By: Qinwei Wu
Since the late 2000s, houses sitting on a cliff in Union City, a little New Jersey town with a perfect view of New York City’s skyline, have been left to rot.
In the early 20th century, the hills became a sort of home for creatives such as sculptors and painters.
Bonnie Berger, 45, said, “It was an amazing place to grow up. 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.”
However, in 2005, a group of investors paid her 1.7 million dollars for her property on the hills, which Bonnie Berger had paid only $130,000 for initially. Three years later, another group of investors paid 2.8 million dollars to those investors to take it off their hands.
Slowly but surely, the properties on Mountain Road and Manhattan Avenue, the two roads that occupy the hill, have been bought by investors. The investors, led by Sky Pointe LLC, were originally going to build around 500 units across five residential towers.
However, nothing of that sort has happened. Instead, the houses have suffered from all sorts of property damage, such as fires, graffiti, and intruders. Sky Pointe, who have been entangled in many legal battles since 2015, have not made any official plans for construction yet.
Other people just want the houses to be torn down. Kate Sparrow, who has been living in the cliffs since 1999, said, “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.”
A community meeting that was planned by Sky Pointe in the summer of 2019 was a hope for residents living on the cliffs. The meeting was going to discuss the new plan for towers. Unfortunately, the meeting was canceled.
Even if the houses were torn down and the plan was approved, the project could face numerous challenges. According to a 2021 construction report for a luxury condo on Manhattan Avenue, “Before we can build any of these four buildings vertically, we must first blow the mountainside asunder. We continue to dynamite the rocks away.”
No matter what will happen to Mountain Road and Manhattan Avenue, the once-beautiful houses will never again be what they once were.