A packed and contentious meeting at Hudson County Community College saw Jersey City residents confront developers over plans to tear down most of the former Jersey Journal building at 30 Journal Square and replace it with a 71-story tower holding 694 apartments. The building's front facade and its iconic sign would stay, according to the development team, but little else about the century-old structure would survive the transformation.
The Journal Square Community Association hosted the session, which, as reported by Hudson County View, turned heated as neighbors pressed the project team on scale and neighborhood fit. The land is owned by Kushner Real Estate Group, which already holds multiple properties throughout Journal Square. Project counsel Eugene Paolino told attendees the site had sat vacant for at least 15 years. The Jersey Journal newspaper relocated its operations to Secaucus in 2014.
What's Actually Being Proposed
The tower would include a mix of unit sizes: 163 studios, 281 one-bedrooms, 73 one-bedrooms with a den, 163 two-bedroom units, and 14 three-bedroom apartments. Plans also call for a 14,000-square-foot plaza with trees and benches, 5,000 square feet of retail space, two office floors, and a restaurant tucked behind the preserved facade. Michael Sommer, representing the project, argued the parcel is underutilized and said the investment would bring it back to life; he estimated construction would take about three years once it begins.
One detail drew particular scrutiny from the crowd: the project has no affordable housing component. A representative identified in the meeting as Marchetto acknowledged the gap but said developers would consider adding affordable units if the city offered a tax break. The same source said the project is not seeking a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes arrangement, meaning it would pay full property taxes, and argued that housing in the area would only grow more expensive without the development moving forward.
Residents Push Back on Height and Scope
Pushback from the audience centered on how a 71-story structure would sit alongside the surrounding, far shorter streetscape. “You have a plan that doesn't match the neighborhood,” one resident said, according to the same report. The crowd was similarly unenthusiastic about a separate idea floated for the former Centre Pompidou site nearby — a recreation center — which attendees largely panned.
Paolino described the project as a sister development to One Journal Square and Two Journal Square, tying it into Kushner's broader footprint in the district. Marchetto maintained the project already received approval in 2014 and complies with the Journal Square Redevelopment Plan, and Sommer said developers would weigh adding more retail space if residents requested it. Still, the plan's next formal step runs through the Jersey City Planning Board, and the project is not on that board's November 10 meeting agenda.
A Boom Already Reshaping Journal Square
The proposal lands amid a historic wave of apartment construction across the neighborhood. A CoStar analysis cited by Jersey Digs found more than 10,000 apartments currently under construction across Jersey City's Journal Square and Waterfront districts combined. Jersey City apartment projects built in the 2020s now average 381 units and 22 stories, a sharp jump from the 260 units and 13 stories typical of buildings erected before 2000, and nearly half of the apartment buildings currently rising in the area have more than 50 units.
Other Journal Square projects offer a sense of scale for what's being discussed at 30 Journal Square. A 35-story mixed-use tower at 701 Newark Avenue is already rising with 360 planned housing units, including 90 affordable ones, after receiving a 30-year long-term tax exemption from the city. A separate Kushner proposal, also tied to the 30 Journal Square address, was revised into a 68-story, 718-foot tower with 745 apartments and no affordable units, since local regulations do not require them there; that version's approvals, dating to late 2019, were extended through January 2027. Elsewhere in the district, a two-tower Kushner project near the Loews' Jersey has already cleared several associated lots and is planned to include an art walk and other public amenities.
