Jersey City's Planning Board has signed off on a pair of connected 47-story towers rising 513 feet along Summit Avenue near the Journal Square PATH station, clearing the way for 1,517 residential units, a hotel, retail space, and not a single off-street parking spot. The project, known as Homestead Market, sits on the western frontage of Summit Avenue between Pavonia and Van Reipen avenues, and it now ranks among the largest residential developments ever approved in the neighborhood.
The Planning Board's approval covers a redevelopment application for 548-555 Summit Avenue, according to Jersey Digs, which first reported the vote. Namdar Group is developing the complex, with design work handled by C3D Architecture. Board members granted variances covering tower front and side-yard setbacks, a tower base sideline setback, retail-space depth, and a partial loading-zone exception, but no construction timeline has been announced.
Two Towers, Two Phases, One Pedestrian Plaza
Homestead Market is split into two phases. Phase one includes 863 residential dwelling units, 87 affordable housing units, 26 hotel rooms, and 2,227 square feet of ground-floor retail. Phase two adds another 654 residential units, including 66 affordable units, 15 hotel rooms, and 2,909 square feet of retail. Across both phases, the towers will hold 1,142 studio units, 214 one-bedroom units, 96 two-bedroom units, and 32 three-bedroom units, with the affordable share broken out separately as 31 one-bedroom, 91 two-bedroom, and 31 three-bedroom units.
Between the two towers, the development includes a retail plaza and pedestrian walkway lined with five ground-floor retail spaces, plus co-working space and hotel rooms tucked into the lower floors of both buildings. Up top, the 47th floor is set to house a party room, lounge, and gym, with additional indoor and outdoor amenity space planned for the roof. Notably, the entire complex will include no vehicle parking component at all.
Part of a Much Bigger Namdar Footprint
The Homestead Market plaza is designed to connect directly to Homestead Place through the towers Namdar Group is building at 612 Pavonia Avenue and 29 Van Reipen Avenue, both part of the same corridor. That connection is no accident: Namdar's master plan for the Homestead Place corridor spans seven properties designed by C3D Architecture and is expected to eventually yield roughly 4,500 residential units across 2.1 million square feet, according to Namdar Group.
The developer secured $358 million in financing from Tyko Capital last year to break ground on the two 27-story towers at 29 Van Reipen and 612 Pavonia, which together add 1,126 units to the same block, per Jersey Digs. That pedestrian corridor is modeled on Downtown Jersey City's Newark Avenue Pedestrian Mall, converting a former vehicular side street into a walkway aimed at funneling foot traffic toward the PATH station.
Namdar's reach in Journal Square extends well beyond Homestead Place. This month, the company landed $390 million in construction financing for Park Tower, a separate 47-story, 1,049-unit project elsewhere in the neighborhood, according to a report in StreetInsider. Commercial Observer also reported in July that Namdar secured $180 million to refinance its completed 564-unit tower at 35 Cottage Street, following a $335 million refinancing package in 2025 covering three other finished Journal Square projects, including 9 Homestead Place and 26 Van Reipen Avenue.
Height Bonuses and Affordable Housing Trade-offs
Homestead Market qualifies for its full building height under the commercial use bonus and the Journal Square 2060 Redevelopment Plan, a framework that allows developers up to 20 additional floors in exchange for meeting affordable housing quotas and adding commercial uses. That mechanism, first enacted in 2010 and periodically updated, is why the towers can reach 47 stories at all.
The roughly 153 affordable units built into Homestead Market — about 10% of the total — line up with Jersey City's 2021 Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance, which generally requires major developments seeking significant zoning variances to reserve 10% to 15% of residential units as affordable housing. The trade-off is stark: towers this tall, with zero off-street parking, in exchange for a modest affordable set-aside relative to the project's overall scale.
That density push is part of a much larger pattern. Jersey City expanded its total housing stock by 24% between 2010 and 2022, adding nearly 26,000 units — more than triple the per-capita construction rate of the broader New York metropolitan region, according to a Regional Plan Association study. The city approved more than 68,000 total residential units between 2015 and 2025, and Homestead Market's 1,517 units place it in the same tier as the three-tower Journal Squared complex, whose first 53-story tower opened in 2017.
Labor Concerns Loom Over Nearby Construction
The rapid buildout hasn't come without friction. A September 2025 report cited allegations from the Laborers' International Union of North America of serious safety violations at Namdar's nearby Homestead Place construction sites, including unshored foundation trenches and unharnessed high-altitude work. Union representatives pointed to nonunion labor and safety concerns during ongoing work at 29 Van Reipen Avenue and 612 Pavonia Avenue, the same buildings meant to connect directly into the Homestead Market plaza.
With no construction timeline yet announced for Homestead Market itself, it remains to be seen how those labor concerns might factor into the next phase of building in the corridor. What's clear is that Namdar Group is now positioned to reshape several contiguous blocks around the Journal Square PATH station into one of the densest, most car-free residential clusters in the region.
