What People Are Saying about the Walkway

“I am flattered that I get credit for the Walkway but I see an inevitability in it. It was just the natural thing to. I know it takes leadership and persuasion to get over the little problems but how could you not have what is here today? We had a lot of mayors on the committee and we were trying to keep everybody happy, trying to ensure that Hudson County would remain Hudson County and the municipalities would retain their integrity and all of this could be done in that context. That was a political tug-of-war at times but it wasn’t something where there was flat, absolute opposition. You are seeing a recognition in NJ that cooperation and planning is absolutely essential.”

—Brendan Byrne, Governor, State of NJ, 1974-1982

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“Today it is difficult to come to this spot along the Hudson River Waterfront and understand what it was like here at the beginning of the 1970s when 97% of all the land was fully developed by industry. Less than one acre of land along this 18-mile stretch of waterfront was parkland. The municipalities here at that time had 22% of people living at or below the poverty line with 14% unemployment. Into this situation came the energy industry with proposals for an oil refinery, several oil tank farms, a coal trans-shipment port and just to top it off, a short take off and landing airport! But the people in this area, about nine citizen groups, said: ‘Absolutely no! We do not want this type of thing on the waterfront!’”

—Helen Manogue, Trustee, HRWC

“Overall I think it is very exciting—the Walkway and the development in general. To see so much going on here when it was talked about for so long. To some extent it may have been inevitable, but it is very easy to envision how it might not have happened. Now it seems like such a wonderful moment to finish it.”

—John Weingart, Former Assistant Commissioner NJ D.E.P.

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