Jersey City has been through a stunning metamorphosis. From a working class inner city to a fully gentrified urban metropolis. Under the direction of Bob Cotter for 26 years, the Planning Director for Jersey City. He spoke with NJTV News Anchor Mary Alice Williams.
Williams: Thanks for being here. What a ride you’ve had. Describe the city back in the ’80s.
Cotter: Oh my God, it was bombed out. I started in 1980 and on Montgomery Street where City Hall is there were blocks that had no windows, no glass, nobody living there. It was amazing devastation.
Williams: So what was the tipping point? What happened to bring investment in?
Cotter: Well the federal government put a lot of money into Jersey City in the early ’80s. Montgomery Street was known as Montgomery Gateway and there was a big federal grant that allowed us to renovate those houses bring the people that used to live in them back. That was about 400 or 500 families in that neighborhood and across the street today houses sell for $2 million and we still have the affordable housing in those restored buildings.
Williams: What encouraged flourishing of the shops and restaurants, like the Grove Street neighborhood?
Cotter: Density. It’s all about people. Jersey City peaked in the 1930s with the population of 313,000 and then it dropped to about 240,000. We brought back up 25,000 or 35,000 people, largely the downtown neighborhood with the high rises. That density is what produced the shoppers and the diners and the people who go out.
Williams: You’ve called gentrification a misnomer. Why?
Cotter: Gentrification implies that people were forced out. That’s not what happened in Jersey City.
Williams: That’s right, the development was on abandoned properties or vacant properties. But now, it’s not. Now, it’s in properties where people have been living for centuries.
Cotter: Well, the Journal Square area is seeing development. It’s the first time we have been seeing it for 30 years.
Williams: So does this add urgency, lead to more affordable housing?
Cotter: Jersey City has a lot of affordable housing but it does add urgency and we’re getting it. The mayor’s programs put affordable housing back on the waterfront for the first time since the Newport Project 30 years ago. There’s a new project that broke ground — it’s out of the ground now — being done by Forrest City and it’s a 20 percent affordable housing.
Williams: When you were an undergrad you told the famous urban planner, Tony Nelessen, is that his name?
Cotter: That’s his name, yeah.
Williams: That you knew Jersey City was going to become this. How did you know that?
Cotter: Well I was studying planning for one, and we guttered the waterfront in the early ’70s and it was totally abandoned there, there was nothing there other than packs of wild dogs. We’d hang on those piers, look at the skyline across the river of Manhattan, see the World Trade Center towers coming up you sort of realize, this is going to change, this is not going to stay this way. It’s too valuable, too close to New York City for it to remain abandoned rail yards.
Williams: As an urban planner you’ve watched Newark try, and fail several times, to have a kind of re-emergence that Jersey City’s had. Why were you lucky?
Cotter: Proximity. Location, Location, Location. Being five minutes from Wall Street allowed us to be Wall Street West which was the plan that was promulgated in the ’60s by Mayor [Thomas] Gangemi. He brought in state planners from Trenton and they said Wall Street West is your future.
Williams: What do you want the new guy to watch out for? What was the most important lesson that you learned in the process?
Cotter: I think it’s to have humility. To understand that just because your the head planner doesn’t mean you’re the head of this city. The mayors are always the head, they got elected. I just got appointed. You have to sort of keep your ego down so you can listen to people and hear what they think and inactivate your staff based upon what the people were saying and looking for.
Williams: Very quickly, next big project?
Cotter: Write the book. It’s such a great story. I was told by a news writer that if I don’t tell it someone will. So I think when I retire, which will be in about seven days, I am going to start doing the book.
Williams: Congratulations, Bob Cotter.
Cotter: Thank you, my pleasure.