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Shopping Centers Today -> May 2004
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RETAIL KEY TO NEW JERSEY CITY’S REVIVAL STRATEGY
BY DONNA MITCHELL
Cliffside Park, N.J., was once a hub of shopping and social activity. These days, though, this borough some 10 miles west of New York City appears neglected.
Outdated 1920s- and ’30s-era buildings make Anderson Avenue, the main thoroughfare, look shabby. To add to the misery, neighboring Edgewater has undertaken a significant development boom along its waterfront, capped off with three major retail projects.
But Cliffside isn’t actually being neglected. Officials say they hope a mixed-used development they are planning will turn things around.
The $40 million project, tentatively called Cliffside Park Towne Center, calls for an 11-story edifice with 242 apartment units over street-level retail space. The project would also have outdoor restaurants, pedestrian plazas and a 300-space underground parking facility, says Christos Diktas, Cliffside Park’s borough attorney. Towne Center Associates, a development team led by C. Raimondo & Sons Construction Co., Fort Lee, N.J., will build the project, along with local developers Fred Daibes and James Demetrakis, according to The Record, a north New Jersey daily. (C. Raimondo & Sons declined to talk about the project, saying plans are at too early a stage.)
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Borough officials are also working on a payment in lieu of taxes, or PILOT, agreement with the developers. Ordinarily, property taxes are paid to Bergen County, the local board of education and the municipality. But under the PILOT program, Raimondo and its partners will pay a reduced tax, and only to Cliffside Park, says Brian McGuirt, the borough clerk and administrator.
The financial arrangements will be complex, and the issues surrounding the fate of existing residents and businesses along Anderson Avenue could be so too. The project’s opponents fear they will be forced out with inadequate compensation. Diktas says the properties will be bought at a fair market price, through condemnation if necessary, and the borough will also pay for relocation.
Some business owners welcome the change, though. Anderson Avenue, currently a venue for little more than nail salons and pizza joints, needs a more diverse merchandise mix, says Lynne Nesbihal, vice president of operations at Cliffside Flooring, a floor-materials retailer on the avenue. She said she would like to see more men’s casual-apparel stores, a small bookstore and a kitchenware store.
At press time the borough council and planning board had approved project plans; they were also working on a “memorandum of agreement” with Towne Center Associates that will lay out the terms of the PILOT program, the municipal bond, the ground lease and the developer’s agreement, says Diktas.
Diktas declined to give a time frame for a ground-breaking or completion of work. But there is a sense of urgency, some say, given the activity in neighboring Edgewater. Projects there include City Place, a 500,000-square-foot lifestyle center, Edgewater Commons, a 434,000-square-foot power center, and Edgewater Towne Center, a mixed-use project that includes 75,000 square feet of retail space. (All three are the work of local developer G. Heller Enterprises.)
“It is draining all the retail business from our town,” Diktas says of Edgewater’s newest retail offerings. “We have a significant number of empty stores on Anderson Avenue.”
And increasing that urgency is the fact that the Department of Public Works, which takes up 40 percent of the redevelopment site on Anderson Avenue, is relocating to Fairview, which neighbors Cliffside Park to the south. That leaves quite a hole in the central business district that must be filled, McGuirt says.
Nesbihal says she is looking forward to an Anderson Avenue hopping with pedestrian activity and better retail selection.
“I do feel it will prosper,” she said. “If the avenue does well, everyone does well.”
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