Board Members, Residents Express Concerns Over Redevelopment 5 Signage

Signage dominated expert testimony by Tucker Development Corp. (TDC) on Monday night when the Fort Lee Planning Board switched gears to discuss the western parcel of Redevelopment Area 5 called Hudson Lights.

The mixed-used development will incorporate a 175-room hotel, residential units and 165,000 sq. feet of new retail space, which will be “appropriate in dignity, scope and accommodating the esthetics of the town,” said TDC attorney Francis Giantomasi. “We think it is historically important for Fort Lee.”

It’s not often that a project occupies multiple city blocks and Hudson Lights is meant to be a pedestrian gathering place for the Fort Lee community, according to architect Bernardo Fort-Brescia, who said it would be a pedestrian experience along the new sidewalks.

The environment would be soft (not asphalt) and shops would have their own individual facades, even some canopies, Fort-Brescia said. 

“We have a maximum range of height,” he said, so it’s not an endless differential, but the intention was to create a feeling of a street with shops and a variety of movement.”

According to Mayor Mark Sokolich, the goal was that Fort-Brescia would tap into his most talented artistic juices and “wow” us with a beautiful street front, as opposed to 300 feet of "plain Jane vanilla" seen everywhere else.

When it comes to setting sign parameters, Planning Board Chairman Herbert Greenberg said he appreciated Fort-Brescia’s recommendations, but found them very difficult.

“I think we would prefer to have input on every sign that goes up,”Greenberg said. “I know you have to sell it, but we have to make sure we don’t have a mishmash of signs.”

With respect to Lemoine Avenue, Councilman Armand Pohan said the Board has never written a blank check for somebody on a major street. 

“In our world of Fort Lee, we agonize over one sign that’s 62 ft. instead of 24 ft., Pohan added.

To give a blanket approval anytime soon is not acceptable, Greenberg said. The West parcel will be built in two phases, with the southeast block and the southwest block completed first. There’s a 12-month delay required before building the residential units on the north block.

The first phase encompasses Lemoine Avenue, Park Avenue, Martha Washington Way, and Central Avenue south. 

Resident Ruth Adler was concerned with store facades that have nothing to do with the two monolithic towers being constructed.

“These are residential buildings. We were not looking to create a perfect glassbox like in an office building,” Fort-Brescia said. “There is a texture to the 'skin' (and) the change of formality from building to building is intentional. It creates a city within a city.”

Fort-Brescia was trying to avoid the notion of a shopping mall, and instead, proposed a retail street with different heights, materials, and individuality and artistic expression for the storefronts and signage.

In a certain scale, he said the towers become a backdrop to the stores themselves and this is the direction retail is moving around the world.

The 25 retailers and three, 5,000 to 7,000 sq. ft. sit-down restaurants will benefit from this signage, according to Robert K. Futterman & Associates executive vice president Barry Fischbach.

“We look forward to the marketing of this project,” Fischbach said. “We are confident it will be very successful, but the signage is an important component.” 

Fishbach said until leases are signed he never knows who the retailer will be, but he has a vision. 

With prodding from the board, Fishbach said the stores would be “above five” (on a scale of 1 to 10), to which Sokolich teased, “Seven doesn’t send me home with a warm and fuzzy feeling either, but I also don’t want to price out my citizens.”

The Planning Board will review Hudson Lights again on May 7, 7:30pm., at the Jack Alter Fort Lee Community Center.