595 Newark Ave first: Hudson draws a line against shipping civil courts out of county

JERSEY CITY — Hudson County’s bar association and Board of Commissioners drew a clear line Thursday: temporary civil courtrooms should stay in Jersey City — starting with the county Administration Building at 595 Newark Ave. — not ship across the county line while the historic William J. Brennan Courthouse waits on major HVAC work.

Who first floated an Essex County option remains unclear. No speaker at Thursday’s meeting claimed authorship. Commissioner Bill O’Dea (D-2) said he opposed moving courts to Essex and that he did not know how the idea arose.

Christine Fitzgerald, president of the Hudson County Bar Association, told commissioners during public comment that the association’s Board of Trustees held an emergency meeting on Sept. 21 and adopted a resolution on where the civil division should sit while Brennan undergoes “long overdue” HVAC renovations.

“Our position’s simple,” she said. “We stand with the judiciary in supporting the use of the administration building located at 595 Newark Avenue as a temporary home of the civil division. It’s available. It’s suitable with proper facilities, including jury rooms. It’s right here in Jersey City. Most importantly, it’s what’s right for the residents of Hudson County.”

She framed the fight as access to justice for Hudson County residents, families, workers, small businesses, older adults, people with disabilities, and people without cars — arguing they should not be forced out of county for their day in court, and that jurors should sit in the community they serve.

“Jersey City is our county seat and our transit hub,” Fitzgerald said. “Moving cases out of county, pushing them to virtual hearings or to the municipal court where there are no jury rooms for the juries would place the heaviest burden on those least able to bear it.”

Keeping operations inside Brennan during major HVAC work, she added, “would expose them and the public to a genuine health hazard.”

She closed: the city’s vision for Courthouse Park and a civil division that stays in Jersey City “are not mutually exclusive,” so long as 595 remains available until civil returns to Brennan — and asked the board to ensure no demolition decision comes before residents’, litigants’, jurors’, and court personnel’s needs are considered. “Hudson County Justice belongs in Hudson County.”

That preference collides with the clock on Courthouse Park, planned for the Administration Building site once staff finish moving to the Frank Guarini Justice Complex and asbestos remediation/demolition clear the way. Using 595 as a temporary civil-court home would further delay that sequence — tension that boiled over again Thursday among commissioners and park advocates.

Earlier in the meeting, Board Chair Anthony Romano (D-5) read a statement from County Executive Craig Guy: Guy and Jersey City Mayor James Solomon had been exploring options that would not delay the park or add unnecessary cost, and — as Romano read — the two were then touring the Jersey City Municipal Court Building on Summit Avenue as a possible temporary home for Brennan courtrooms. Guy’s statement called Brennan’s HVAC at the end of its useful life and said the county had structured contractor work for six days a week, 10 hours a day.

Later, Guy joined by Zoom and confirmed the tour himself: he and Solomon’s teams “just completed a tour of the Jersey City Municipal Court,” would reconvene “ASAP” with the judiciary, and faced “challenges both logistical and financial” — “leave no stone unturned,” he said, after walking the courthouse “15 minutes ago.”

O’Dea, speaking before Guy’s Zoom update, said he had only “just heard” about another county that day, opposed leaving Hudson, and was “not willing to discount” municipal court “out of hand.”

Near the end of the meeting, the board added resolution number 33 — language Romano described as coming from the bar association, “encouraging” a move of the civil division to 595 Newark Avenue. O’Dea sponsored while stating his Essex opposition, then abstained on the roll call, arguing the board had voted “the language of a resolution of a bar association and not the language of a resolution of this board doing anything.”

County Counsel Alberico De Pierro said the Tuesday caucus had asked for a board resolution of support “of its own,” similar to past statements on other issues. Commissioner Al Cifelli (D-9) then withdrew to an abstention, citing a conflict as a bar association member, while agreeing the text was recommendatory rather than a clear board directive. O’Dea pressed that counsel should have waited for a next-meeting draft with a proper “be it resolved” aimed at the board.

Vote: On video, O’Dea and Cifelli abstain; multiple yes votes are audible. Auto-captions do not cleanly announce a clerk tally; contemporaneous meeting coverage and a nine-member board with two abstentions put the result at 7-0-2.

Brennan HVAC / Hall path: Thursday’s video confirms Romano saying cancelled special meetings left the county needing to “go out to rebid.” It does not audibly state a Hall Construction award or the figure $33,693,000. That amount has been reported as a proposed multi-year HVAC figure tied to the mid-August agenda path (item 25B carried Aug. 13 toward special meetings that were later cancelled). The Hall contract was not awarded.

For now, the public record on Thursday points to Jersey City first — 595 Newark Ave. as the bar’s and board’s preferred temporary home, Summit Avenue under active tour, and a thin, contested resolution that still rejects the idea of shipping Hudson’s civil courts out of county.