(Save the date: RealShare New Jersey comes to the Hyatt Regency, New Brunswick, NJ, September 19.)
JERSEY CITY–“Everybody said I was crazy. They said I was nuts,” laughed the world-famous “Cake Boss” as he showed off his 51,000-square-foot factory, baking school and TV studio here Monday to a group from the Urban Land Institute.
The Cake Boss – a.k.a. Buddy Valastro – was definitely a pioneer when he invested in retooling a part of the worn-out-looking Lackawanna Center, a former warehouse on Grove Street in the part of Jersey City called “NoHo” (north of the Holland Tunnel) last year.
“But I’m here for the long haul,” says Valastro, whose only retail shop remains at the 900-square-foot Carlo’s Bakery on Washington Avenue in Hoboken founded by his father. “This neighborhood is where I invest my money.”
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| Valastro served cake and spun dreams of a thriving residential neighborhood he hopes will grow up in NoHo for the group of about 40 developers, planners and land-use specialists on the tour. |
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| “This,” he said, waving an arm in the direction of parking lots, railroad tracks, and open bushy plots rippling out toward the Hoboken border and the ritzy apartment towers on the hills above, “can be Disneyland if we want it to.”
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| ULI members took a tour of the city's cast iron district. |
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Well, not exactly, explained Jersey City’s planning director, Robert D. Cotter, who helped brief the ULI members on the tour. But the city, along with Valastro, and developer Sandford Weiss, whose Cast Iron Lofts complex is expected to open a block away next year, does envision a post-industrial Tribeca-style neighborhood growing up in the area.
“It is an area that has resisted change,” Cotter said, but is now ripe for it.
Weiss’s 155-unit Cast Iron Lofts, a 20-story bi-level tower that will have a gymnasium and roof garden, was on the ULI itinerary Monday, too. The group rode up to the recently-topped-off roof in construction elevators and took in a panoramic view of Manhattan, the Hudson River, Statue of Liberty, Jersey City and Hoboken.
The building on Jersey Avenue, between 17th and 18th Streets will have one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments, said George Garcia, managing director for the project.
He, Cotter, and the Cake Boss all spoke hopefully of an effort to convince state transportation authorities to create an additional light-rail station in the Jersey Avenue area. Until that happens, said Garcia, shuttle service will be set up to the light rail for lofts residents.
“This new mixed-use neighborhood is poised to create $2 billion in new residential value in the city of Jersey City,” said Chris Fiore of the Jersey City Redevelopment Authority.
Valastro said he invested heavily in his operations - to the point of “infrastructure overkill – because he plans to expand; and also, because he believes NoHo is going to attract other entrepreneurs due to his “domino effect.”
“I think people will come in, who want to be associated with the Cake Boss,” he said. “I can see a community growing up here, like what was once Jersey City and Hoboken, with the best bakery, the best mozzarella, the fruit stand on the corner, everything you could want.”
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