It’s time to put Pompidou x out of its misery. In the wake of last week’s bombshell report that the Kushner-inspired gift to Journal Square developers would cost a whopping $23 million a year to run — on top of the estimated $200 million to build it — the project needs to die the ignominious death it deserves.
From the very moment it was announced, we opposed it. We wrote “Pompidou Jersey City will be expensive, very expensive.” We argued that “the use of so much money on a cultural project that will cater largely to highly-educated, well-heeled residents is simply immoral given the city’s myriad needs and vast economic disparities.”
It’s time for the mayor to reset his priorities. It’s time to build something large numbers of Jersey City residents want and need. We propose the building of recreation centers in each of the six wards.
It’s eminently doable. In 2011, Secaucus built a recreation center for its twenty-two thousand residents. In 2022, North Bergen opened a recreation center for its sixty-three thousand residents. With a population thirteen times the size of Secaucus’ and five times North Bergen’s, Jersey City doesn’t have even one. That bears repeating: not one.
At a February event, former coach Bob Hurley complained “we have three hundred thousand people, and we don’t have a community center.” At the same event, a Greenville mother of three said she takes her children to Newark or Bayonne for recreation. She called Jersey City’s athletic facilities “embarrassing.” We agree with both of them.
The city’s indifference to recreation has done real world damage. The Pershing Field ice rink has been out of service for over a year. In the words of Ferris High School baseball coach Josh Beteta, the Caven Point Athletic Complex is “beyond disrepair.” And the city’s disregard for recreation has given fuel to the rapacious Paul Fireman’s plan to convert Jersey City’s last remaining green space in Liberty State Park into a noisy, traffic-jammed, mini-Meadowlands.
While it wouldn’t solve all of Jersey City’s recreational needs, building six ward-based year-round recreation centers would go a long way and have myriad benefits. Most obviously, such facilities would be convenient. Imagine the time a parent would need to spend driving a child from Poplar Street in the Heights to a facility in Liberty State Park and back again — assuming he or she even has a car. Instead, a ward-based facility would be within a short walk or ride from home. Ward-based recreation centers could also serve as community meeting places and venues for everything from exercise classes to after-school programs.
The mayor can’t complain it’s unaffordable. The thirty-five-thousand-square-foot Secaucus facility cost $12 million; the North Bergen facility cost $19.5 million. Even with inflation, the cost to Jersey City for six facilities would be a bargain compared to building and running Pompidou x.
In a tweet last week, the mayor suggested that he’d have raised the money for Pompidou x but for Governor Murphy’s treachery. In 2019, he committed the city to acquiring the $120 million Public Safety Headquarters. In 2018, he borrowed $170 million to become the developer of Bayfront. Money is never a problem for projects he likes.
The mayor can choose to stew in resentment over the seemingly imminent demise of Pompidou x, or he can begin a project that will leave a legacy he can be proud of. We hope he chooses the latter.