Jared Kushner’s family company is suing Jersey City over allegations it forced the delay of a major twin-tower project due to a ‘political animus’ towards President Trump.
The federal lawsuit, filed on Wednesday by the Kushner Cos., claims Jersey City and the city’s redevelopment agency (JCRA) ‘put politics over principle’ when they ended a contract with developers over the planned One Journal Square project.
It accuses Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, a Democrat, of scrapping a deal to grant tax breaks and city-issued bonds for the project in order to ‘enhance his status among the electorate of the city’. He called the claims ‘nonsense’.
Jared Kushner’s family has filed a lawsuit claiming Jersey City delayed the One Journal Square project (pictured right in an artist’s impression) because of Kushner’s position as an adviser to President Trump. Pictured left: Kushner in the White House on February 13
The One Journal Square towers are set to be 56 stories high with 1,512 apartments along with more than 200,000 square feet of retail and commercial space, reported NewJersey.com. The final cost is expected to be $400 million.
The JCRA and the Kushners entered into an agreement to redevelop the site in 2015, and over the following two years designs were approved by planning officers on several occasions.
However, in 2017, Fulop began to get cold feet due to the upcoming election in November, the lawsuit claims. In May 2017, he tweeted to say he would not approve a 30-year tax break and $30 million of city-issued bonds for the project.
The developers claim city officers told them they would need to wait until Fulop won re-election until he could reconsider the tax break request.
The lawsuit accused Democrat mayor Steven Fulop (pictured at a gala on May 1, 2015) of withdrawing his support for the project because he feared the electoral implications of helping the Kushners
This suggests, says the lawsuit, that he was wary of the electoral implications of being seen to help the Kushners financially, despite cosying up to them in private. Jared Kushner is Ivanka Trump’s wife and a senior adviser to the President.
After he was successful in the election, Fulop then arranged another meeting with the developers.
‘Fulop further confirmed during this meeting that the true motive in the denial of tax abatements to the project was the involvement of the Kushner family, stating that it was “really tough” to move forward with the deal, and that the problem would go away if the Kushners left the deal and a new partner was brought in,’ the lawsuit says.
Then in April, the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency said developers were in default because they missed a deadline to begin construction on the project – bringing it to a halt.
The lawsuit is seeking to stop the city from ending the project’s contract and declare the notice of default null and void. It calls the default threat a ‘transparent pretext to enhance Fulop’s status among the electorate of the city.’
Fulop dismissed the lawsuit by saying it amounts to ‘hearsay nonsense’.
‘It’s not like the Kushners have a great deal of credibility in anything they say’, he said, before adding, ‘They will do anything to manipulate a situation.’
Joseph Fiorenzo, the company’s lawyer, said the ‘outrageous conduct’ of city officials ‘strikes at the very heart of our economic system which has, as its foundation, the freedom of people to organize their affairs by entering into contracts. This is the glue that holds our economic system together.’
The One Journal Square site remains empty.
An artist’s impression of the view over Jersey City from the One Journal Square development, which is planned to be 56 stories high with 1,512 apartments inside