The Beacon is not exactly in a prime location. These buildings probably wouldn’t have been redeveloped back then without the abatements. Or the project would’ve been seriously scaled back.

Read up on the history of the condos at the Beacon. Here’s one story about it.

Sales started shortly before the financial crisis in 2008. For years, they had a tough time selling units even with the tax abatement. Units were selling at auction at deep discounts.

They may not have gone ahead with the rest of the project or delayed it indefinitely without abatements, which would mean lost revenue for the city.

Construction jobs and PILOT revenues (i.e., the $22k/year from this penthouse unit) are better than a massive complex of abandoned buildings that contribute nothing to the city.

It would be a different story if you were talking about some of the waterfront high rises with generous abatements, like 77 Hudson or Crystal Point. Those building are in much better locations and probably would have quickly sold out once the economy recovered even without abatements.

The Board of Education directly controls the schools budget, not the city council or the mayor’s office.

I think the question we should be asking is why the BOE can’t get basic capital projects done despite having the ability to independently raise the school tax levy.

I suspect the answer is that adding HVAC to all the old school buildings would be very expensive (probably way more than what the city will spend on this museum) and that raising school taxes to pay for it is not politically feasible, especially considering the blowback that the BOE has faced from its recent tax increases.

The difference is that none of those failed museums involved a partnership with a major institution like Pompidou, which actually knows a thing or two about running museums.

The Pompidou Centre in Paris will be completely closed for renovations until 2027. If they lend the JC museum artworks from their collection during that time, that could be a good way to jumpstart interest and attract visitors from around the metro area.

> the restaurant will be taking up residence in the building’s southeast portion at the intersection of Grand Avenue and Warren Street.

Where did “Grand Avenue” come from? It’s at the corner of Morgan St. and Warren St.

Good thing the PATH and HBLR are running smoothly today. /s

Oh agreed. I just thought you were using the word “homeowner” in a different way.

Shuster actually did buy a house there. I looked him up in the county’s online property tax records when this debacle started and saw that he had bought a house there pretty recently.

But I really doubt he ever lived there. He and wife have owned a massive, ultra luxurious house in Paulus Hook for a number of years.

He most likely bought the Saddlewood Court house as a legal bargaining chip he could use in his attempt to thwart a competing developer’s redevelopment plans.

A few years back, Shuster himself was in the process of buying out homeowners so he could redevelop the site. Then Lennar came in and outmaneuvered him and managed to get the city to award the redevelopment deal to Lennar instead of Shuster.

This story helps explain Shuster’s motivations.

The station replacement at Harrison is basically a vanity project.

The main problems with the old station buildings were narrow staircases and no elevators. It shouldn’t cost $250 million and 10 years of construction and service disruptions to fix that.

The irony is that most passengers at Harrison spend only 15-30 seconds in the station building itself. Most of the time, people choose to wait outside on the platform.

Yet even once this boondoggle of a project is finally complete, the canopy won’t extend the entire length of the platform to keep people from getting wet in the rain or snow.

Slightly off topic, but I thought this was interesting. It’s footage (from COPS I think) of JCPD running a sting operation in 1990.

>it is legally the owner’s responsibility to change the light bulbs of the recessed lighting

Maybe I'm misinformed, but I've literally never heard of that being a thing.

Even if that’s true, I wouldn’t be surprised if installation costs are more of an issue than anything else. Recessed lights are generally more complicated to install than other types of fixtures.

In older buildings, they can be more difficult to retrofit than traditional ceiling mounted fixtures.

Meanwhile, most high rise apartments have concrete slab ceilings. In that case, you need to build a soffit or a false ceiling to house a recessed fixture, which adds to costs and reduces ceiling heights.

The concrete slab issue is also why many high rise apartments have very few lighting fixtures (of any type) built into the ceiling in bedrooms and living rooms. Without some type of false ceiling, the electrical stuff needs to be built into the slab during construction in order to avoid having an ugly exposed conduit running along the ceiling.

Yeah they used premium only because that’s what the manual said and the car’s gas cap was labeled “premium fuel only.”

But Shell’s premium grade also has extra additives (“V-Power”) beyond what their regular and middle grades have.

At most other brands, the premium grade has the same additives as the brand’s other grades.

> They tend to (but not always) use the minimal detergent requirements under the law. So more buildup in your engine. Vs a “Top Tier” gas, which is what your owners manual will recommend you use.

It’s interesting because that’s potential a problem for newer cars with direct injection that most people probably are unaware of. Not that most people know whether their engine has direct injection and/or port injection to begin with.

That said, my parents had a direct injected car that they religiously filled only with premium Shell or Chevron gasoline and it still ended up needing an expensive repair to clean the carbon buildup on the intake valves after about 100k miles.

Apparently, the design of some engines makes them inherently prone to carbon buildup no matter what type of gas you use.

Morgan & Marin.

One of JC’s most luxurious intersections. 😍

PATH’s budget is smaller than the NYC subway’s.

But their operating costs per passenger mile are higher than the NYC subway, as well as most other subway systems in the world.

> This is also the reason why the PATH will never be expanded because any new tunnels will need to be built to current freight railroad standards.

I don’t think that’s the main reason. My understanding is that the burden of PATH being regulated as a federal railroad mainly comes in the form of operational inefficiencies. Though the Feds did require PATH to upgrade its signal system sooner than they would have otherwise.

Due to corruption and a lack of accountability, building tunnels in the NYC metro area is extremely expensive no matter what kind of tunnel it is. It’s significantly more expensive than it is even in cities like London and Paris.

Our capacity to build major new infrastructure projects will be limited until we somehow get a handle on these absolutely insane construction costs.

That’s up to a 20 % reduction in service.

Going from 15 trains per hour to 12 trains per hour reduces capacity by close to 5,000 passengers per hour.

Thankfully, in its infinite wisdom, PATH has indefinitely reduced service frequency on the NWK-WTC line during rush hours.

So now whenever there are delays on the 33rd line, the WTC line is less effective as an alternative due to crowding.

Ah TIL. I’ve only ever gotten lunch there.

This is why I usually place my orders online at Cangiano’s.

Curious to know if your friend (or anyone else for that matter) has photos of Pavonia Terminal.

There are hardly any photos of that place online, especially of the interiors, which is super weird for what was such a major terminal.

It’s not the total dollar amount that matters, it’s the dollars per capita.

Households in the suburban NJ generally have higher incomes than urban households, which means they pay higher taxes per capita and receive less in return in the form of school tax subsidies relative to their urban counterparts.

Which means that taxpayers in JC may collectively pay more in total tax dollars than, say, Paramus taxpayers, but that does not mean that the tax burden is “fair” on an individual level.

I’m not taking a side in this debate, just trying to explain the math.

This is not accurate.

> no landlord of any dwelling as defined in § 260-1

That part is very important. These provisions only apply to apartments that are subject to the city’s rent control ordinance.

Most buildings built in the past 30 years or so are not subject to rent control. Many older properties are also not covered by the ordinance.

I used to work nearby before COVID too. It was only busy on weekdays until like 6:30pm or 7pm. It was a complete ghost town on weekends.

I know it’s technically a historic building, but I think they should’ve just demolished the whole building instead of renovating. The layout of this massive multi-block long building is inherently uninviting and I don’t think the renovation did enough to change that.

More like Luxury Ave. nowadays, amirite?

/s

Last I checked, you need to take at least 43 rides a month for a monthly PATH pass to be cheaper.

For the NYC subway, the OMNY system has automatic fare capping if you use contactless payment. That essentially means that you will never pay more than $33 a week as long as you use the same contactless card with every ride. At most, that works out to be about $5 more expensive than a monthly metrocard which is a flimsy plastic card that you’ll have to buy and refill at a vending machine.

The best of both worlds is a Smartlink pass for PATH with auto-refill enabled (you don’t have to buy a monthly pass for that) and a contactless credit/debit card or digital wallet to use with OMNY readers on the NYC subway and buses.

You will never have to wait in line to deal with a vending machine again.