BIT to Break Ground on $131M Development in Hoboken

By Scott Baltic, Contributing Editor

Park Place, a $131 million, 12-story multi-family building funded by the AFL-CIO Building Investment Trust and to be developed by Bijou Properties and built by Tishman Construction, will break ground tomorrow (Tuesday) in Hoboken, N.J.

Unusually, the 262,000-square-foot building will include, along with its 212 market-rate apartments, both 13,000 square feet of retail space and 32,000 square feet of educational space. The latter was required by city approvals, and there is no specific tenant in mind, a spokesperson for the AFL-CIO Building Investment Trust (BIT) told Commercial Property Executive.

The building’s owner is an entity wholly owned by the BIT. The site at 1415 Park Ave., near Weehawken Cove and about five blocks from the Hudson River, was previously a parking garage, according to the spokesperson.

Like previous BIT projects, Park Place will be built by union labor; it’s expected to create about 650 union construction jobs. It joins a $1.4 billion BIT development pipeline comprising 10 projects around the United States.

Since its inception 25 years ago, the BIT, a collective investment fund for which PNC Bank, N.A., is the trustee, has directly or indirectly invested in 29 projects worth more than $2 billion in New York and New Jersey, including some 3,000 housing units and nearly 3 million square feet of commercial real estate.

Park Place is designed to attain LEED Gold status. Founded in 1999, Hoboken-based Bijou focuses on green development along the Hudson waterfront. Recent projects include Garden Street Lofts, New Jersey’s first LEED Gold residential high-rise); The Hostess Factory, a 42,000-square-foot retail restoration including a 20,000-square-foot green roof; and Edge Lofts, a mid-rise rental building at 1405 Clinton St.

Hudson County’s effective apartment rents are the highest in Northern New Jersey, at $2,742 per month, according to a second-quarter 2013 report from Marcus & Millichap. Job growth in the region continues to exceed the national average, and multi-family demand is expected to be boosted for a few more quarters by both families displaced by Hurricane Sandy and construction workers to be moved to the region to find rebuilding work.