The controversial plan to redevelop the former Iberia restaurant property in Newark into a high-rise apartment complex will return to the Planning Board tonight after a Superior Court judge’s ruling.
Despite receiving approvals for the project in April, Chess Builders, a Brooklyn-based developer, will have to plead their case once more to the city’s Planning Board after a local nonprofit Homes for All Newark filed a lawsuit. In September, Superior Court Judge Avion Benjamin “remanded” the case back to the Planning Board on account that the public was not allowed to question the developer’s experts.
In tonight’s application, the plan doesn’t seem to have changed much from its original proposal. The developer is still hoping to construct four glass towers in two phases at 450-466 Market Street ranging from 26 to 30 stories and bringing a total of 1,408 new apartments to the city’s Ironbound neighborhood. However, critics of the proposal are hoping their ability to cross-examine the experts will sway the voting members of the Planning Board.
“The goal is to have a better outcome and more engagement with the community,” said Tanisha Garner, an Ironbound resident and president of Homes for All Newark.
Garner believes that the current plan is part of a larger trend of development that has left her neighborhood worse in terms of crowding, displacement, and affordability.
One of the major concerns from the public is the height of the building. New Jersey Appleseed, which represented the plaintiff in the lawsuit, doesn’t believe the height of the building accords with the city’s latest master plan. In that plan, passed in 2023 after a series of community meetings across several months, the height limit of Lot 80 of that Iberia property was capped at five stories and Lot 1 was capped at 12 stories.
Last August, a year after the master plan was completed, the City Council passed an amendment to the Riverfront Redevelopment Plan allowing both towers to be 30 stories tall.
“The community is not saying they do not want a building there — the high density is what they’re opposing,” said Renee Steinhagen, executive director of New Jersey Appleseed at the previous Planning Board meeting in March.
The plan, Steinhagen also noted, does not comply with the standards laid out in the Riverfront Redevelopment Plan, requiring the developer to request waivers in terms of tree plantings, setback, and impervious pavement, important issues in a place traditionally prone to flooding.
“Page 44 of the redevelopment plan makes clear that modification of these standards requires extraordinary hardship,” Steinhagen said.
However, some of the city’s business leaders have spoken in favor of the project, including Jack Costa, president of the Portuguese Sports Club, who said the project will “stimulate business” in the neighborhood. “It will energize the area, bring modern infrastructure, better lighting, safer pedestrian access,” Costa said.
Chris Bernardo, CEO of Commercial Services District, said that the neighborhood surrounding Penn Station is part of a business improvement district that his company oversees. Developing the property would increase funding for cleaning and public-safety measures, he said.
“This is a very important property — we only have so many parcels around this train station,” Bernardo said. “As we make this property more valuable, we’re actually increasing the ability for the district to provide all the important quality-of-life activities that we all know are important.”
