The light rail isn't a terrible thing, but it only fits certain commutes from there. Bus\ferry is going to be a lot faster and potentially cheaper for people once you do connections.

What really helped was hoboken more or less fully developed and they started running out of room places to put larger developments there. Then once a few things did creep in over that way, it hit a critical mass that could sustain itself and become a bit of its own thing.

Also those places rented and sold for a bit less, or were a little bit nicer\bigger, than what you could do in hoboken at the time. I know because we looked at them a few times between 2008 and 2015.