Another lame story from editors who ditched Hackensack

The Record's front-page story on the redevelopment of Hackensack doesn't discuss inadequate indoor parking in the 222-unit Meridia Metro apartment building under construction on State Street, and whether this empty lot across the street could be turned into additional parking spaces.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I doubt "the face of the new Hackensack" is an apartment building under construction on State Street, although that's what The Record's front page claims today.

But you could find the new Hackensack a couple of blocks away at the recently completed Atlantic Street Park or in Art of Spice, one of the downtown restaurants that opened in the past few months.

Today's story is about a debate over how to market a redeveloping Hackensack (A-1), but there is so much missing from this account it is hardly worthy of Page 1.

Will it work?

And the biggest question of all isn't even asked: 

Will apartment development in downtown Hackensack revive Main Street, once the shopping and entertainment hub of Bergen County?

In Englewood, which has seen intensive apartment development on its main street, Palisade Avenue, as well as along Route 4, empty storefronts are commonplace, and restaurants come and go.

The story incorrectly calls the Meridia Metro building shown on A-1 and A-8 (five floors of apartments over a parking garage) a "residential tower." 

And it doesn't mention the appeal of its location for people who work in New York -- across the street from an NJ Transit express-bus stop and not far from the Essex Street rail station.

'The Sack'

If you want a good laugh, take a look at marketing themes proposed by two professional firms, Axiom of Secaucus, and Words and Pictures of Park Ridge:

"Hackensack: Bergen County's Main Street."

"The Sack: Not Your Mother's Main Street."

"The Sack"? LOL. 

As a taxpayer, I hope the city doesn't turn out to be a "Sack of Woe."

How about sacking that firm, which isn't identified? 

Left Hackensack

This superficial story comes from the same editors who abandoned Hackensack in 2009 on orders from Publisher Stephen A. Borg.

He closed the River Street headquarters of North Jersey Media Group and its flagship daily paper.

A year before, Borg's newsroom downsizing set off a precipitous slide in accuracy and the quality of local reporting that continues today.

On the the land across the street from the Meridia Metro project, passers-by can see what looks like jet skis on a trailer, above; and shuttered businesses, below.

Does the landlord own the expensive Porsche parked behind this building?

Two sides of Christie

The Record's reporters continue to cover Governor Christie's fading campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, months after the paper's editorial writers started to criticize him in harsh terms.

Today, an editorial says replacement of the antiquated Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan is more important than a new La Guardia Airport (A-16).

"As for Christie, he is more concerned about a few hundred thousand Republican voters in the early presidential primaries and caucuses than he is about the millions of passengers who use the Port Authority Bus Terminal annually.

"A midtown bus terminal is not a Christie priority. Perhaps if the Port Authority were to build it in Iowa, he would come."

Local news?

In Local, Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza relied on nearly two pages of police news and a long Dean's List to fill the municipal-news holes in their thin section (L-2, L-3 and L-6).