During his mayoral campaign and since taking office, James Solomon has criticized the previous administration’s sale of city-owned land, characterizing them as one-shot gimmicks used to plug budget holes. In a campaign video on Instagram, then-Councilman Solomon singled out SciTech Scity as an especially egregious example: the city gave away 16 acres for $10 to a private developer who built luxury housing while a promised high school and STEM incubator never materialized. He even made t-shirts.

SciTech Scity is structured differently than a typical land sale. While Solomon decried this initial sale price ($10) as low, the city will receive ongoing payments forever from the deal that will exceed the value of the land. The deal was also negotiated to deliver public goods — a STEM high school, an innovation hub, and public space — while giving the city an ongoing financial stake in the project’s success. And, surely, had the city required full payment upfront, then Mayor Solomon would have criticized it as a one-shot gimmick as he has other land sales (which will be explored in future articles). 

It’s also worth having a broader discussion about disposing of unused public land. As Marc Pfeiffer, a senior policy fellow at Rutgers’ School of Planning and Policy told the JC Times in September, public land sales are “often necessary to meet competing demands.” Land sales generate revenue, create space for projects that the city cannot build itself, and produce new ratables that generate property tax revenue for decades. Putting valuable urban land to more productive use is a sound policy choice to grow a city. 

It is worth understanding how the deal actually works because, since Solomon’s campaign video, misinformation about the project has continued to proliferate and gets repeated across social media. 

The Land Went to Liberty Science Center, Not a Private Developer

Jersey City did not sell this land to a private developer. The city sold it to SciTech Scity LLC, a nonprofit affiliate of Liberty Science Center. Hudson County tax records — searchable under 179, 189, 251, and 285 Philip Street — confirm that Liberty Science Center remains the owner today.

Alpine Residential, the firm that built the apartments known as Scholars Village, was not selected until 2023 — six years after the land transfer. Alpine operates under a ground lease from Liberty Science Center. It does not own the property.

The City Gets Paid Back Through Surplus Sharing

Under the agreement between the JCRA and SciTech Scity LLC, the city participates in the project’s financial upside through a surplus-sharing mechanism. The Redevelopment Agreement defines “Surplus” as the amount by which the project’s annual revenues exceed its annual expenses. Those revenues come primarily from a long-term ground lease of approximately two acres to Alpine Residential for the apartments.

Here is how the surplus-sharing works:

• Phase 1 — Payback: Once the project’s cumulative surplus exceeds the philanthropic donations made to date (estimated at $75 million in 2017), the city receives 50% of the ongoing surplus until the city has been repaid the full assessed value of the land.
• Phase 2 — Ongoing participation: After the city is fully repaid, it continues to receive 20% of the surplus in perpetuity.

Instead of taking a lump sum and walking away, the city structured a deal that ties its compensation to the long-term financial success of the project. The apartments that Solomon criticizes in his video are the very mechanism generating the revenue that flows back to taxpayers, which will soon be a welcome surplus to the Solomon administration as the city stares down its alleged $250 million deficit. 

We do not know the exact terms of the ground lease between Liberty Science Center and Alpine, as it is not public record. But any such lease required approval from the LSC Board of Trustees, which includes finance and management experts and major donors who have collectively given tens of millions to Liberty Science Center. These donors have strong incentives to negotiate fair-market terms that maximize revenue for the science center’s stake in the project, not to give a freebie to a developer at the expense of the institution that this deal helps to fund.

The High School and Incubator Are Public Projects

Solomon’s video frames the school and incubator as givebacks that a developer promised in exchange for the right to build luxury apartments. That is not how the deal was structured.

The high school is a public project led by the Hudson County Improvement Authority and operated by the Hudson County Schools of Technology. It is funded through county bonds, a $2 million annual contribution from Jersey City, Liberty Science Center’s own fundraising, and philanthropic donations. The innovation hub, Edge Works, is being developed by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority and SciTech Scity with a $20 million state investment. Liberty Science Center has raised over $42 million in philanthropic donations for the project, including a $10 million gift to name the Frank J. Guarini Innovation Campus.

The original city council ordinance authorizing the land transfer explicitly acknowledged that philanthropic funds would be needed to bridge the gap between apartment revenues and total project costs. The residential component was always one necessary revenue stream within a larger funding structure. The cost of building the school and incubator far exceeds what even the luxury apartments generate, which is precisely why the science center needed to raise $42 million in donations on top of everything else.

So Why Isn’t Everything Built Yet?

This is a fair question given the complicated nature of the project. Scholars Village has been completed and recently began leasing. The high school and Edge Works have not yet been finished. But it is the revenue from the luxury housing, decried by Mayor Solomon, that is set to help fund other aspects of the project. 

COVID-19, tariffs, supply chain disruptions, and rising construction costs forced the HCIA to scale back and redesign the high school to reduce costs — the same forces that have delayed public construction projects nationwide. The project’s complexity, involving multiple government agencies, a nonprofit, and philanthropic fundraising, made it especially vulnerable to these disruptions.

That said, the fundraising trajectory provides reason for cautious optimism. Liberty Science Center has raised over $42 million from donors including Bank of America, EY, Verizon, and Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield. That level of commitment signals that the institution and its backers remain serious about delivering the full vision, even if the timeline has slipped.

Legitimate Questions Remain

SciTech Scity deserves a critical look; such civic engagement is good for democracy so long as it is grounded in facts. It is reasonable to question whether the funding mechanisms will prove sufficient for a project this ambitious, whether Jersey City will get its expected school enrollment allocations, and whether Liberty Science Center can manage a development of this scale alongside its museum operations. One can debate whether the city should be doing complicated deals like this at all given low overall public awareness of the intricate details.

But those substantive questions are different from claiming that the city gave land to a private developer and got nothing in return. The city conveyed land to a nonprofit institution, structured an ongoing surplus-sharing arrangement, and attracted tens of millions in outside philanthropic and government investment for a public high school and innovation campus. The deal turned unproductive public land into 500 new homes, a future school, an innovation hub, and a long-term revenue stream for the city, which is precisely the kind of outcome that good urban land-use policy should aim for.

Getting the facts right on deals like this matters. Land use is already a niche topic for many, and public trust erodes when elected officials, regardless of their intentions, mischaracterize how these transactions work. Jersey City residents deserve an honest accounting of what was promised, what has been delivered, and what remains to be done.