Connell Foley has chaired the Jersey City Summit since its inception. In 2024, the 9th annual iteration of the event drew nearly 1,500 investment, real estate and other professionals to the Hudson County waterfront.

The Roseland-based law firm’s presence throughout the programming included welcome and closing remarks from partner James McCann as well as W. Nevins McCann, Real Estate & Land Use Group co-chair, moderating the SciTech Scity panel discussion and a fireside chat with Panepinto Development founder and President Joseph Panepinto Sr.

Nevins’ fellow co-chair, George Garcia, moderated the Emerging Markets & Region session. Later, he spoke with NJBIZ about Jersey City’s transformation, new neighborhoods, the challenges of rapid development and more.

Questions and answers were edited for length and clarity.

NJBIZ EDITOR JEFFREY KANIGE: Connell Foley was one of the main sponsors for this event and you were a moderator for a panel that just finished?  

GEORGE GARCIA: Yes. Connell Foley has been the chair of this event since its inception nine years ago. I had the privilege of actually emceeing it one year and I just finished being the moderator of the emerging merging markets panel with my esteemed colleagues.  

Q: That’s what I wanted to ask you about, the emerging markets panel. We’ve heard that phrase, emerging markets, a lot. What does it mean in the context of the discussion that you had today? What is an emerging market in terms of what these people are thinking about?  

A: So, my background, I’ve been in Jersey City since the early ’90s. So, I’ve seen the transformation. The folks on the panel have been here if not that early, but they’ve been part of the renaissance. Jersey City was a railroad town. This entire waterfront you see here was the Erie Lackawanna Railway that came in from Pennsylvania; ships went out the harbor. So as the years have gone by, as you see here, the waterfront development continues, but it’s pretty much nearing its end stage as far locating real estate. And what’s emerging now are other sides of the town that are “off river.”  

So, the panel members today have sites that are in Journal Square, which is another hub, it’s further west, which is an area that’s now really growing. An area we call Soho West, which is right on the border of Hoboken in Jersey City, that’s a very trendy neighborhood now that used to be truck terminals. At my office, we have been fortunate enough to work on all of these, on their entitlements, because we’re talking about 10,000-plus residential units, hundreds of thousands of square feet of retail. My partners and I have probably done 93% of all the entitlements on the waterfront, including PILOTS, when we had them. So, it’s a group that’s been here for a long time.  

I went to school in ’80s in Jersey City. I raised my family here. I’m very proud of what’s happened. So, the emerging means these new neighborhoods that 20 years ago you would’ve said to somebody, ‘you’re out of your mind.’ Now it’s becoming a reality. More affordable housing, working on the Bayfront area, which is all inclusive and affordable housing, which is really what the city’s focusing on now. And it’s important. 

‘Old’ Jersey City

Q: Again, coming from a perspective of an outsider, speaking of Jersey City as an emerging market is kind of, strange. Because we look around, we see all this construction and we realize, at least from an outsider, again, development, economic development and the residential development has been extraordinary. And that’s continuing, yes? 

A: It continues and now it’s continuing off water. From an outsider – and we’ve had this discussion with some of my colleagues on the panel – there have been a lot of New York developers, Related [Cos.], Tishman Speyer – a lot of these bigger developers moving into Jersey City and they’re still trying to locate primarily waterfront. However, there’s a contingent of developers that are either priced out or just got into these other niches. So, to an outsider you say, well I looked at the waterfront — million square, hundreds of thousands square feet of office, what do you mean an emerging market? But if you go 3 miles up the hill, you’ll still see the old Jersey City.  

If you go 3 miles west, you still see Old Greenville where there’s a lot of work that needs to be done and those neighborhoods are now emerging and hopefully within the next 20-year cycle they’ll look like the waterfront but have their own character. 

Timing

Q: That was my next question. What kind of time period are you talking about in terms of the way this development has evolved, the way it’s moving and migrating into the rest of the city?  

A: The one project I’ve been very close to is what we call SoHo West. I mentioned it before, but we used to have all trucking terminals, vacant, fallow land—[it took] 22 years. I measure that because my son … is 22 and he was born the day I stood on the corner with my client and looked at these vacant parcels that now have probably over 4,000 apartments and that was 2001—a 20-year cycle.  

The waterfront started in late ’80s – Sam LeFrak, late ’80s. So you take that forward, that was 20 years to get some of it, but more like 30, because it continues. So, over the next 20 or 30 years it’s a complete transformation that you don’t get it until you actually turn around and you’re like, ‘wow, do I really live here?’ People complained to me because I brought all these people here, ‘I just wanted my old city back.’ Right? But with development comes a lot of great things: Affordable housing, bike lanes, open space, new infrastructure. What I mean by that is water, sewer, sidewalks, sustainability. It’s been a fascinating process and I’m just happy to have had the opportunity to have been here since its inception. 

Changing dynamics

Q: That’s an interesting point. When I’ve talked to folks from Jersey City and from Newark, there is concern about exactly what you’re talking about. You brought all these people here; is there still room for the old-time residents, for the folks that want to make their home here? And I’ve heard that the city really does have its heart in the right place, is that what you think? 

A: Well, there’s different minds, different opinions. I’m a downtown apartment dweller and I have a second home where I go relax. And then you have the folks who have been here and really haven’t been displaced – this town doesn’t condemn properties. You can’t satisfy everyone. Not everyone wants to see a high rise, but they do want not to have their basements flooded. So with all this development that’s happening now, the sustainability community givebacks [is] where it mitigates that for the folks who’ve been here a long time.

“[W]e’ve gone from a transient city to a full-time city.”

And you also have parts of the city that are not high-rise; they’re very Brooklyn, not brownstone, [but] like Bayonne – two-family [homes], which are really areas that haven’t been disturbed and you have a lot of folks moving there. So, we’ve gone from a transient city to a full-time city. Meaning I had my son and daughter both raised here. We didn’t move to Montclair, we didn’t move to Bergen County or Essex County, and you’re seeing that more. When I first moved here, you didn’t see one stroke. 

You’re not going to satisfy everyone. … But like I said, even I complain sometimes — the bike lane, I can’t make a right turn. It’s all new. This never existed. But I just think it’s going to continue to happen. I think the proximity to New York, the professionalism that the planning staff and the mayor’s office here — how they work with you on the private sector, you don’t see a lot of places in New Jersey — if you’re from New Jersey, you know what, I mean. 

Outlook

Q: That was the last question I was going to ask you. Just in terms of the future, we’re entering a period of flux now, there’s going to be a new administration in Jersey City and the state. Is there enough momentum to sustain? Are the institutions strong enough to keep the kind of development, the kind of evolution that you’ve been talking about going?  

A: I think that I’ve been here through, let’s call it nine administrations, very close to all of them. I was just on the panel with the mayor, Bret Schundler, who was here in the early ’90s. So the answer is, I don’t know. You never know what a new administration’s going to do. However, what concerns me more, is what’s happening on the federal level with interest rates, with inflation because the financing has become very different and we have a new election on that spectrum. 

I think whoever gets elected here, I know most of the candidates that are out there, it’s too close to call. The election is not happening until November of ‘26. But I think the momentum won’t stop because there’s so much investment already. And for example, when the current mayor, who’s done a fantastic job, but he really did not want to give any more PILOTS. That was his policy. This was new to people. 

They used to give PILOTS – payment in lieu of taxes … This was new to development, but they did other things and the development community adapted to that and moved on. So I think the future’s bright. Unfortunately, you can’t predict politics. I think if the interest rates get stabilized and we don’t go into a recession, we’re in good shape.