Winners, Losers, And The Fine Print At 701 Newark Ave

By The Garden State Gazette

A roughly $200 million structured capitalization just locked in a 34-story, 360-unit tower at 701 Newark Ave in Jersey City’s Journal Square, with 90 affordable units, union labor from construction through operations, and a fat list of institutional backers behind it.

On paper, it’s a clean story:
Homestead Gateway = more housing, more “walkability,” more “vibrant” Journal Square.

But in North Jersey, big money never moves without winners and losers.

GSG breaks it down.

WINNER: Lions Group (The Developer)

Let’s start with the obvious.

Lions Group, the project’s developer, walks into this with:

• A prime Journal Square site three blocks from the PATH hub
• A fully assembled $200M capital stack (construction loan + bridge + LIHTC equity + Aspire tax credit purchase + Freddie Mac forward)
• Political cover from being able to say the words “affordable housing” and “100% union labor” in the same sentence

If they build on time and lease up decently, they’re sitting on:

• A stabilized 360-unit mixed-income building
• Ground-floor retail in a transit-rich neighborhood
• An asset perfectly aligned with the Journal Square 2060 Plan, which is literally written to reward dense, transit-oriented development near the PATH.

Even if the margins are thinner because of affordability set-asides and union costs, they’re still the ones holding the deed at the end.

Verdict:
Big win. High-profile project, long-term asset, and plenty of “we did a good thing” PR baked into the deal.

WINNER: Goldman Sachs Alternatives & Freddie Mac

The article’s own language gives away how institutional this is:

• A capital solution from the Urban Investment Group at Goldman Sachs Alternatives
• A forward commitment from Freddie Mac baked into the structure

Translation:

• Goldman gets to deploy capital into a project that checks all the modern boxes: transit-oriented, mixed-income, union, ESG-adjacent.
• Freddie Mac gets guaranteed product in the form of multifamily housing with an affordability component in a growing, rail-connected node.

They get:

• Yield
• Political goodwill
• A press release that reads like a case study in “doing well by doing good”

If the building leases up and Journal Square keeps trending upward, this is exactly the type of deal these shops like to replicate.

Verdict:
Win. Their risk is diversified across the structure, but the upside is reputational + financial.

WINNER: Union Labor – Hudson County Building Trades & 32BJ

The Daily Voice write-up is crystal clear:

• 100% union labor during construction under a Project Labor Agreement with Hudson County Building Trades
• Permanent union operations via 32BJ SEIU on the back end

That means:

• Construction phase:
  • Serious man-hours for local trades
  • A marquee high-rise job in Journal Square, not some anonymous box off the Turnpike
• Operations phase:
  • Long-term building service jobs (porters, doormen, cleaners, etc.) under a union contract

In an era where non-union “value engineering” is the norm, a full-stack union commitment is not small.

Verdict:
Clear, direct win for organized labor. Real jobs now, ongoing jobs later.

WINNER: Future PATH Commuters Who Can Actually Land a Unit

On the resident side, you’ve got:

• 360 total apartments,
• 90 of them restricted as affordable according to the JLL release.

For the people who actually land those 90 affordable slots, the upside is strong:

• New construction
• Three blocks from Journal Square Transportation Center
• Direct access to NYC and Newark via PATH, plus buses and local connections

In a region where “affordable” usually means “far from transit and jobs,” that’s rare.

But let’s keep it honest:

• 90 units is 25% of the building.
• A big share of the residents will still be market-rate tenants paying whatever the building can command in 2027, 2028, and beyond.

Verdict:

• Big win for the slice of families that actually get those 90 units.
• Mixed for everyone else — they get the building’s presence and neighborhood changes whether or not they ever step inside.

MIXED: Journal Square As a Neighborhood

From the city’s perspective, this thing is almost a perfect Journal Square 2060 Plan poster child:

• High-density housing near the PATH
• Ground-floor retail
• Open connections to a plaza and transit
• Bike storage, shared workspaces, “amenity” lifestyle stuff baked in

On the plus side for the area:

• More residents = more foot traffic for local businesses
• Better eyes on the street, more tax ratables, more political proof that Journal Square’s “rebirth” is finally real and not just another planning board PDF
• A city that has been zoning for height and density here for years finally gets another flagship tower

On the minus side (this is where the critics will be loud):

• Every new high-rise with glossy amenities helps reset the rent expectations for landlords within walking distance
• Long-time tenants in older walk-ups may feel “squeezed” as their buildings are sold, renovated, or re-positioned to chase the same commuter crowd that will be touring Homestead Gateway
• The project sits on what used to be a municipal parking lot – the kind of land that drivers, small businesses, and some locals might say they needed for cars, not towers

None of that is a guaranteed outcome; it’s the typical Journal Square gentrification vs. revitalization tension.

Verdict:
The neighborhood as a whole is a situational winner – but only if:

• public spaces stay genuinely public,
• affordability mandates don’t stall at this one project, and
• the next few towers don’t go 0% affordable and 100% luxury.

POTENTIAL LOSERS: Small Landlords & Long-Time Renters

Nobody in the JLL press release is going to say this out loud, but the pattern is familiar all over North Jersey:

• Transit-adjacent high-rise goes up
• Rental comps creep upward
• Investors start sniffing around existing buildings within a 5–10 minute walk radius
• Long-time renters, especially in older stock, feel the pressure first

Layer in the Journal Square 2060 Plan, whose explicit purpose is to transform the area into a dense central business district with mixed-use towers, and you can see how this plays out long term.

If the city doesn’t pair these deals with:

• strong enforcement of whatever affordability rules exist,
• tenant protections,
• and a serious pipeline of additional mixed-income projects,

then some of the real “losers” become:

• older tenants who’ve been in Journal Square for decades, and
• small landlords who get squeezed between rising taxes, rising expectations for renovations, and competition from institutional players.

Verdict:
Not automatic losers, but absolutely the people with the most to lose if policy doesn’t keep pace with development.

WINNER (QUIETLY): Jersey City’s Long Game

Zoom out from one lot and one tower.

This project hits every note Jersey City has been rehearsing since the Journal Square 2060 Plan was drafted:

• Transit-oriented residential density
• Mixed-use programming (housing + retail + amenities)
• Journal Square as a true CBD competitor to Downtown, not just a transit stop with old signage

For the city:

• This is a proof-of-concept that big capital, union labor, and affordability commitments can coexist in one deal.
• It’s another line on the sales pitch to future investors: “Look what we just did at 701 Newark Ave.”

If they’re smart, they’ll leverage this project to demand equal or better affordability and labor terms from the next wave of developers who come calling.

Verdict:
Win—if they treat this as the new floor, not the rare exception.

The GSG Read

Strip the PR down and you get:

• Clear winners: Lions Group, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Freddie Mac, local unions, and the relatively small pool of families who score those 90 affordable units.
• Probable winners: Journal Square’s image, PATH-friendly commuters, and Jersey City’s long-term redevelopment narrative.
• At-risk groups: older renters, small landlords, and local businesses who will have to navigate the next rent cycle that this tower helps set.

The story at 701 Newark Ave isn’t just “$200M for a tall building.”

It’s a test:

Can Journal Square add height, money, and density
without quietly pushing out the people
who were there before the cranes?

GSG will be watching.