A years-in-the-making, $90 million New Jersey City University project once hailed as a catalyst for the revitalization of Jersey City’s West Side has been aborted, a city councilwoman said Monday.
The Frank Guarini Performing Arts Center — expected to feature a 500-seat theater a 100-seat recital hall, a “grand lobby” that would lure the Joffrey Ballet School from its New York home and 320 apartments — was initially expected to open in 2021 as part of the $400 million project once envisioned as a “campus village” to be built across the 22 acres of land the university owns between West Side Avenue and Route 440.
But now, the cash-strapped university will not be able to “make good” on the project, West Side Councilwoman Mira Prinz-Arey told council members during Monday’s caucus meeting. The council will vote Wednesday on a resolution directing the planning board to revise and amend the NJCU West Campus redevelopment plan.
New Jersey City University officials confirmed it Monday.
“Budgetary realities meant any project not deemed essential to our immediate mission was being re-examined, and as such, the Performing Arts Center project has been indefinitely suspended,” school spokesman Ira Thor said.
In 2020, Guarini, the former congressman philanthropist, donated $10 million to school to be split evenly between two institutions that would bear his name, the Frank Guarini Institute of International Studies and the Guarini Performing Arts Center. The gift is largest in the school’s history.
“There have been some changes with the plan itself because the college was not able to make good on the performing arts center,” Prinz-Arey said. “We are working with them to create another set of community benefits packages, but we wanted to make sure if that was ever going to move forward, we knew one way or another if anything would trigger the IZO (inclusionary zoning ordinance) here.”
The IZO requires developers of projects with 15 units or more that are seeking any kind of variance or zoning amendment to build 10% to 15% affordable housing, depending on the area.
NJCU spokesman Ira Thor said the school and the city are “actively engaged” in discussions about the undeveloped land on its West Side property — which is bordered by Carbon Place, University Place Boulevard, Hernandez Way and West Side Avenue. The conversations do not affect the university’s plans to further monetize current ground leases in place on the West Side.
“NJCU continues to work collaboratively with the city to amend the long-term community benefits agreement to solidify our vital role as a public anchor institution and the mutual interest of NJCU and the community in this space,” Thor said.
A spokesperson for Guarini, the Joffrey Ballet School and city spokeswoman Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione could not be reached for comment. School officials would not say if NJCU will return the money the 98-year-old Guarini donated for the arts center.
NJCU has spent the past year climbing out of a financial emergency that left it with a $22 million deficit. The Jersey City school cut that to $8.1 million after enacting numerous austerity measures, and now will also receive $10 million in additional state aid in the 2024 state budget to help address its fiscal troubles.
The University Place “village” was one of three massive real estate expansion projects NJCU invested in over the past decade, but, along with declining enrollment and investment in sports programs, helped lead the school to its financial emergency.
The campus village was expected to include a residential dorm, the performing arts complex, restaurants, a supermarket and residential developments, with NJCU owning the land and offering ground leases for private developers to build and pay rent.
“I think it’s going to bring new life to the west side of Jersey City. It’s important because there’s been a lack of development in Ward A,” Councilwoman Denise Ridley said in 2019.
Prinz-Arey said more information will come in the “next week or so,” regarding plans for the land.
“We have been in conversations with NJCU and the developer, Claremont, to work out what this new iteration would look like,” Prinz-Arey said.
Ad Choices