‘For decades, politicians spoke about investing in the South side of Jersey City, which unfortunately never happened. In the meantime, we recognized that at the HUB businesses were failing over and over. It was that point that our Administration decided to do more than simply talk about change.

In 2014, we pulled the City’s deposits out of banks that closed branches in the South side of the City, and moved our city deposits to Investors Bank when they gave a commitment to open branches in Ward F on MLK Drive.

In 2015, we decided that rather than rent properties over the City, we would aggregate them into a new building at the HUB called the City Hall Annex. We would move some of the City’s most important Departments, such as HEDC and HHS, so that anyone who wants to business with us now needs to go to Ward F to do so.

At the time, we believed that if we moved 250 City jobs to one location it would not only help existing business, but we would start to see new small businesses open shop to service the community. Last week, both a pizzeria and coffee shop reached out to rent in the area.

As we complete the first phase of this project, there are two important things we can all be proud of: first is that the City will save $1 million in the first year alone now that we are not renting offices spaces, and the second is that the City Hall Annex was built with a huge number of local Jersey City minority contractors from the community.

Next Phase

In addition to cutting the ribbon on the new building last Friday, we announced that we are building two additional buildings. The first building will include city offices, a parking deck, and community meeting spaces so the place will be more active in the evening and night with residents. The second building will be a rehab of an existing building on MLK and this will house an aggregated office for affordable housing so there will be one location for tenant-landlord issues, affordable housing trust fund, or services around housing code.  These buildings will be located next to Rising Tide Capital’s new building as we have worked over the last year with Rising Tide Capital on their new HQ and small business incubator space.

Our goal is to create a campus feel that Ward F and the City can be proud of

We also announced on Friday a rebranding of the HUB. We are changing the name of the area formally because we feel a name should reflect the importance we place in an area (Journal Square, Bergen Square, McGinley Square). Calling this area in Ward F as the HUB never reflected the seriousness the City should have placed on this. We are renaming the entire area with the Post Office and City campus as “Jackson Square” as recognition of the past as we look to the future.

At the next council agenda, we will also be renaming the first of the two recently announced buildings in honor of Councilwoman Melissa Holloway, who pushed for this initial development in the 1990s and was a huge advocate for Ward F.

In total, we are putting $68 million into this vision, which will represent the largest public investment in the City.

Day by day, we are pushing hard for progress – More than just words.