HOBOKEN, NJ-Some years ago, a prominent New Jersey-based developer regaled this reporter with a colorful – and shocking – anecdote about his early days, when he was trying to break into the Hoboken market. City officials had seemed to simply ignore his first project proposals, he said, so he made an appointment with the mayor to make his case.

“They kept me cooling my heels in the outer office for a long time, at least an hour or more,” he told me. (I still have my notes, although the anecdote is moldy, and I was employed elsewhere at the time it was told to me.)

“Finally, the secretary said the mayor would see me now,” he said. When he entered the inner chamber, the developer was stunned to see a rival builder seated, with his feet up on the mayor's desk. The mayor was nowhere in sight.

“What is it about the word no,” said the man behind the desk, “that you do not understand?”

It was that developer's initial school-of-hard-knocks lesson in the subject of influence-peddling in the world of commercial real estate, now commonly known as “pay-to-play.” He was sharing it with me, a reporter who was then new to commercial real estate reporting, and new to the unique character of Hoboken wheeling and dealing.

Since then, the incessant turnings of the wheel of pay-to-play scandals and tougher laws, allegations and more scandals, has become all too familiar to the citizens of Hoboken, and – without a doubt – to the commercial real estate world at large, in New Jersey and beyond.

Still, it has to be with some fresh sense of alarm that we report the results of a recent GlobeSt.com poll that demonstrate a prevailing jadedness.

This was the question: “Do the recent allegations regarding Gov. Chris Christie withholding Sandy relief funds from the city of Hoboken in exchange for a deal for the Rockefeller Group surprise you?”

Only 7% indicated surprise, picking this response: Yes. Reprisals of this sort are uncommon.
20% chose this response: Yes. It's common, but usually doesn't come to light.
More than half - 51% - answered: No. Pay-for-play schemes are the norm with larger development sites.
Another 22% said: No. But I'm not sure what was done was wrong.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, we could not find any respondents to comment publicly on the poll results. The Rockefeller Group has, however, called the allegations about the Sandy-fund arm-twisting “deplorable,” should they be true.

It has terminated its contract with Wolff & Samson, a politically-connected firm that it hired almost six years ago to pursue a major office project in Hoboken.

At the same time, the Christie administration has insistently rejected the Hoboken mayor Dawn Zimmer's public allegation that it put pressure on her to back the project, linking storm-relief aid to her decision.

Instant Insights /

GlobeSt. Poll Results: Pay-to-Play Is Rife

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