In addition to student, affordable and luxury housing, the mixed-use development aims to anchor the broader surrounding community. The tower will feature a 717 car public garage, an upscale restaurant, and ground floor retail stores, and – pending approvals – a multiplex movie cinema. Not yet under construction, the development team is currently marketing to potential residential and restaurant tenants. Construction is expected to begin in early 2015.

The post McGinley Square Tower Moving Forward, Expanding Jersey City’s Revitalization first appeared on River View Observer.

JERSEY CITY – Mayor Steven M. Fulop announced today the administration’s plans to bring redevelopment to Journal Square, with a $600 million, three-tower residential project near the PATH station.
The project, by KRE Developers, will see three residential towers rise behind the Journal Square PATH station – on Summit Avenue between Pavonia and Magnolia Avenues. The three-phase project, called Journal Squared, will result in 1,840 market-rate units, as well as 36,000 square feet of retail space. Approximately 700 construction jobs will be created during each of the three phases, with ground expected to be broken later this year on the first phase.

“Jersey City residents have waited years, in fact, decades, for the revitalization of Journal Square,” said Mayor Fulop. “With this project, we will finally see real progress in Journal Square with a major residential development. We made a commitment that the success of development along our Hudson River waterfront would extend throughout the city, into areas like Journal Square and Bergen-Lafayette, and this project is the first example of how we are doing that. “

Mayor Fulop also cited the development as being the first significant new project that adheres to the administration’s newly unveiled tax abatement policy. The new policy provides greater incentives to build outside downtown and targets areas such as Journal Square by offering more favorable terms than those the City will provide to projects along the downtown waterfront.
“When the City provides incentives to develop, it should be in those areas that need it most,” added Mayor Fulop.
Additionally, the project is the first in Jersey City to utilize Redevelopment Area Bonds (RABs) for financing infrastructure improvements. In this case, $10 million of RABs will be utilized at no-cost to the city to finance improvements including Magnolia Avenue street renovations, upgrades to part of the JSQ PATH plaza, the construction of public parking, and utilities improvements.

“Past administrations would allow developers to build projects without considering the impact on infrastructure,” said Mayor Fulop. “As part of our development approach, we are instituting ways for development to improve the quality of life in our city, while having the least impact and cost to the taxpayer.”

As part of its redevelopment agreement with the City, the developer will also contribute $2.5 million toward the restoration of the historic Loew’s Theatre, a centerpiece of the revitalization of Journal Square.
“We believe the Loew’s Theatre is the lynchpin to a vibrant cultural scene and nightlife in Journal Square,” said Mayor Fulop. “Journal Square is already a transportation hub and employment hub. This project will restore Journal Square to its rightful place as a residential and cultural center in the heart of the city. We want to make Journal Square a true destination for entertainment and culture.”

All media inquiries should be directed to Jennifer Morrill, Press Secretary for the City of Jersey City, at 201-547-4836 or 201-376-0699./////

The post Fulop Administration Announces $600 Million, Three-Tower Residential Project in Journal Square; Development will Kick-Start Revitalization in Heart of City first appeared on River View Observer.

Bill Sorvino – A Dream of a Film Festival

by Sally Deering

 Ideas sometimes come to us in dreams and that’s exactly how Bill Sorvino conceived the Golden Door International Film Festival to be held in Jersey City in October. What started as images flickering in his sleeping mind will now be images flickering on the silver screen.

 “I had a dream last year about having a film festival in Jersey City,” Sorvino says,” and it was like lightning in a bottle. Jersey City is close to my heart. I grew up here and my family has a 100-year history here. I want Jersey City to have something in its own right.”

 

Dreaming of a film festival is not much of a stretch for Sorvino. He’s a screenwriter and actor who studied at the William Esper Studios in New York City and has appeared in several indie films. He also hails from a theatrical family – his uncle is celebrated actor Paul Sorvino and he’s cousin to Academy Award winner Mira Sorvino – and throughout the years Bill Sorvino shared conversations with his Uncle Paul and cousin Mira about film, theater and acting held during family gatherings at the dinner table.  

“My uncle had a farm in Pennsylvania and I would go and hang out and we would eat and talk,” Bill Sorvino says. “One weekend, Mira, my Uncle Paul and Mira’s husband were at his house down the shore and my uncle was holding an (impromptu) class on acting. We were sitting there mesmerized by his depth of knowledge.”

 Not everyone who comes from Jersey City wants to come back and shine a light on the talent here. Usually star-struck wannabees head to Los Angeles and carve their niche there. But Sorvino’s different – his passion for Jersey City and the place where he grew up and his love for film and theater and his uncle Paul and cousin Mira are key factors to his dream. Sorvino and his Uncle Paul are very close – and it’s quite likely festival-goers in October will get a chance to see Paul Sorvino at the festival’s closing night gala at Loew’s Jersey City, the restored movie palace in Journal Square and one of the venues for the festival’s screenings.

The Golden Door International Film Festival will take Jersey City by storm from Oct 13^th through October 16^th – where four local venues will unroll the red carpet to film stars, celebrities and film-goers screening films by local and international filmmakers. It’s a juried competition with awards given out in ten categories including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor/Actress and Best Cinematographer. Still in the preliminary stages – the venues have been chosen and film submissions are pouring in and Sorvino, who grew up in downtown Jersey City and attended Hudson Catholic high school and St. Peter’s College, wants to encourage local filmmakers to submit their films. Comedies, dramas, documentaries, animations and short films are welcome as are student films.

Filmmakers can submit their films to the Golden Door International Film Festival by going to the website www.withoutabox.com an online submission system for film festival and screenplay competitions. Film Festival directors like Sorvino use the website to manage their festivals and for filmmakers it’s the go-to-place to enter the festival, upload their films and PayPal their entry fee. (Deadline for submissions to the Golden Door International Film Festival is July 1, 2011; entry fee is $50.)

“Everyone goes to withoutabox.com if you are going to put on a festival or submit to a festival,” Sorvino says. “They do the money transactions and post the checklist of submission requirements. It makes it easier to screen the films, too.”

 Festival Highlights

The Golden Door International Film Festival will screen film submissions in Jersey City at the beautifully restored Loew’s Jersey City movie palace in Journal Square; Michael Anthony’s restaurant on the waterfront; LITM restaurant, a hip bistro on Newark Avenue; and Bar Majestic, a cozy gathering place across the street from City Hall on Grove Street.

“Another thing I’ve really come to love about planning the film festival is getting to meet the owners of these places,” Sorvino says. “These owners want to create a better sense of community and have an artistic insight.”

So far, Sorvino has received submissions from all over the globe including South Africa, India, Austria and England and several from local filmmakers. Although the roster of films that will be screened hasn’t been chosen yet (filmmakers will be notified Aug 1^st) several submissions have caught Sorvino’s eye including “Street Corner Harmony” a documentary by Abraham Santiago and Steven Dunham about Doo-Wop groups of the 1950s narrated by record producer Wayne Stierle; and “Night Club” a film by San Borowski starring Ernest Borgnine, Mickey Rooney, Lance Howard and Clint Howard (Ron Howard’s father and brother,) Sally Kellerman (‘Hot Lips’ in the film “M.A.S.H”) and Bill Sorvino’s uncle Paul Sorvino.

Members of Jersey City’s arts community are also joining in to support the festival. At the closing night gala at Loew’s Jersey City a panel of judges, including John Dapolito of Jersey City, who teaches acting and script analysis in New York, will give out awards. Members of the Golden Door International Film Festival’s Board of Advisors will also be on hand including Christine Goodman, Founder/Director of Art House Productions in Jersey City; Eileen Gaughan, administrative aide for the Hudson County Office of Cultural & Heritage Affairs; and Joseph Calamito, publisher of the Riverview Observer newspaper and website.

 “I’m holding it in Jersey City, because for me, when I was growing up here downtown was terrible,” Sorvino says, “and in 2007, I came back and saw the changes. It’s amazing what can happen when there’s group effort, community pride and positive energy moving forward. You have a vibrant artist community in Jersey City, great bars and restaurants. It’s like a little Manhattan. I want to make movies here. I tell everybody I know in the business, we have to look at Jersey City as a location to make films.”

To Sorvino, Jersey City could easily become the new go-to destination for filmmakers on the East Coast. All it takes is a festival and a dream.

Submit your Film

Golden Door Film Festival

Film Submissions:  Go to www.withoutabox.com  or  www.goldendoorfilmfestival.com

Deadline:  July 1, 2011

Fee for Submission:  $50

Notification:  Filmmakers will be notified Aug 1, 2011 if their films have been accepted to the competition

The post Golden Door International Film Festival Director Invites Filmmakers to Screen Their Dreams in Jersey City first appeared on River View Observer.

 

 

By Sally Deering

Acappella groups – four or five guys singing harmonies with no back-up band – bridged the gap between 1950s Doo-Wop and 1960s rock and roll, but until now, little has been written about that time in music history when teenagers harmonized on street corners, inside subways and underneath train trestles searching for the echo that gave them their sound.

Abraham Santiago grew up in Jersey City and remembers the days he sang tenor in The Concepts, a street corner acappella group of fellow students from Ferris High School in Jersey City. Santiago, who now resides in Chicago, took his memories of those days and collaborated on a book and documentary about the acappella era with Steve Dunham, an acappella enthusiast and music producer in Las Vegas with a mammoth acappella record collection and a passion for singing street harmonies.

 “Acappella Street Corner Vocal Groups:  A Brief History and Discography of 1960s Singing Groups,” (Mellow Sound Press, Chicago,167 pgs;) chronicles every street corner acappella group ever recorded from that time like  Joanne and the Heartaches, the Royal Counts and the Persuasions; and the record companies that produced their songs, like Snowflake, Relic and Catamount. The documentary, “Street Corner Harmony: The Missing Link in Rock and Roll History,” narrated by record producer Wayne Stierle delves deeper into the singers’ lives and the genre of acappella music. Both the book and the documentary are touchstones to a bygone era, the time between the 1950s and 1960s, when musical tastes shifted to British rockers like The Beatles and short-haired teens singing acappella became as old-hat as the Hi-Fi record players that spun their songs.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

 “In 2004 I began thinking about why no one ever wrote about the acappella era or the Golden Age of Acappella as some call it,” Santiago says. “I starting writing it, but I’m not a good writer so I asked around and I found Steven Dunham. We hit it off really well considering I didn’t know him and he didn’t me. We started working together and in 2006 the book was published under Mellow Sound Press. In that same year a native Jersey City music critic Jim De Rogatis who lives in Chicago reviewed our book for the Chicago Sun Times. The following year the book was reviewed by Soul Patrol.com and we won an award.”

 Originally from Brooklyn, Dunham resides in Law Vegas where he owns the record company Street Corner Entertainment and sings with two acappella groups, The Chaperones and the Emerald Dreams, whose songs are part of the documentary’s soundtrack. Dunham says he collaborated with Santiago because he believed the history of acappella recordings of that time needed to be preserved and so far, no one else had done the job.

 “We wanted to preserve the traditional street corner singing in the northeast in that time period,” Dunham says. “We felt it was an important piece of rock and roll and American history to preserve this genre before it was completely forgotten about and the memories passed away.”  

The Way it Wa-a-as  

Back in the early 1960s, when Santiago sang with The Concepts, he and his buddies, lead singer Amed Valentine, baritone Ed Rivera and first tenor Juan Perez were always on the lookout for the right backdrop for their acoustic sound. When they weren’t harmonizing on Jersey City street corners, they sang under train trestles and in subways, too.

 “We were always looking for the echo, the hallmark of that elusive dream to make it big,” Santiago says.  

The Concepts sang R&B/Soul songs they imitated from African-American singing groups of the 1950s. That was the standard for how they wanted to sound, but what they really wanted was the opportunity to record their songs, have them played on the radio and sold in record stores.  

“Today anyone can make a recording at home, press out a CD and sell it,” Santiago says. “In the 1960s you couldn’t do that. A record company had to hire and record you and you became part of that record company’s label.”  

The Concepts recorded for Catamount and Cat Time labels and their songs were produced by Stan Krause who owns a record shop in Journal Square in Jersey City. Krause recorded many groups including the Persuasions, one of the best known acappella groups in history, Santiago says. 

“Independent record labels recorded various groups from Jersey City and other surrounding urban cities like New York,” Santiago says. “Those recordings were played on the radio and immediately, the birth of acappella came into existence. Before long acappella shows were attracting large audiences at the State Theatre in Journal Square and the Palace on Newark Ave in Jersey City and in Hackensack and New York. It just exploded and a new pop genre was created. It was a small niche within the music industry.”  

Dunham says many of the acappella groups weren’t taken seriously in the music industry and yet they have influenced groups of the past forty-five years as well as the collegiate acappella circuit. Even shows like NBC’s “Sing Off” where acappella groups of all ages and backgrounds compete for a recording contract owe their success to the guys singing on street corners back in the day.

 “If it wasn’t for the 60s acappella groups, this type of singing would never happen,” Dunham says. 

 Too young to have experienced the first wave of acappella singing, Dunham, now in his 40s, was just 11 years-old when he became interested in acappella singing. It was the late 1970s and he and his buddies would harmonize on his Brooklyn stoop, singing classics like “In the Still of the Night,” and songs by the Stylistics.

 “Street corner singing is a neighborhood thing,” Dunham says. “It’s not just about the music; it’s about the culture of the northeast. It was a way of expression similar to how rap and hip-hop started.”

 Both Santiago and Dunham are pleased with the reception to the book and are discussing a sequel with new information they’ve discovered since publishing it. Santiago would also like to have the documentary shown in Jersey City, the place where acappella music began for The Concepts and other acappella groups that came and went over the years.

 “For teenagers in Jersey City and along the corridor that stretches from Boston to Philadelphia, singing was their favorite past-time,” Santiago says. “Guys didn’t play soccer or basketball as we do now, they would get together and sing. It was a way of connecting with each other and to potentially connect with a person of the opposite sex. If you could sing and you were in a vocal group you were cool.”

 To purchase “Acappella Street Corner Vocal Groups,” and or the DVD call QP Distribution at 888-281-5170 – or send an email to qpdistribution@skyerock.net (The book is $10; the DVD is $14.95, plus shipping and handling.)

to read more about these 1960s Premiere Acappella groups of the 1960s visit www.beaudaddy.com

 

 

The post Searching for the Echo-Book and Film Shine Light on 1960s Street Corner Acappella Groups first appeared on River View Observer.

November 4, 2010, Jersey City, N.J. – On Monday, Nov. 1, Hudson County Community College held an official Grand Opening ceremony for its newest facility at 2 Enos Place on the Journal Square Campus in Jersey City. The building was renovated to include 10 classrooms, two computer labs (one Mac, one PC), a writing center, testing center and a student lounge.

Pictured on bottom row from left: HCCC Trustee James Fife, HCCC Trustee Alfred Zampella, Jersey City Deputy Mayor Kabili Tayari, HCCC Board of Trustees Chair William J. Netchert, Hudson County Executive Thomas A. DeGise, HCCC Trustee Karen Fahrenholz, Hudson County Freeholder Anthony Romano, and HCCC President Dr. Glen Gabert. Pictured on top row from left: HCCC Foundation Chairman Emeritus Paul Silverman, Jersey City Councilman William Gaughan, and HCCC Vice President for Development Joseph Sansone.

The post Hudson County Community College Celebrates Grand Opening of 2 Enos Place Building in Jersey City first appeared on River View Observer.

The event will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 28, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Collegeâ€s Student Lounge, 25 Journal Square (adjacent to the Journal Square Transportation Center) in Jersey City. It is free and open to the public.

“Given the numerous incidents of domestic violence – among both celebrities and private citizens – that have been reported in 2009, and the increased risk of abuse occurring due to current economic conditions, this event could not be more timely,” said Ophelia Morgan, Director of Student Activities at HCCC. “It is our hope that as many who are able will come out to educate themselves.”

During the vigil, there will be information booths, an open forum and candle lighting ceremony.  Actress Lisa Regina will perform a monologue titled “A Write to Heal.”

For more information about this event, please contact the Office of Student Activities at (201) 360-4199, or Margaret Abrams at WomenRising, (201) 333-5700, ext. 544.
# # #

The post Hudson County Community College and WomenRising to Host Domestic Violence Awareness Month first appeared on River View Observer.