I personally think saying “the property owner is definitely going to pay taxes 30 years from now,” is a different statement. Also, less likely to be true, because it’s pretty likely to be sold meantime.

I don’t know that I oppose stuff like this being built at all if it’s going to have a long term abatement like that, but it certainly has a negative impact on the city to have to provide services to thousands (over the last 10 years at least) more people with no income to pay for it.

I guess there’s a good chance they would pay sales tax to somebody, but you would be surprised at the number of people that I’ve known around here who basically live their lives in New York City or Jersey City, and just live here (usually pretty temporarily). I remember one guy overheard in the barbershop saying he lived there for two years and this was the first time he was getting his haircut in Newark, because he just went back to Jersey City for everything. Had never even been far enough down Ferry Street to know what church the barber was talking about by Wilson.