Hoboken, New Jersey

HOBOKEN, NEW JERSEY street. We have a diverse array of small businesses starting up in all parts of the city – from yoga studios, to coding classes, to the arts community. There are a lot of opportunities because when you compare start-up costs for opening a small business in Hoboken to the costs in New York City, right across the river, the economies of scale are more attractive here. “We’re trying to promote an innovation economy; we just received a $100,000 grant from the New Jersey Economic Development Authority to help implement a living laboratory concept focusing on the Innovation Society. That grant is going to be undertaken with the Stevens Institute of Technology, the Hoboken Public Library and a start-up called Propelify with one of our local entrepreneurs, Aaron Price.” BVM: Why did the city create a ‘pop-up’ park? Mayor Bhalla: “We acquired a large, six-acre property to build Hoboken’s own Central Park. It will be our largest park and combine the dual interests of growing our open space inventory with protecting the city from chronic flooding. The park has the ability to store 1.5 million gallons of water - about 500,000 through the green infrastructure on surface, and a 1-million-gallon underground water detention tank for storing the water, so it can be treated and discharged through weather pumps. It mitigates street flooding, as well, which is a challenge of ours. We’re creating a park that has recreational and passive elements, including a great lawn, an ice-skating rink, a multi-purpose athletic field, and a lot of other features for the community to enjoy. And also we’re using the park to combat flooding. “Because the process takes so long to complete, we wanted to utilize the space in the interim, so with about $500,000 in funding, we developed a temporary ‘pop-up park’ while we go through the design phase of the permanent park. The pop-up park includes passive elements, as well as tennis courts, basketball courts, pickle ball courts, a rock climbing structure, and the hardware is portable, meaning it can be transferred elsewhere. Once