Is Bergen-Lafayette Jersey City's next big neighborhood?
One real estate investment services firm that recently sold an apartment in the area for nearly $4 million says it's on the way up, according to NJBIZ.com.
"Bergen-Lafayette is an up-and-coming neighborhood,” Steven Matovski of Marcus & Millichap told NJBiz.com. “Our client saw an opportunity to purchase in an area that will see major redevelopment over the next decade.”
The firm recently sold an apartment building in the neighborhood, which has struggled with pockets of poverty and crime, for $3.6 million to an undisclosed buyer, NJBIZ.com reports.
The four-story building, located at 14-20 Park St., houses 19 apartment units, NJBIZ.com says.
Representatives from the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency recently led a group of 40 local realtors and real estate agents on a bus tour of the neighborhood to show them eight of 23 vacant properties the city hopes will be restored.
"We're having these tours to showcase the possibilities that exist in a place that has gone a long time without any economic stimulation at all," Anthony Cruz, director of Housing, Economic Development, and Commerce in Jersey City, told The Jersey Journal.
Cruz said he sees redevelopment in the making in the city's plans to create a City Hall annex that will bring jobs to the Hub shopping center on Martin Luther King Drive, the neighborhood's light rail station and a $2.5 million city investment in 22 new town homes within two blocks of the Hub starting next spring.
Bergen-Lafayette, which was once a commercial center for the city, has long been in a battle for resurrection, especially for its main street, MLK Drive.
While most of Jersey City's recent real estate boom has taken place Downtown or along the waterfront, others have forecasted growth in other surrounding neighborhoods, such as Journal Square.