Issue 456 April 26, 2004

Xanadu No Pleasure Dome for Drivers

The Mills Corp. and Mack-Cali Realty Group may ultimately regret calling their huge development proposed for the NJ Meadowlands "Xanadu." In Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, Xanadu features a "sacred river" in "caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea … [where] twice five miles of fertile ground with walls and towers were girdled round..."

The measureless caverns planned for 104 acres in the Meadowlands, mostly on the Continental Arena site, amount to 4.96 million sq. ft. of buildable space, including a 520 room hotel, office buildings, sports and entertainment facilities, and more. Total construction cost: $1.3 billion. Principal mode of access? Driving on Route 3 in Bergen County.

A Xanadu project hearing on Tuesday, April 27th is devoted to transportation and air quality. We urge the public to attend the hearings and raise questions — there are many.

The biggest is why the developer did not include any information about the project’s traffic impacts on the morning peak hour in the DEIS. There is no background information for how much traffic is on Route 120 south, flowing into Route 3 east (toward the Lincoln Tunnel), for instance, and how the project’s 1.76 million sq. ft. of office space will impact rush hour. The developers hide behind an arcane and out-of-context NJ DOT regulation about highway access permits, for excluding this vital information.

The project would build 12,500 parking spaces at full build-out in 2009. The run-off from this much paving alone could lead to a lifeless sea. The office towers will be "twinned" so that they can share parking. A good idea, but the parking management plan referenced in the DEIS is not yet available.

Perhaps the NJ Sports and Exposition Authority (NJ SEA) declared Mills and Mack-Cali the bid winner for the site too quickly? Shouldn’t it have awaited the results of the hearings, or held hearings where all developers would have exposed their plans to public scrutiny? Certainly we question the basis for the choice of Xanadu from transportation and environmental perspectives.

NJ SEA’s authorizing law requires it to "consult with the Meadowlands Commission and DEP with respect to the ecological factors constituting the environment of the Hackensack meadowlands to the end that the delicate environmental balance of the meadowlands may be maintained and preserved" and to "consult with the Meadowlands Commission before making any determination as to the location, type and character of any project under the jurisdiction of the Meadowlands Commission." If NJ SEA’s mind is made up, the burden will fall to DEP and the Meadowlands Commission to ensure this isn't gridlock-inducing dumb growth with fancy name. v

 

 

 

 

 

 


MTR #456 portable document format (PDF) file version
(requires Adobe Acrobat).

Related Articles and Links

 

 

MTR back issues:

Go to index of all Mobilizing the Region back issues