Jackson Green Homes, a 22 single-family homes across the
street from the Hub shopping center on
is nearing completion with the help of a multinational conglomerate.
For eight years, Interfaith Community Organization and
Honeywell International were bitter opponents in federal court. The community
group, which is being reorganized under the banner Jersey City.
Together, sought
to force the corporate goliath to remediate the 32-acre Roosevelt Lanes site
off Route 440 – the largest known chromium site in the city – after Honeywell
absorbed the company responsible for the actual pollution.
In 2003, a federal judge ordered Honeywell to remove all the
contaminated soil from the site, replace it with fresh fill, and clean up any
contamination in the ground water and in the Hackensack River. That cleanup
started in 2006 and is ongoing.
As part of the court settlement, Honeywell agreed to set
aside $2.5 million for affordable housing construction in Jersey City, which is
what ICO was seeking to do in the first place — build homes — but the leaders
kept running into chromium dumps.
The $2.5 million is now being used as a revolving loan
construction fund to build the 22 homes at Rose and
breeding ground for rats and mosquitoes for 40 years.
The community group and its nonprofit builder, TRF
Development Partners, have signed an agreement with the Jersey City
Redevelopment Agency to build 100 more homes in the area.
Honeywell spokeswoman Victoria Streitfeld said the company
is “pleased to see the completion of the project and the expanded
affordable housing available for the residents of
The three- and four-story homes that comprise the $7.2
million Jackson Green development are being sold for between $112,000 and
$204,000 — a price that families earning 80 percent of the area’s median
income, or $61,000 for a family of four, can afford, Jersey City Together
leaders said.
The homes are built at two factories, one in
from
do the finishes and exteriors, and hook up the utilities. So far one family has
moved in and the other 21 units are under contract. Construction is expected to
be finished by mid-July and all the families moved in by the end of August.
Modular construction has a number of advantages over
construction done on-site. Those benefits include faster construction, minimum
waste and minimum debris at the site. Vandalism is also less of an issue, while the insulation can be sprayed at the
factory to create an extremely tight seal, making the house very energy
efficient.
