News

Friends of the Loew’s, the Jersey City-based non-profit organization that has worked to keep the Loew’s Jersey theater in operation since 1987 and that has been in litigation with the city since 2013 will cease to have formal ties with the city at the end of this month when its contract expires. Despite these circumstances, the volunteer-run group will remain involved in the Journal Square landmark theater for at least the immediate future.

City Hall’s council chambers buzzed with local residents including a group of Downtown homeowners who came to address the council. They represented 37 of the 38 homeowners who want the council to pass a resolution formalizing a plan that deems their properties in need of redevelopment with possible condemnation. The developer Lennar Multifamily Communities (LMC) has made a tentative deal with the 37 homeowners to buy their homes for agreed-upon prices. In their place, LMC will build a 50-story high-rise with 810  rental apartments and  14,000 square feet of retail space, a new public park, an expanded Filipino Veterans Plaza, and a new public school for 300-350 children.

Goodman spoke of a “severe and pervasive funding gap that Jersey City non-profits face and have faced for a very long time on the state level”.

“(Jersey City is) on the very bottom of the funding list for counties across the state,” Goodman said. “We have Essex, a comparable county pulling in $5 million in funding. The entire County of Hudson gets $200,000 to share, so there’s a huge funding gap.”

“The water pipes coming into McNair were all resolved a while ago, and there was no work required by the JCMUA,” said Hudson County Freeholder Joel Torres in an email.

Gov. Phil Murphy announced Wednesday that the Jersey City Medical Center and eight other hospitals around the state will each receive $2 million in federal funds for violence-intervention efforts.