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Woods Bagot shares images of Jersey City’s newly approved One Journal Square megaproject

Turning Over a 700-Foot-Tall Leaf

Woods Bagot shares images of Jersey City’s newly approved One Journal Square megaproject

Located in the center of Journal Square in Jersey City, the Woods Bagot-designed development will feature two 52-story residential towers. (Courtesy Woods Bagot)

With news that New Jersey mixed-use megadevelopment One Journal Square has at long last received approval from the Jersey City Planning Board, the New York office of Australia-born global architecture studio Woods Bagot has unveiled a slew of new renderings that depict the 2-million-square-foot skyscraper complex in its latest iteration.

Nestled roughly equidistance between the Hudson and Hackensack Rivers near the busy Journal Square PATH Station in New Jersey’s second-most populous city, One Journal Square—currently a large, long-vacant lot—is a project of developer Kushner Companies and has been in the works in different iterations (according to Jersey Digs, this is the fourth version of the development) since 2015 when Kushner and KABR acquired the site from Harwood Properties.

rendering of large skyscraper development
(Courtesy Woods Bagot)

Given that Kushner Companies is no stranger to high-profile real estate rumpuses, One Journal Square itself has been subject to numerous controversy-stirring headlines over the past several years detailing legal squabbles involving perceived anti-Trump bias, cold feet from anchor tenants, financing woes, abandoned quests for tax abatements, multiple scaled-back redesigns (as mentioned), and unscrupulous pitches to Chinese investors, not necessarily in that order. (Jersey Digs has done a fine job of tracking the twisty, turn-y ongoing litigation saga attached to the development.)

The just-approved plan for One Journal Square follows Woods Bagot’s revised design first introduced in November of last year following a legal settlement with the Jersey City Redevelopment Authority (JCRA) in which Kushner Companies agreed to invest $2.5 million in local art initiatives.

rendering of a skyscraper
(Courtesy Woods Bagot)

Featuring just over 1,700 residential units ranging from studios to three-bedrooms along with 41,000-square-feet of retail space, the development will place two 52-story glass-and-steel skyscrapers atop a shared 10-story podium. On-site resident amenities include a pool, basketball court, an expansive roof terrace with a dog run, and communal al fresco entertaining and dining areas, and more.

As noted by Woods Bagot in a news release, One Journal Square’s twin 710-foot towers “express a slender verticality while a series of stepped volumes gracefully transitions the towers to the scale of the surrounding context.”

rendering looking up at two glass skyscrapers
(Courtesy Woods Bagot)

The project will also feature a lushly public plaza with retail that aims to meld the development into the neighborhood and just shy of 900 parking spaces. Parking and traffic remain contentious issues. As noted by NJ.com, representatives from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey have not only voiced concern about how the a sharp influx of new residents will impact the nearby PATH station (the development will add 759 additional PATH commuters to the morning rush per a study) but also the impacts of increased street traffic.

With years of heated litigation now in the past, however, the office of Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop appears nothing but enthusiastic about the massive development landing in the heart of Journal Square. In a statement shared by NJ.com, the mayor’s office referred to One Journal Square as a “prime example of how the mayor fought for the taxpayers’ best interest” that will “further the revitalization of Journal Square and the city as a whole.”

Construction is slated to kick off in late spring with an estimated completion date in the fall of 2025.

rendering of twin skyscrapers
(Courtesy Woods Bagot)
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