's a piece art in and of itself, a 600-foot tall sculpture," he said.

The city's director of planning, Robert Cotter, said the project represents a new kind of urban vitality for Jersey City, more cutting edge than other buildings.

"This city can't grow out anymore," he said. "It'll grow up."

The building must still undergo final design and other approvals from the city, a process expected to take 12 to 14 months; construction should be complete by 2010 or 2011.

Developers with the Athena Group of New York said about 300 condo units are expected to sell for between $500,000 and $1 million. They haven't yet secured an operator for the hotel.

[NYguy]

curbed.com

Across the River, Rem Koolhaas Gone Wild

http://www.curbed.com/2007_02_remjersy.jpg

What we have here is 111 First Street, an innovative, exciting design for a mixed-use development unveiled today by starchitect Rem Koolhaas. Would look great in the East Village, no? Great! Then you'll enjoy the fact even more that the project is actually set to rise in Jersey City.

[NYguy]

More images:
http://jclist.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=97749#forumpost97749

[Lecom]

Wack

[WonderlandPark]

Love it, build it. 100X better than that Trump travesty.

[Thskyscraper]

I'm sorry, but I'm just not a big fan of these building 'mosaics'. More so if they're high enough to define a skyline, which it would in JC since there wouldn't be any buildings blocking it. Well it's not as bad as the one in Louisville, but I'm just not in love with it. Maybe if it was half as tall I'd like it more.

[The Mad Hatter]

whats with OMA and monolithic slabs, with little gimicks which are suppose to represent architecture..louisville,beijing, and now jersey.

[CoolCzech]

You know how there are certain proposals where you take one look at the rendering and almost instantly realize it will never get built?

I got that feeling seeing this one.

I could be wrong - my initial reaction when I saw renderings of the BD was that it was yet another Buck Rogers caricature that a reasonable world would never build... but I'll be really, really surprised if this thing is built without serious modification.

Not that I'm against it: it IS interesting, and it will be great if it IS built, I'll be the first to admit...

[StatenIslander237]

I am loving this one.

[Swede]

I, for one, welcome this building and the new interest it will create for the JC skyline. Jersey City is really booming, just like Brooklyn and Queens (skyline-wise). Thiss will IMO mean the Manhattan skyline becomming even more impressive in it's massiveness.

[macmini]

You know how there are certain proposals where you take one look at the rendering and almost instantly realize it will never get built?

I got that feeling seeing this one.

I could be wrong - my initial reaction when I saw renderings of the BD was that it was yet another Buck Rogers caricature that a reasonable world would never build... but I'll be really, really surprised if this thing is built without serious modification.

Not that I'm against it: it IS interesting, and it will be great if it IS built, I'll be the first to admit...

Czech construction has already started on this project it's not my favorit Rem Koolhaas building but this is better then all the boring crap being built in JC. The developer has put to much time and money not to build this project he just gave the Jersey City museum 300k as part of the deal to build the building.

[CoolCzech]

Woah! What a skyline is sprouting across the Hudson! What a great time to be alive and living nearby!

[NYguy]

http://www.curbed.com/2007_02_remjersy.jpg

I actually like it, but we'll see what further design changes have to be made.

The building must still undergo final design and other approvals from the city, a process expected to take 12 to 14 months; construction should be complete by 2010 or 2011.

Imagine the outrage if it were proposed in Manhattan.

It will be among the tallest residential projects in New Jersey and will sit diagonally across the street from another high-rise condo with a famous name, Trump Plaza: Jersey City.

And I agree it's more interesting than this:

http://www.miamirealestatetrends.com/Images/StarterImages/TrumpNJ-Aerial.gif


http://therealestate.observer.com/uploaded_images/trump-730989.jpg

[phillyskyline]

Trump Plaza looks like the cookie cutter condos someone in city council was referring too.

[BANKofMANHATTAN]

I don't care for the Trump project, just because he could do way better...and this thing...

In the immortal words of Mr. Horse

*rubs chin...*

"No sir, I don't like it"

Somebody's been playing Jenga again.

But that's just me, i'm not really a fan of this type of achritecture...
However, i do give them credit for being a more imaginative than Mr. Trump in this case.

[antinimby]

Trump Plaza looks like the cookie cutter condos someone in city council was referring too.Well, this Koolhaas project looks like a cookie cutter that was sliced in three and someone turned each section around in a different direction.

[toddguy]

:yuck: Not as bad as the thing planned for Louisville though.

[Jularc]

Very interesting. Hopefully it gets built.

http://www.nj.com/cgi-bin/prxy/photogalleries/nph-cache.cgi/cache=3000;/njo/images/8238/003.jpg

[Lost Island]

That's even stranger than things proposed in Spain and the Netherlands.

[Swede]

http://www.nj.com/cgi-bin/prxy/photogalleries/nph-cache.cgi/cache=3000;/njo/images/8238/003.jpg
Like I said, booming :) JC 10 years ago vs. JC in 10 years, huuuge change.

[samoen313]

Well, it beats the heck out of a lot of OMA's skyscraper attempts (OMA offshoot REX's Louisville building, the Gazprom proposal, the Tour Signal proposal in Paris, etc.) Nonetheless, it's still missing a lot of something. But what the hey, Jersey City's current skyline is a real snore. They could use something mildly controversial.

[MattSal]

I like the Trump one by a mile further. This building is a travesty.

[Aleks]

umm... its not that good of a design

i dont like the square

skyscrapers shouldnt be square

maybe keep the whole criss cross style just change the shape of the crossed sections

[Lecom]

I hope the city council forces a redesign. What a joke of a design this building currently is.

[supastar]

not sure why, but i freaking love it!!!! It turns modern architecture on it's side :)

[-GR2NY-]

I dont see it happening in JC, it dont think it will get approval.

[NYguy]

Very interesting. Hopefully it gets built.

http://www.nj.com/cgi-bin/prxy/photogalleries/nph-cache.cgi/cache=3000;/njo/images/8238/003.jpg

One thing for certain, You'll know it when you see it...

[Jularc]

The Hanging Tower of Jersey City


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/04/realestate/04njzo.600.jpg
ARTS DISTRICT, BUILDING BLOCKS This 52-story design by Rem Koolhaas is to house apartments, hotel
rooms and artists’ spaces as well as stores, an art gallery and a cabaret.


By ANTOINETTE MARTIN
March 4, 2007

AFTER a wild development saga involving a dozen legal actions and the hiring of a mega-star architect, the design for a new tower to anchor this city’s arts district emerged last week as, well, kind of wild.

The structure designed by Rem Koolhaas is 52 stories tall and holds 1.2 million square feet of mostly residential space. Yet, from most angles, it resembles nothing so much as a small child’s precarious stack of blocks. Looking from Manhattan across the river, the skyscraper presents the startling prospect of a giant barbell, standing on end.

Mr. Koolhaas, the Dutch founder of the internationally known Office for Metropolitan Architecture and a professor of urban studies at Harvard, said he took note of the way bare-boned monoliths dominate Jersey City’s modern architecture — “and played with that.”

The building he designed for a two-acre site at 111 First Street here is born of conflict. Displaced artists, Manhattan developers and Jersey City politicians have mixed it up in court for years over the project’s configuration and scale and the basic question of whether it should replace a historic industrial building where artists once lived and worked.

Mr. Koolhaas seemed to cast that history into oblivion during an interview after the unveiling of his designs — or at least he tried.

“This building was born under a lucky star,” Mr. Koolhaas said after the formal unveiling, held at the Jersey City Museum. “I think everyone who has seen it so far likes it.”

One key issue in the debate over the structure, the proposed centerpiece of the city’s Powerhouse Arts District, has been whether a high-rise is appropriate for the site, since the city had said it intended to create a neighborhood to human scale, with vibrant street life.

Mr. Koolhaas and his associate Shoei Shigematsu, the lead architect for the project, responded by breaking the building into three components — a cube and two rectangular blocks — and stacked them perpendicularly. Terraces and open spaces are created at each structural joint, and slices of the view of Manhattan from existing buildings in the neighborhood are retained.

There is to be a meditation pool at street level, as well as a sculpture garden and sports terrace. Upper terraces are to feature gardens, outdoor dining areas and other amenities. A connection across Washington Street to the historic Powerhouse building, a vacant Victorian-era power plant slated for conversion to an arts center, will be achieved via a pedestrian plaza with sculpture garden.

The First Street tower is envisioned as a “vertical city” by its Manhattan-based builders, the Athena Group and the BLDG Management Company.

The top 25 floors will hold 330 apartments; the 7 floors below that will have 252 hotel rooms. Below these, there will be 40 loft apartments; 120 artist live/work spaces; parking for 719 cars on 6 floors; and a 2-story street-level area for stores, an art gallery and a cabaret, plus the lobbies for the hotel and the condos.

From some angles, as displayed in digital renderings and a scale model by the architects last week, the structure’s profile looks positively svelte — even a trifle fragile, as if it might topple in a stiff wind. “That was my first question,” joked the Jersey City mayor, Jerramiah T. Healy. “Is it going to blow over?”

The president of BLDG Management, Lloyd M. Goldman, whose company owns the site — and who at one point sued the city for stopping demolition of the old tobacco factory there that served as housing for hundreds of artists — declared the new design “utterly sound.”

“We brought in WSP Cantor Seinuk as the structural engineers,” he noted. “They’re the firm that’s doing the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center.”

A reinforced concrete tube running through its core will anchor the building. Cantilevered concrete beams will support the two upper blocks, whose end sections splay out over the street.

The bottom third of the building will hold the artist spaces and rise 16 floors over the two-story retail area. The midsection, 18 stories tall, will hold the hotel and 10 floors of loft apartments that may be developed as “hotel condos.”

The glass-faced 16-story top section, which will face the Hudson River and Manhattan skyline directly eastward, will be condos.

As with other parts of Jersey City, a total transformation is under way in the area — providing a source of satisfaction for developers, angst for artists who loved the beaten-down warehouse district the way it was, and torn loyalties for city officials committed to revitalization.

At the unveiling of the design for the $400 million project, the mayor chortled over the coup of getting a “cool house for Jersey City,” playing on the architect’s surname, and called it a step forward in a renaissance. Later, he said he needed to correct himself. “This area used to be full of two-family frame houses, factory buildings and hole-in-the-wall bars,” he recollected. “We’re not just seeing a renaissance. We’re building a new city.”

William Matsikoudis, the city’s attorney, said he was thrilled to have wrested a compromise from a crowd of “New York City lawyers” hired by the developers, permitting a high-density structure on the one hand, but on the other a building that resembles a “600-foot-tall sculpture.”

Mr. Matsikoudis said he had handed the developers a list of seven world-class architects last June and told them a deal could be struck over the size of the building if they could lure a “star-chitect” to the project. Mr. Koolhaas accepted the commission in September.

The deal also included a commitment from the developers to donate $1 million to the arts in Jersey City. A first check of $330,000 was turned over to the city art museum two weeks ago.

For Mr. Koolhaas’s firm, based in Rotterdam, the Jersey City structure represents its first large-scale residential project in this country.

Mr. Koolhaas described the project as a welcome chance to produce “serious” architecture in a “real” place, as opposed to “spectacular architecture in unreal places.”

The architect, who won the Pritzker Prize in 2000, has in recent years designed the Prada stores in New York and Los Angeles, the Whitney Museum extension, the Seattle Public Library and the Illinois Institute of Technology campus center in Chicago.

His firm’s largest project to date worldwide is the China Central television headquarters and cultural center, under construction in Beijing.

Mr. Koolhaas said he thought the Jersey City arts district would appeal to “anyone who doesn’t want to live in a manicured environment.”

Asked for his favorite vantage point for viewing the 111 First Street building, Mr. Koolhaas said it would be from the thoroughly unaesthetic New Jersey Turnpike. “From there,” he said, “you see the Jersey City skyline in the foreground, with the Manhattan skyline in the background, and the two seem to meld. This is truly urban, truly beautiful.”


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[NYguy]

The Hanging Tower of Jersey City


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/04/realestate/04njzo.600.jpg
ARTS DISTRICT, BUILDING BLOCKS This 52-story design by Rem Koolhaas is to house apartments, hotel
rooms and artists’ spaces as well as stores, an art gallery and a cabaret.

I like it...

Asked for his favorite vantage point for viewing the 111 First Street building, Mr. Koolhaas said it would be from the thoroughly unaesthetic New Jersey Turnpike. “From there,” he said, “you see the Jersey City skyline in the foreground, with the Manhattan skyline in the background, and the two seem to meld. This is truly urban, truly beautiful.”

In other words, one big New York skyline...

[NYguy]

Jersey City hopes image will rise with proposed Koolhaas tower

JANET FRANKSTON LORIN
Associated Press

JERSEY CITY, N.J. - With its prime location across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan, Jersey City has been drawing new residents and businesses for years with its stunning views of the New York skyline and cheaper rents.

But now New Jersey's second largest city is commanding something more than a quick commute to Manhattan: the cache of an avant-garde 52-story condominium and hotel tower to anchor an arts district, designed by internationally acclaimed architect Rem Koolhaas.

He announced plans last week for a 1.2 million-square-foot building with an unusual design: three rectangular slabs stacked perpendicular to each other. City officials have called it a 600-foot-tall piece of art.

The new building will replace a brick 130-year-old former tobacco factory, now being demolished. Developers with the Athena Group and BLDG Management Co., both of New York, said its 300 condominium units are expected to have a price range of $500,000 to $1 million.

Like many cities around the world, Jersey City is trying to use architecture to upgrade its image, said Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for the New Yorker magazine.

"Architecture is increasingly one of those bootstraps that cities use to bootstrap themselves up a couple of notches," he said. "It shows that Jersey City has reached a new level and it makes sense to do something like this today."

Robert Ivy, editor-in-chief of the Architectural Record, agreed.

"Developers and cities are realizing that architects have the power to draw attention, international attention, to their location. That was true in Milwaukee, and in Bilbao, and it's going to be true in Jersey City," he said, referring to Santiago Calatrava's Milwaukee Art Museum and Frank Gehry's design for the Guggenheim Museum in Spain.

In other words, design can change perception, he said. Imaginative or poetic buildings change the entire perceived personality of a city.

"I have no way of knowing whether Koolhaas' building can do that, but really great buildings can do that," he said.

Koolhaas' $400 million building at 111 First Street, to be complete in three or four years, will add to Jersey City's emerging real estate portfolio.

The city already has a sleek and elegant new office tower designed by Cesar Pelli for Goldman Sachs, the tallest building in New Jersey. Goldberger described it a 2004 New Yorker magazine critique as "the anchor of a new city, a kind of Shanghai on the Hudson, that has sprung up over the past decade on what was once industrial land."

In addition, the city has approved plans for a second Goldman Sachs tower, designed by famed architect I.M. Pei, but it won't be built until the first tower is filled, said Jersey City's planning director Robert Cotter.

Another established brand in real estate, Donald Trump, has attached his name to two condo towers, expected to sell $1 million apartments.

The Koolhaas tower will put Jersey City on the world map for other reasons, said Hilary Ballon, a professor of architectural history at Columbia University.

"People will want to see a Koolhaas building," she said. "It's not that he's just a famous architect. It's what his work stands for."

The Dutch architect, a winner of the prestigious Pritzker Architectural Prize, has also designed the Prada store in New York, the Casa da Musica concert hall in Porto, Portugal, and the China Central Television Headquarters, under construction in Beijing.

He said in an interview with The Associated Press that he wants Jersey City building, with its mix of uses, to inspire social interaction, life and energy. In addition to condos and a hotel, it will include artist lofts and studios, gallery and retail space, as well as several levels of public space.

"We are creating something slightly more memorable and slightly more energetic," he said. "What New Jersey lacks is some visible evidence of a new beginning."

That new beginning began creeping across the Hudson two decades ago with the Newport, a 600-acre project by the New York development family LeFrak, which has more of a suburban feel and includes its own PATH stop as well as office space, housing and a shopping mall.

The more urban Koolhaas building wouldn't have been possible 20 years ago, said Michael Beyard, a senior fellow with the Urban Land Institute, a Washington-based think tank that promotes responsible development.

He said the building will raise the value and importance of Jersey City's location.

"As the value is added, as the area becomes more acceptable as a destination for residential, office and retailing, the value of the property continues to rise," he said.

More is likely to follow, Ivy said. He said Koolhaas' name alone will draw attention.

"Let's say the intellectual investment will attract scrutiny and perhaps attract others to join the party," he said.

Cotter, the planning director, said the Pelli building was a crucial piece of the city's waterfront development, but the Koolhaas project is step beyond, a breakthrough for Jersey City.

"We will now have a building that people will come just to see," he said.

[Thefigman]

My fingers are crossed for this one.

[GVNY]

What is so redeeming about this building? Aside for its unoriginal shape, it is a shameless box, and from what the photograph shows, a plain, banal one at that.

[Steely Dan]

damn, this is one AWESOME proposal! it's like the crazy ass stuff i dream about. i defintiely have my fingers extra-super-crossed for this one.

[NYguy]

I have a feeling it won't have trouble getting through, because JC officials really want the "600 ft piece of art". Something else to put JC on the "map".

[Thefigman]

In addition, the city has approved plans for a second Goldman Sachs tower, designed by famed architect I.M. Pei, but it won't be built until the first tower is filled, said Jersey City's planning director Robert Cotter.


Wow. I didn't even catch this the first time I read the article. JC is going to shine for sure!

[NYguy]

USA Today

Model of urban future: Jersey City?

http://images.usatoday.com/news/_photos/2007/04/16/jersey-cityx-large.jpg

Morning commuters on the Jersey City waterfront, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Jersey City is second only to New York in a ranking of the USA?s 'least sprawling' cities.


By Rick Hampson, USA TODAY

JERSEY CITY — Once, this was a city of browns and grays. Railroads owned a third of the land, and trains rumbled night and day to the cacophonous riverfront. Factories belched fumes and leaked chemicals. "Nobody cared," says Bob Leach, born here in 1937. "Smoke meant jobs."

And those were the good years. Then, in the 1960s, the railroads went broke. Rail yards were abandoned, piers rotted, factories closed. In the 1970s alone, the city lost 14% of its population and about 9% of its jobs.

Now Jersey City has come back as its own antithesis: clean, green and growing — an example, urban planners say, of how the nation can accommodate some of the additional 100 million Americans expected by 2040 without paving over every farm, forest and meadow.

Jersey City, a model of smart growth? Even Robert Cotter, the city's planning director, says he was surprised by the notion. But because so many people here live in apartments or attached houses located near shops, offices and mass transit, they require less land, gasoline, heating oil, water, sewer pipe and other finite resources.

Smart Growth America, an advocacy group that ranks the largest metro areas by sprawl, says Jersey City is the second "least sprawling," trailing only New York City.

It's part of a remarkable demographic and economic U-turn. In a region where many cities are shrinking, Jersey City in the last quarter-century has gained about 30,000 residents, 27,000 jobs and 18 million square feet of prime office space — more than all such space in downtown Atlanta, Phoenix or Miami.

Another 8,000 housing units are being built, and permits have been issued for 10,000 more. With tens of thousands more homes planned over the next 25 years, Jersey City — given up for dead 30 years ago — could pass its 1930 population peak of 316,700.

Once written off by the rest of the nation as another Rust Belt failure, Jersey City is now seen as instructional.

Robert Lang, director of Virginia Tech's Metropolitan Institute, says the city "won't be a model for the whole country, but it will be an important model for parts of it" — especially satellite cities near bigger, more dynamic ones: Long Beach near Los Angeles, Oakland near San Francisco, Chelsea near Boston.

"Areas that have been blighted are beds for redevelopment," says Ben Jogodnik, a vice president of Toll Brothers, a leading national home builder that just finished a 12-story condo tower here. "Decay is incredibly fertile for regrowth."

Toll Brothers is known for building big houses on big suburban plots. But it formed a division to focus on locales such as Jersey City, Jogodnik says, "because that's where our customers are going."

A winning formula

How is Jersey City doing it? Observers such as Lang, Jogodnik and James Hughes, dean of Rutgers University's school of planning, identify several elements in the city's reversal of fortune:

•Proximity to New York. Hughes calls Jersey City "almost a sixth borough of New York." Mayor Jeremiah Healy calls the waterfront "Wall Street West." The city is a short trip across the Hudson River from Manhattan, but its building and real estate costs are one-half to one-third of Manhattan's. This has attracted companies such as Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs, and thousands of residents who cross the Hudson to work.

•Redevelopment and infill. Because Jersey City had built on almost all of its land more than 50 years ago, it has to reuse, reclaim and redevelop land, including so-called brownfields (once-polluted industrial sites) and grayfields (parking lots, old strip malls).

After the Hudson riverfront's industrial economy collapsed in the 1970s, Jersey City lucked out: The land was abandoned. No one was living there to object to the construction of offices, apartments and stores on old rail yards and piers.

Similarly, the city has created the Powerhouse Arts District around an imposing but abandoned early 20th-century subway power station. Plans call for a mix of loft-style residential condos and rental units, restaurants, clubs, galleries, theaters and artists' spaces in an area just west of the waterfront.

Also, several former industrial sites contaminated with chromium have been cleaned up. Tons of soil have been removed from a former Honeywell plant on the west side and replaced with clean soil.

•Politics. For most of the 20th century, Jersey City's politics were reliably Democratic — and reliably corrupt. But in 1980, Democratic Mayor Gerald McCann endorsed Ronald Reagan, whose administration later gave the city a $40 million grant for infrastructure improvements along the still-undeveloped waterfront.

In 1992, even though only 6% of the electorate was registered Republican, conservative Republican Bret Schundler, a Harvard graduate who had worked on Wall Street, was elected mayor. Corporations were lured to the city in part by Schundler's reforms and by his reputation for honesty.

Hughes, the Rutgers professor, says publicly traded national companies no longer are automatically leery of doing business in Jersey City.

•Mass transit and infrastructure. Unlike Sun Belt cities that must build new transportation and water lines to accommodate growth, Jersey City is rich in basic infrastructure that was designed when the city was more populous than it is now.

Take mass transit. Although the city is served by a new, $2.2 billion state and federally financed light-rail system, it has long had subway, bus and ferry lines to Manhattan. About 40% of commuters use mass transit — second only to New York among the nation's 100 largest cities — and 9% walk to work.

•Immigrants. Thirty-seven percent of Jersey City residents are foreign-born, compared with 12% of all Americans. From 1970 to 1980, foreign-born residents jumped 45%, an increase nine times the city's population growth rate. Dozens of different languages are spoken here, and the city is home to one of the largest Arab Muslim communities in the nation.

Immigrants include wealthy Asian émigrés who are snapping up apartments at the still-rising Trump Plaza tower, which will be New Jersey's tallest residential building, Indian business owners who have established a "Little Bombay," and low-income Central Americans who work as domestics and manual laborers.

•Density. Cotter, the planning director, half jokes that Jersey City has earned its green reputation largely "by piling people on top of each other."

Among the largest U.S. cities, only New York has a higher population density than Jersey City. Nationally, 64% of homes are free-standing, single-family houses; in Jersey City, the figure is only 8%.

Jersey City's repopulation fits the state's policy of fighting sprawl and preserving open space. "We really have stemmed sprawl and forced development into some of the older urban areas," Hughes says.

And he says it's not just New Jersey: "In the whole Northeast now, part of the political culture is to slow down growth." As Sun Belt boom states such as North Carolina continue to grow — to get more "Jersified," as Hughes puts it — they'll come around, too, he says.

The Beacon on the hill

Last year, Caitlin Coan and Scott Young, who rent in a tower on Jersey City's waterfront, took a walk west — under an elevated highway, past a vocational high school and public housing project. They wanted to check out what Coan calls "that crazy hospital on the hill."

This was the former Jersey City Medical Center, a cluster of Art Deco buildings on a rise in the center of the city, far from the booming waterfront.

Now the medical center was becoming The Beacon condominium complex, one of the nation's largest historic renovation projects.

Most of it was built during the Great Depression. In 1932, Jersey City's most famous mayor, Frank Hague, helped elect Franklin Roosevelt president. In return, he got federal money to help build the hospital complex.

Hague, the history of Jersey City clearly documents, was a master of vote fraud, extortion and intimidation who told city workers how much to kick back to his political machine, whom to vote for and what newspaper to buy. He once had his police dump Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas on a Manhattan sidewalk after he tried to lead a rally in Jersey City.

The medical center symbolized his power. It could be seen for miles —The Saturday Evening Post wrote that it rose "like a beautiful mirage … up from the municipal rubble which is Jersey City." Its eight buildings had marble walls, terrazzo floors, etched glass, decorative moldings and glittering chandeliers.

Overbuilt and overstaffed, the center drained city finances for years. In 1988, four decades after Hague's retirement, the hospital declared bankruptcy. In 2004 it moved to a new building, leaving behind one of the biggest white elephants in America.

The city got it declared a state and national landmark and sold it to a developer for $9.5 million and a promise to spend $350 million to turn its huge buildings into 1,200 condos. This summer, Coan and Young will move into The Beacon, where they've purchased a one-bedroom unit.

Their willingness to move inland to find an affordable home is crucial to the city's plan to repopulate and upgrade its traditional center. The couple acknowledges they're taking a risk on an unfashionable neighborhood. "This is still an up-and-coming area," Young says. "If it doesn't get better, we'll be stuck."

In many ways, Jersey City still is two cities: waterside and inland, new and old, rich and poor.

"We see buildings going up, but it doesn't do us any good," says Walter Williams, 64, an unemployed security guard who lives near The Beacon. About 19% of Jersey City residents live below the poverty line, compared with 9% statewide and 12% nationally. Crime remains a problem despite the hiring of more police. The troubled schools are under state control.

George Filopoulos of Metrovest, The Beacon's developer, says 85% of the apartments in the first two buildings have been sold, mostly to residents of the waterfront or New York, or empty-nesters from the suburbs. Studios sell in the mid-$300,000s; a penthouse went for $2.3 million.

The legend of Hague, softened by the years, is part of the sales pitch. "The ghost of Frank Hague will be happy," Leach says. "In his own way, he always wanted to make this a world-class city."

Cotter says The Beacon is a test of whether Jersey City can grow out beyond its golden waterfront: "This is how we're growing, and in the future it's where a lot of U.S. cities are going."

[NYguy]

Wow. I didn't even catch this the first time I read the article. JC is going to shine for sure!

Yeah, it's a planned 500 ft tower...
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=113610

[-GR2NY-]

If this building gets approval and goes up, I think it's possible that we're going to start seeing alot more 'dubai-like' buildings around NYC.

[NYguy]

If this building gets approval and goes up, I think it's possible that we're going to start seeing alot more 'dubai-like' buildings around NYC.

I hope not. I'm not a fan of too man of those Dubai towers. I want New York-like buildings.

[NEWARKNJREP]

sometimes...photos and drawings do not do justice...why does everybody dump the trump towers??you need a little "plain jane"in a skyline to make it well rounded...as we nurse our young jc along...im sure the trump building will become a favorite...the new proposal is awesome!!!!build it now!!!all the winers and complainers just obviously have no taste...trump is to regular...this is too extreme...what will make you happy...shut up crybaby and suck your bottles

[CoolCzech]

If this building gets approval and goes up, I think it's possible that we're going to start seeing alot more 'dubai-like' buildings around NYC.

Why would we want to?

New York need not emulate; it is a model for others. (To paraphrase Sen. Moynihan)

[NYguy]

From worldarchitecturnews.com

http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/news_images/899_1_1000%20OMA%20Jersey.jpg


http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/news_images/899_2_1000%20OMA%20Jersey%202.jpg

[Lecom]

Just because an assembly of shapes makes a pretty cool form, it doesn't mean that this form is bound to make a good building. Koolhaas' only requirement was to create an iconic tower; wasn't there a more graceful solution to the problem?

[JohnFlint1985]

Design is rather European in it's form, I am not sure it is the best one, but it is certainly original.

[NYguy]

Koolhaas' only requirement was to create an iconic tower; wasn't there a more graceful solution to the problem?

Maybe a 1,000 footer would have done the trick. I don't mind the design for this one though. It's certainly distinctive for JC.

[Lecom]

Maybe a 1,000 footer would have done the trick. I don't mind the design for this one though. It's certainly distinctive for JC.
What I was saying is there are thousands of ways to make a building distinctive and iconic, even a 600 footer, and the architect had to stick to the most prosaic and awkward one - 3 nearly identical boxes stacked one on top of anther, one turned at 90 degrees. Original and memorable? Yes. Awkward? even more so. It's the same as if the teacher assigned to do an essay on an original and memorable person you have met, and you write your essay on that cracked-out toothless bum that's the only one of his kind in your nice suburban town.