As far as I know, Eleven80 is at or near capacity this past year. Vacancy rates under 3% are considered full / frictional vacancy only.

What’s offensive is an officious, overbearing government that caters to the whims of a few busybodies. This is outrageous.

The homeless at Penn Station don't bother me much, but I understand that the attendant issues do bother a lot of other people, and I empathize with them.

My girlfriend for example will not travel through Penn Station unaccompanied, and I know her concerns are not way out of the norm. Yes, the fear of crime is generally disproportionate to the risk of victimization. The chances of victimization to her at the station are likely quite low. But the appearance of disorder and norm violation has a psychic cost, making people uneasy and motivating them to avoid the place.

Any location in which a large number of street people congregate will likely become known for pungent body odor, the smell of human refuse and psychotic episodes. I don't blame the homeless for these issues, but I also don't blame the large segment of the population who will do what they can to avoid such unpleasantness. Norms are important to people everywhere, and norm violations are, in every society treated with some measure of avoidance and shunning.

My understanding is that the LA Metro, currently undergoing a multi-billion dollar expansion, has low ridership due in part to its common use as a place to live and do drugs. Once a location or system becomes well-known for norm violations, the people interested in those things will flock there, and those people not interested or disgusted by those things will stay away.

Newark Penn Station is of course not at that extreme level. Its the seventh busiest train station in the US, as I understand. But I think the OP's concerns are valid. The state of things is a deterrent to people traveling through the station, visiting Newark, and living here. And if the police had a completely live-and-let-live attitude about Penn Station, then I think it would go the way of the LA Metro, or worse.

There have been times I have come back late through Penn Station and found certain parts of the station essentially taken over by station residents. By taken over I mean that they blocked egress and diverted passengers elsewhere.

I think it's far from unreasonable to suggest that the police contain the issue to a greater extent, though that would require more coercion on their part.

I think you're only focused on one side of the equation. There's a balance between liberty and order. If there were no rules about where to sit or how long you could stay, and there was never any removal by police, Penn Station's function as a train station would be in jeopardy.

You can enforce a rule against remaining in the station / loitering past a certain period of time.

My sense is that there is room at the shelters, but that shelters have strict rules that many people would have difficulty following. Shelters of course impose structure that many would resist. I can understand the mentality of a person who is dealing with severe mental health and drug issues gravitating toward living at a place like Penn Station to the extent that it is made available to him. Then if there is a contingent of people essentially living in the station without realistic alternatives, how should the police handle that? Very difficult question, but I wouldn't fault someone for arguing that there should be rules against squatting / domiciling in the station, and that the police should enforce those rules. That is a legitimate argument, though not the only one.

The police are already clearing the station to some extent. If they weren't, one would see more homeless people at Penn Station, eventually to the point that the core function of the station would be in jeopardy. I think what we're seeing right now is some unhappy equilibrium / compromise between the interests of train passengers and station residents, as it were.

The people attacking the OP and calling you a monster for asking whether a train station can be maintained as a train station are indirectly answering the question.

The previous poster answered your question in spite of himself. You raise a perfectly legitimate question. Is it possible that a train station operate simply for that purpose — a way station for passengers, or must it also inevitably double as a homeless shelter? But of course in the current political environment there are those who will become apoplectic about you even raising the question. And take the opportunity to insult you and virtue signal. And so then of course the answer is that the status quo must remain because even to question that a train station be exclusively a train station is to be a horrible person. It’s absurd but this is now what we’re dealing with.

I know but I thought the HAX lease, for all the hoopla, was only 35K, not even one floor of this building.

To rent out all those units, I'm thinking they've got to have soundproof, triple-pane windows to block out all the noise.

I have walked in this area at all times of the day and night over the last five years and never had a problem.

Those projects are included in the other maps. One project that is missing however is 50 Sussex. That project was under construction by the end of 2022 Q3.

Adding that project, there were 1,754 units under construction in Newark as of 2022 Q3, as compared with 2,238 in Jersey City.

Can’t forget Horizon BCBS (largest insurance company in the state) still occupies 3 Penn Plaza. I think these buildings are reasonably attractive actually. I don’t have any issue with them.

After considerable debate, including statements from HPC and James St representatives in opposition and powerful statements by Kaleb, Drixxon, recnilcram, Gamezilla -- among others -- in favor, the Planning Board voted 7 - 1 to approve this project.

Next up: How long will it take the City to demolish the existing derelict buildings so they can get started in earnest?

Yes! Thanks for doing this. I do not have a mind for these sorts of important details.

Hello, I thought Hochul was advocating for more than this, such as lifting FAR caps and changing rules to encourage office to residential conversions. Regarding Jersey City, my understanding was that Fulop has made it much easier to build in JC. Yes prices have increased but likely would have increased that much more without all the development. Also I think it’s as much about increasing utility as reducing prices. More development has meant more people get to enjoy downtown JC.

I say this as someone who was basically priced out of much of downtown JC.

If I was priced out of downtown Newark after the place exploded with development and became that much more desirable, I would still be happy with the outcome.

In my limited experience of the hospital, it’s not bad as brutalist buildings go, but it’s an embarrassment for this prominent teaching hospital in one of the richest states in the country to look as it does. It seems like all the money goes to New Brunswick.

There’s plenty of empty hospital land to build on where the “temporary” admin buildings are now.

Theres no state allocation for this.

The YIMBY cause is much bigger than one building. It's about removing barriers to new housing. There's a principle at stake here. For more on this, note Matt Yglesias' work, in particular his book, The Rent is Too Damn High.

To her credit, Gov. Hochul of New York has recognized the problem and pushed for change. I wish Gov. Murphy would do the same. Outside of JC and a few other places, NJ is just as problematic as NY.

The design seems pretty dull to me.

Regarding the design, I think we should compare what is proposed with the likely counterfactual rather than with some ideal.

Consider the likely options with rental buildings. Typically, rental apartment towers are thrown up with the least consideration for exterior aesthetics. Painted concrete, ungainly proportions dictated entirely by interior design, PTACs galore. Or some design that is touted as contextual but value-engineered to the hilt.

Here we have a developer willing to spend some more money on the design. Note for example the way the tower cantilevers over its base floor in the renderings.

But the building is not contextual, the critics say.

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Who here among us would wish the iconic (Broad and Academy) Prudential Plaza had never been built? And yet, does it look like any building around it? Did it look like anything around it when it was built in 1960?

I'm reminded of a Douglas Adams quote about technology, which can readily be paraphrased to apply to the built environment:

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A set of rules that describe standard (NIMBY) reactions to buildings:

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1. Anything that is already built in your town when you are born is normal and ordinary and just a natural part of your world.
2. Anything that is built when you are young is new and exciting.
3. Anything built after you're 30-35 or so is against the natural order of things.

I generally do sympathize with regard to sidewalks, but it's McCarter Highway -- who really wants to be walking on the sidewalk there next to multiple lanes of fast-moving traffic? The pedestrian traffic would be mostly at the corner and on Market St. Instead of a parking lot, we have a building that will add 400+ residents downtown. How is this not good? The cladding on the parking podium isn't bad either. Boraie looks to be doing a pretty good job of it, though of course one can't be sure until it's finished. But note too what appears to be a grand entrance on Market St.

I’m here at 520 Broad. I asked the man at the desk about Calvin Souder’s law firm and he said I was at the wrong building.

I would really like to make this, but I have a work meeting I can't get out of next Tuesday at around the same time :(