BATTLE FOR TRENTON
City residents to sue New Jersey over state office buildings project
TRENTON » A new Battle of Trenton is brewing in the capital city.
Instead of Continental Army taking up arms against Hessian soldiers, this time around city residents, business owners and leaders are readying a lawsuit against New Jersey for its despised state office buildings project.
Behind the movement, a group called Stakeholders Allied for the Core of Trenton (ACT) recently created a GoFundMe page to support its cause with the caption “Battle for Trenton!” and a picture of a mural by Illia Barger titled “After the Crossing,” depicting the Continental Army on its path to Trenton. As of Thursday night, the group has raised $7,352 of its $30,000 goal.
“It is an uphill battle,” Stakeholders ACT co-chair Iana Dikidjieva said Thursday, noting the mural was picked for a reason. “The ragtag, improbable, ordinary sort of people can pull off real upsets in the Battle of Trenton.”
Stakeholders ACT is challenging the state over the quarter-billion-dollar project to build new Taxation and Health and Agriculture buildings in Trenton.
Last week, the State House Commission unanimously voted to forge ahead with the project during Gov. Chris Christie’s final month in office after deciding the previous month to postpone the proposal until Gov.-elect Phil Murphy assumes office.
In September 2016, Christie outlined his vision to bulldoze the state’s Taxation building at 50 Barrack St. and Health and Agriculture building, which is located at 369 S. Warren St., to free up space in Trenton for redevelopment.
A new seven-story, 175,000-square-foot building will be erected at the northwest corner of John Fitch Way and South Warren Street to house Taxation, and a five-story, 135,000-square-foot Health and Agriculture building will be constructed on the southwest corner of North Willow and West Hanover Streets. Both spaces are currently state-owned parking lots.
But the project has no support from city residents, many classifying the idea as a “1950s model of urban development” that would result in Trenton remaining a “weekend wasteland.”
“The fact that they called together a new meeting of the State House Commission with new people on it at the eleventh hour and with very short notice, to get this thing muscled through is a huge issue,” Dikidjieva said. “Essentially, we just feel that if they’re going to spend $240 million of everybody’s money and everybody’s children’s money, it might as well be a catalytic development for Trenton.”
So far, Stakeholders ACT has received donations from some prominent people.
Former Trenton Mayor Douglas Palmer has given $1,000, real estate tycoon George Zoffinger chipped in another $1,000 and the man who spearheaded the charge to delay the project at the November meeting, Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (DMercer/Hunterdon), donated $1,250.
“There’s not one person, not one Trenton resident or a person of urban planning background that is supportive of the project,” Gusciora said. “It was really ill-conceived and not really thought through. I don’t understand why the governor can’t simply move the buildings into either the economic development area or the transit area and that way both labor and the city of Trenton can win. Why should we just arbitrarily put two buildings where they fit without any kind of downtown real economic development for the city?”
A point of contention with Stakeholders ACT is that the state should have looked at a public/private partnership for mixed-use development that would help spur the economy in the city.
Despite no residents backing Christie’s plan, Trenton Mayor Eric Jackson’s administration supported the project, which has the strong endorsement of unions due to jobs.
“This will be an opportunity for developers to see that there is significant investment by the state,” Trenton’s Housing & Economic Development Director, Diana Rogers, said at last week’s State House Commission’s meeting without the mayor present. “We see this as an opportunity to leverage development in the downtown.”
The mayor’s blessing of the project and the fact that Jackson has yet to attend any hearing has infuriated residents, even those who donated to his 2014 campaign.
“The mayor is just chicken s**t,” said Ann LaBate, who donated to Jackson’s campaign and is a cochair of Stakeholders ACT. “He’s so cowed by the governor, it’s scary.”
Dikidjieva said the city’s stance has been “very frustrating.”
“I’m slightly sympathetic to City Hall feeling like they’re in a bind,” said Dikidjieva, who holds a degree in urban redevelopment. “A lot of the things that we’ve heard, if this doesn’t go through exactly as it is, then it will not happen at all and the state could pull back on all the investment. The city has told us that they’re trying to see some big picture that supposedly we are not seeing...we see the big picture. The big picture that the city is holding onto is this notion if they do this project then the state will give them some portions of the land around Health & Agriculture and that they are going to redevelop that with private developers. There’s this down-the-line kind of thinking... Holding onto these future promises is not the way to do sensible development.”
Palmer, who is one of the closest people to Jackson, said he talked about the project with the mayor on Thursday.
“If they don’t do this now, nothing will happen,” Palmer explained of the mayor’s reasoning. “He’s really thinking this over.”
Palmer said he “put his money where his mouth is” to support the group opposing the plan to “slow this down” to have incoming Gov. Murphy take a look at it.
“I believe strongly that this project on its face is not the best way to utilize that space,” the city mayor from 1990 until 2010 said. “I also believe it’s a great opportunity, and I have to thank Gov. Christie for the opportunity, to have those buildings down. So I believe it’s also important to look at this project as a public/private partnership and a mixed-use development, which will create more jobs and also create more sustainable jobs in and around the capital city.”
Stakeholders ACT knows it will have to move fast to file a lawsuit to halt the project.
The State Leasing and Space Utilization Committee will decide the state office buildings project’s fate at its meeting on Monday at the State House Annex, committee room 7 on the second floor. If approved, the bonds for the project will likely be sold immediately, complicating any future legal options.
“They’re going to screw us on Monday,” LaBate said. “We’ve got word they intend to screw us.”
Stakeholders ACT has already retained an attorney, Bruce Afran, who took up the Princeton Battlefield suit against the Institute for Advanced Study,
“He does a lot of citizenaction related stuff,” LaBate said. “And he definitely feels like there’s a number of solid objections to be made.”
The group intends to file a lawsuit on Friday.
As president of Segal LaBate, a city commercial real estate company, LaBate said she knows the city’s downtown “struggles.” “This will set us back,” LaBate said, noting her taxes went up 50 percent this year due to the city’s revaluation. “It’s only going to get worse if they just undercut the downtown and more people leave. I’ve got clients telling me they’re going to walk away from their building. There’s no hope in sight. We’ll suffer for a generation or more with them doing a bad project as opposed to a catalyst that would give people hope and willingness to invest. This is devastating.”