WHEN writer Adam Duerson moved to the tri-state area after college, he knew he wanted to live in New Jersey. Like many, he was attracted to the slower pace of life and lower cost of living across the river.
“It’s a little more residential, a little more quiet,” he says of New Jersey. “It can get a little claustrophobic working in Midtown. After a 10-hour day, you need to get out of the city.
“And it’s so much cheaper. The rent I pay here – what that money would translate to in the city, it wouldn’t be an apartment I’d be willing to live in.”
Yet, while Duerson knew he wanted to live in New Jersey, he wasn’t certain where. Once something of an industrial wasteland, in recent years the western bank of the Hudson has blossomed with new apartment complexes and revitalized neighborhoods. Jersey City, Weehawken and Hoboken were all viable options for Duerson. Eventually, he chose a spot in Jersey City near the Grove Street PATH station. He stayed there for one year, at the end of which, craving a younger, more energetic scene, he decided to move.
“Jersey City is very family-oriented,” he says. “It’s a great community, but it’s much older. You have a lot of little kids running around and a lot of older, established families. Just not many kids my age. Very few bars or hip restaurants,” he says.
Duerson found the vitality he was looking for in Hoboken.
“Hoboken is a mecca for twenty-somethings, with a lot of bars and restaurants,” he says. “I went to school in Madison, Wisconsin. I find Hoboken very similar to that downtown area. It’s the perfect post-college town.”
It’s also, with a population just under 40,000, a fairly intimate place, in contrast to Jersey City, which has towering office buildings and a quarter-million residents.
“There’s always something to do, but it still feels like a small town,” says Stevens Institute student Hiral Shah, a lifelong Hoboken resident.
And while much of Hoboken’s housing stock consists of the beautiful brick structures built over a century ago, in the last few years the city has, perhaps in an effort to compete with its neighbor to the south, constructed several new luxury apartment buildings. Renters interested in amenities like private health clubs, parquet floors and 24-hour concierge services will fit right in at developments like 333 River St. and Hudson Square North.
After all, youthful scene or no youthful scene, not everyone is interested in climbing the stairs of a fifth-floor walk-up.