JV Proposes Two 48-Story Residential Towers

JERSEY CITY-K. Hovnanian and Equity Residential are teaming up to build a residential community encompassing more than 900 units in two 48-story towers on this city's waterfront. According to a published report, the Red Bank-based K. Hovnanian, a unit of Hovnanian Enterprises, and the Chicago-based Equity Residential have agreed to buy the site at 77 Hudson St. from Hartz Mountain Industries for $65 million. Hovnanian officials would not confirm that sale price and a Hartz spokesman declined to comment on a pending sale.

For Hovnanian, at least, it would be an outside-the-box project for a company that has specialized in low-rise and single-family suburban residential development. "We've been expanding with more diversity in the types of homes we build," the company's Doug Fenichel tells GlobeSt.com. "We're doing lots of different kinds of projects, and 77 Hudson is one example of how we're taking on new markets. This one will be our largest."

What Hovnanian and Equity have in mind for the site, Fenichel confirms for GlobeSt.com, is just over 900 residential units in a total of 925,000 sf of building space. One tower, Hovnanian's part of the project, would encompass 420 condominiums; the second tower, Equity's responsibility, would encompass 481 rental apartments. The two towers would be tied together by some 20,000 sf of ground-floor retail space and a 10-story parking garage with a capacity or nearly 900 cars. A spokesman for Equity Residential could not be reached for comment.

As far as a timeline for the project, "we're hoping to break ground in the fall of this year," Fenichel tells GlobeSt.com. "But we still have a lot of work to do to get to that point."

The Hovnanian/Equity project also marks another example of the ongoing shift in this region's real estate market. In early 2000, Hartz proposed to build a 32-story, 1.1-million-sf office tower on the site, which is part of Colgate Center, the redevelopment of the former Colgate-Palmolive manufacturing site. The building was targeted for a 2002 completion, but in the wake of the last recession and the effects of 9-11, the project never got done.

Hovnanian and Equity's two-tower residential community will join several other new high-profile residential projects rising on this city's Hudson River waterfront, and within the larger metro area's hot residential market. Donald Trump (teamed with locally based Metro Homes), Roseland Property Co. and Toll Brothers all have projects currently under way.