News

For Immediate Release
[email protected]

Saturday, June 29, 2024 – Jersey City residents who have fought for years in support of community-first enhancements to Liberty State Park that prioritize active recreation opportunities for local children and families, cheered news today of $35,000,000 being appropriated from the “New Jersey Debt Defeasance and Prevention Fund” to improve Liberty State Park.

According to the budget language, the significant investment from the state “shall be used only for the construction of athletic fields, active recreation, community center, railroad terminal, community gardens, and improvements that directly support such facilities, including concessions, restrooms, and mobility within Liberty State Park.”

Local residents applauded the leadership of Governor Phil Murphy, Senate President Nicholas Scutari, Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, Hudson County’s own State Senator Brian Stack and State Senator Angela McKnight of Jersey City, for their efforts to make this dream a reality for so many.

“We want to thank Governor Murphy, Senators Stack and McKnight, and legislative leaders in Trenton for hearing our voices and making this significant investment in our city – which will at long last help to create a Liberty State Park for ALL now and into the future,” said People’s Park Foundation President Bob Hurley, Sr.  “Moreover, it’s important to note that this simply never could have happened without the tireless efforts of Hudson County’s own Senator Stack.  The Senator is a true friend to Jersey City and its residents.”

According to Hudson County Commissioner Jerry Walker, the funding also ensures that Liberty State Park will be a focal point of New Jersey’s efforts in preparation for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. According to recent reports, the worldwide soccer tournament is projected to spur as much as $2 billion in economic impact, help to create 14,000 new jobs, and attract over one million tourists to the region.

“For years, thousands of concerned citizens have advocated to their elected representatives, attended public hearings, wrote letters to the editor, spoke out on social media, and spread the word amongst their neighbors that Liberty State Park was in dire need of improvements that would benefit the local community.  It’s gratifying to see all that hard work rewarded.  We could not be more excited to see this project come to fruition and look forward to the critical role that Jersey City and our park will play in the upcoming FIFA World Cup and future events in our newly enhanced park,” said Commissioner Walker.

TAPinto

By Franklin Walker

As someone who has spent 48 years playing a role in the life and growth of generations of Jersey’s City young people students, I have a unique perspective on our city’s rich history and its future potential.

Beginning in 1974 as a health and physical education teacher in our school system – and holding more than 20 different positions since – it was a privilege to cap my career as the Superintendent of Jersey City Schools before my retirement at the end of 2021.

During that time, I did my best to nurture the hopes and dreams of our students, while helping them and their parents navigate the barriers and challenges blocking their path.

One of the consistent roadblocks that our children have faced growing up in Jersey City has been a lack of facilities as compared to their peers in other municipalities in Hudson County and throughout the state.

While other cities and towns have ample basketball, tennis and pickleball courts; soccer pitches, baseball, and football fields; and indoor community centers with pools and meeting areas, Jersey City has lagged and the impact on our children is real and lasting.

It’s why I was excited to be appointed to a seat on the Liberty State Park Design Task Force – giving me the opportunity to lend my experience to this important debate and to continue my life’s work advocating on behalf of Jersey City’s children and families.

Let me be clear: I believe that the park represents a source of pride for our city, and I genuinely respect residents who have viewpoints on both sides of the debate about its future.

At the same time, Liberty State Park also represents a well of untapped potential to enhance recreational and community-based offerings for our residents. Failure to take advantage of that potential and find common ground would be tragic. 

In a city that has experienced such explosive development and growth in recent years, more than ever before our families need facilities to play basketball, soccer, baseball, and other sports.  They also need facilities for the community to gather in a safe and welcoming environment, with structured activities and after-school programming.

To that end, one of my fellow Task Force Members suggested that Liberty State Park should largely be home to what he called “unstructured active recreation”, which in other words means a place for kids to kick a soccer ball around or play catch. 

Respectfully, that isn’t good enough, nor is it acceptable.

Neither is a plan being pushed by the NJ DEP to essentially flood a 170-acre section of the park, forever restricting the available space for active recreation in our city.  If their plan, in its current form, takes effect – reversing it would be impossible.

Recently, the NJ DEP made a statement that their plan does not “flood” the park, but then admitted in the same statement that their plan does include “reintroduction of native tidal and non-tidal wetlands”.  Moreover, the Director of Environmental Planning at Rutgers University conceded that the DEP plan includes “building wetlands” at the park.

I am not sure about you, but that sure sounds like a recipe for more water in the park.

I believe an alternative plan that includes trails, waterfront access, and a community center; indoor basketball courts and a swimming pool; outdoor ballfields and other sports facilities are the better option.

I encourage residents to attend the upcoming public meeting of the Liberty State Park Design Task Force to be held on Tuesday, April 9 at 1 Audrey Zapp Drive in Jersey City, starting at 6:00 P.M. There is also an option to attend virtually by clicking on this link and registering in advance. 

Your voice matters.  Please make it heard.

NJ.com

By Jerry Walker

Growing up and living in the Lafayette Section of Jersey City, Liberty State Park has always been a part of my life.

When I was young, we played at Liberty State Park and walked across the bridge to Ellis Island, which was our clubhouse, long before the historic landmark was revitalized. Times have changed and so has the surrounding neighborhood and the needs of its people. Jersey City has seen massive development over the years with more housing units built to accommodate its growing population. The city prides itself on being among the most diverse in the nation with some 23 different languages spoken.

With an increasingly diverse population come diverse needs and demands for recreational opportunities for residents of all ages.

We need more outlets for active recreation, not just passive recreation. People in our community like to jog and ride bikes, but also play sports to get in shape like basketball, football, soccer, field hockey, rugby and cricket. We would love a place to swim or ice skate. Pickleball is the nation’s hottest sport, but we have nowhere in Jersey City to play.

We need facilities for afterschool programming to keep kids active, engaged and off the streets. We need fields for our school teams with adequate seating.

Liberty State Park is the only available area in our densely populated city to address the community’s needs. Unfortunately, the park has had no improvements in five decades. We have two children’s playgrounds for a 600-acre park and two expensive restaurants that the community from the south side of Jersey City can’t afford.

Some 250 acres in the park’s interior remain contaminated and fenced off. The $50 million to clean the contamination and return the land for public use from a lawsuit against Exxon has been available since 2011, yet the DEP sits idle.

Central Park is the epicenter of New York City and the most iconic park in the world with amphitheaters, athletic fields, a zoo, basketball courts, nature trails, an ice rink that now hosts pickleball courts in the summer, and activities for everyone. On the other hand, Liberty State Park is just a large swath of open land with beautiful views of Manhattan but not much else to do beyond taking the ferry to Liberty and Ellis islands.

Our time is now. We have the opportunity to create a modern, inclusive, vibrant, and accessible Central Park right here in Jersey City — to make Liberty State Park not just our Central Park, but a national model for urban, community parks and the envy of the world. New Jersey deserves no less!

A plan unveiled by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection ignores the community’s needs. Yes, it adds a new community center and ballfields, but the DEP shoves active recreational facilities along an industrial tract far from park entrances and public transit and inaccessible to the very people who would use them.

The DEP also plans to flood 160 acres of the interior to create swamp and marshlands. With the threat of rising sea levels and more severe, frequent storms from climate change, bringing water in Liberty State Park threatens flooding to the park and surrounding communities. We experienced it firsthand after Superstorm Sandy; I lost power for 11 days and the park was six feet underwater. There is no logic in introducing more water into an existing flood zone when Liberty State Park is already surrounded by water on three sides.

The ideal solution is to elevate the park to create a natural flood barrier, allowing water to run back off into New York Harbor. This is the people’s park. We deserve better.

We deserve a revitalized Liberty State Park that benefits the entire community — not just a select few. We want clean, open public spaces with recreational opportunities for everybody. At 600 acres, Liberty State Park has enough space to do it all — preserve natural habitats and provide the amenities our community so desperately needs. We want and deserve our Central Park!

It’s been a 50-year fight to level the playing field, but I’m energized that for the first time the entire Jersey City community is involved in the process and rallying with a strong, collective voice, demanding more from the State. It’s time our elected officials listen and answer the people’s call.

Jerry Walker is a Hudson County commissioner and the founder of Team Walker, a non-profit working in Jersey City to improve the quality of life for children through academic and recreational programs.

NAACP New Jersey

By Richard T. Smith

Whether it’s air pollution from dirty diesel trucks or proximity to polluting industrial facilities and toxic waste sites, Black and brown communities like Greenville in Jersey City have borne the brunt of environmental injustice.

While wealthier suburban communities have acres of athletic fields, communities of color often lack adequate green space and parks, forcing kids to play on crumbling asphalt basketball courts or, even worse, on busy streets and narrow sidewalks.

And that’s when kids go outside. Nowadays, many kids in underprivileged communities are holed up inside, sitting on couches, tethered often to violent video games. Childhood obesity is more common among Black and Hispanic children, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

The tragedy is that Liberty State Park borders the Greenville community, but there’s really nothing there for our kids to do there – no soccer fields, no basketball courts, no swimming pools, nothing, except if you want to take a walk or take in sights they see every day.

While investments have been made in other parts of Jersey City and Hudson County over the last 20 years, leading to historic growth and improved quality of life for many, why have leaders permitted more than half of Liberty State Park to remain fenced off, unusable, and a threat to the community’s public health for nearly five decades due to toxic chromium and asbestos contamination?

Fortunately, we have an opportunity to clean up the hazardous waste and revitalize that land to create a bigger, better park that can provide something for everyone, including the kids from Greenville.

The People’s Park Foundation has put forth a vision that reimagines the park as a recreational oasis for the community. This plan is consistent with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s climate justice mission to strengthen resilience and livability in communities that have endured legacies of pollution and neglect. It’s a civil rights issue.

The People’s Park vision calls for a state-of-the-art community center with basketball courts, a swimming pool and an ice-skating rink, acres of world-class outdoor sports facilities, community gardens, an outdoor market, and a natural amphitheater for concerts.

A revitalized Liberty State Park will serve as a model for other urban parks across the country and be a catalyst for reinvestment in Greenville, one of the few communities in Jersey City that has been left out of the same economic growth and opportunities as other parts of the city.

Unfortunately, a small but vocal group of anti-park activists masquerading as friends of the park are fighting to protect a status quo that maintains Liberty State Park’s legacy of pollution at the exclusion of Black and brown communities who are crying out for more recreational opportunities in the only open space Jersey City and Hudson County has left.

But let me be clear, Liberty State Park is not their park and they do not represent the people that I do.

Maintaining the status quo in Liberty State Park perpetuates the institutional racism and segregation that has plagued Jersey City’s Black and brown communities. It says to the children and families in Greenville, “We don’t want you here. Go play in the street. This park is ours—not yours.”

Black and brown families are sick and tired of other people dictating what is best for them. Listen to what the Greenville community desires. They want a safe, indoor place for children to play basketball, swim, and skate year-round They want to be able to easily access a clean park filled with active recreational activities, not a fenced-off hazardous waste dump. They want Liberty State Park to be more than what it is, so it serves everyone’s needs. That’s not an unreasonable ask.

The People’s Park vision reclaims the polluted land, doubles the size of the park, increases open space for bird watching and strolls along winding pathways, and also creates new opportunities for active recreation, which is sorely lacking in the community closest to the park and the most densely populated region in the country where open space is scarce.

It’s well past the time that we allow residents to access this great resource literally in the heart of our community.

The residents of Greenville are demanding justice. I am proud to stand with them and hope the politicians are listening.

Richard T. Smith is the President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People New Jersey State Conference and a member of its National Board of Directors.

Click here to view this op-ed on NJ.com .