HOBOKEN – They kick around the development issue. Peter Cammarano comes across as the moderate, while Dawn Zimmer stakes out the position of the grassroots neighborhood activist.
Now it’s Beth Mason’s turn.
An infamous quote attributed to her served as the buildup to this discussion topic: “develop or die.”
She wades in.
“Really what it all boils down to is an economic development plan,” says Mason, who supported the Chruch Towers project because it contained 400 affordable housing units.
When she served on the Planning Board, “we brought the community together for a vision, it became a building plan. When you build something, you need to deal with the transportation issues that surround it as well. …Development equals ‘I can’t get out of town.’ That is a challenge for us. We have to look at economic development to bring excitement.
“If we don’t continue to progress, we will continue to stagnate, and none of us wants that,” she adds.
