Housing Authority Director 'Confident' in Eventual Adoption of Vision 20/20 Plan

Housing Authority executive director Carmelo Garcia, who made the second stop on his Vision 20/20 transparency tour Friday, said he’s willing to present his plan to revitalize Hoboken’s public housing stock as many times as it takes to win city council approval for the project.

“If they want me to do 20 public forums, I will do 20 public forums,” Garcia said last week, during his first town hall-style discussion on the project. “I will take it on tour.”

About 50 people attended Garcia’s first forum, held last Wednesday at 411 Marshall Dr., including Councilman Tim Occhipinti, who supports the plan, and Councilwoman Jen Giattino, who, to this point, has not.

Garcia distributed hefty packets at last week’s meeting that included the original 112-page Vision 20/20 plan from 2010, his correspondence with Mayor Dawn Zimmer about the project and a newspaper article detailing the transformation of Jersey City’s public housing high-rises into an integrated mixed-income development.

Housing authority residents made up the vast majority of attendees at the meeting, which Garcia opened with an introduction and the plan’s architect, Dean Marchetto, followed with a presentation of his award-winning design.

After assurances by Garcia that no current residents would be displaced by the plan — the director topped each packet with a copy of a five-point residents’ bill of rights that’s contained in Chapter 6 of the original plan — he gave way to Marchetto, who expressed passion for the project and explained his vision for revitalizing the housing authority.

“The biggest contribution that I think an architect can make to the city of Hoboken is to try to change this plan and modernize this part of the city,” said Marchetto, who was born in Hoboken, established his architectural practice in the city in 1981, and whose firm has had an important hand in Hoboken’s resurgence.

“This is a large part of the city that, by and large, has been left out of the redevelopment of Hoboken,” he said, noting that housing authority buildings do not meet current safety codes, are highly energy inefficient and do not fit the rest of the city’s aesthetic. “It would be my pleasure to see this project through, because I think it’s very important.”

Marchetto’s original plan, which won a 2011 Smart Growth Award from New Jersey Future, a non-profit that promotes responsible land-use and growth policies, called for a 10-phase construction, relocation and demolition process within the housing authority’s 18-acre main campus. It would replace 806 existing low-income units, one-for-one, and add a balance of 1,047 mixed-income units on top, for a total of 1,853 units in mid-rise dwellings that would be “Sandy-proof,” and “feel, look, smell and taste like Hoboken buildings,” Marchetto said.

“The additional housing could be stepped up and could be financially structured in different ways,” Marchetto explained. “You could have rentals or you could have condominiums. That structure has not been finalized, but all things are possible in that regard.”

Construction of the development would be staggered to prevent resident displacement, with public housing residents moving from old buildings into new ones once they are finished. The old buildings, once emptied, would be razed to create construction sites for new buildings. The entire process would take about a decade, with each phase ranging from approximately 12 to 15 months.

“Step by step by step, everybody gets moved into a new building,” Marchetto said. 

The original plan also incorporated a community center with a pool, a charter school, a multi-purpose field, a new HHA administration building and recreational areas for the entire community.

While Marchetto said the density of his original 1,853-unit plan was consistent with the density of the rest of Hoboken, the HHA board was not comfortable with more than doubling the number of public housing units and asked him to develop a second plan.

Marchetto complied, and in August 2012, the board unanimously adopted his second plan, which called for 1,002 total units (806 low-income and 196 integrated mixed-income).

“The plan in its concept didn’t change and its phasing and its sequencing did not change. The design changed,” said Garcia, who noted that the additional 196 mixed-income units could be scrapped at the discretion of the HHA board or council if a strict one-for-one swap of low-income housing units was preferred.

The project’s first phase is a 44-unit building located at 333 Harrison St. that Garcia said would be LEED Platinum-certified for energy efficiency and have ADA compliance with a ramp and elevator, and a backup generator. 

“You would have everything necessary to make it Sandy-proof and meet current codes,” said Garcia, who plans to fund the building, and subsequent buildings, with a mix of grants and loans.

“We’re not asking for the local taxpayer or the city of Hoboken, we’re not asking for money from them,” he said. “We’re not asking for anything other than the certificate of need that acknowledges we have a need.”

In May, Garcia was unable to convince the council to adopt a “resolution of need,” for Phase 1 of the project that he said would have bolstered an application for Low-Income Housing Tax Credit funding from the Internal Revenue Service. Without the resolution of need, which is not akin to approval for the project, Garcia said the LIHTC application was deficient and unlikely to be awarded to Hoboken.

He said that, in spite of council’s continued lack of support for the project, he’s confident it will eventually come to fruition.

“I’m very confident that with our enthusiasm, our optimism and our hard work and with the residents leading this charge, leading this mission, leading this project, that their actions will speak louder than any words out there that are put on any blogs or websites,” he said. “I’m confident at the end of the day that everyone will come together and realize that Hoboken is a community for everyone and that these residents deserve equality and justice in new housing moving forward.”

The next public forum on Vision 20/20 is scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 14 at 221 Jackson St.