By: Coco Xu

What was once a beautiful neighborhood turned into an abandoned ghost town in a matter of years.

Photographer Bonnie Berger lived in a three-family brick house in Union City in the 1980s with her daughter, Jennie Berger, owned a collectibles shop in Hoboken, and served as a landlord for another photographer.

“It was an amazing place to grow up,” Ms. Berger, 45, said. “We had a great backyard. My mom had vegetable gardens. We had hammocks, and a turtle was living there. It was a little oasis. We could see the fireworks every year. It was pretty unique.”

Though the houses in Union City, New Jersey, were modest, the cliffside city possessed a spectacular view of the sea and skyline, attracting waves of immigrants and artists.

But in 2005, Bonnie Berger was given a tempting offer: A group of investors asked to buy her house for $1.7 million. How could she refuse? Three years later, another group of investors bought the property for $2.8 million.

Soon, there was a sudden demand from investors to buy Union City properties for development. From 2005 to 2009, investors purchased a dozen adjacent buildings on the cliff. A company called Sky Pointe LLC planned to construct 450 to 500 residential units in five buildings.

But no construction occurred.

For reasons only partially known, the properties remained untouched by Sky Pointe after their purchase. Instead, they began to deteriorate.

Now, masses of moss and fungi dominate the roofs. Buildings bear the scorch marks of fires. Fences stand, tattered and broken. Intruders lined the walls with graffiti. The sheer [adjective] state of the once-prosperous town has made it undesirable for investors, even though other, more developed neighborhoods have risen—with views of the same scenery.

David Spatz, the city planner for Union City, said he has not heard from Sky Pointe in “probably six to seven years.” He said that the investors still have no formal plans to develop the city.

The irreparably-damaged state of the properties have caused some residents to want them demolished.

Kate Sparrow, who has lived in a cozy Union City home since 1999, started a petition to tear down the houses in 2015. “These buildings are a fire hazard, an eyesore, reduce our property values, and give Union City a disgusting presentation,” she said. She only received 33 signatures. “There was nothing wrong with the houses,” she added. “They didn’t have to let them rot. But now that they did, why aren’t they tearing them down? There have been fires, vagrants, critters.”

Very few others still support development. Joe Sivo, 94, is a retired social studies teacher and is one of such people.

“They were going to give us a park,” he said.

However, development projects will still run into obstacles, such as topography.

“Before we can build any of these four buildings vertically, we must first blow the mountainside asunder. We continue to dynamite the rocks away,” quotes a construction report from 2021.

Regardless of the outcome, the neighborhood will never be the same modest, yet beautiful, neighborhood that it once was.