County Commissioner and mayoral candidate Bill O’Dea is calling on the state to dedicate funds previously set aside for the Pompidou x museum to Jersey City’s parks.
“I am calling on the state to allocate the $24 million [in] funds that were set aside for the Pompidou museum to be used for our city parks like Country Village, Pershing Field and Caven Point field. There currently exist plans to upgrade these facilities and others but the funding to do so has not been secured.”
On Saturday, New Jersey Monitor reported that Tim Sullivan, Chief Executive Officer of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, had sent a letter to the president of the Centre Pompidou museum in Paris telling him that the planned Journal Square outpost would not receive the tens of millions in aid New Jersey has promised.
The $24 million allocated for the project by lawmakers in the 2024 budget and $18 million from the 2022 budget had been returned to the state’s general fund, said the letter. The state has also asked that the Jersey City Redevelopment Authority return $6 million in unspent state money provided for the project.
In 2021, Mayor Steve Fulop and Gov. Phil Murphy announced the Pompidou x project, saying that it would draw visitors from around the region, while revitalizing Journal Square. In April, however, Sullivan warned the JCRA that a $19 million yearly operating deficit for the museum might cause the state to withdraw its support.
“It would be an injustice if [the funds] were taken away from Jersey City,” wrote O’Dea.
O’Dea isn’t alone among mayoral candidates looking for alternatives to Pompidou x. Mussab Ali tweeted that “the state should still allocate the $24 million towards a different kind of project for JC.” Jim McGreevey, who staked out a position against the museum in February, has called upon the city to build neighborhood recreation centers.
Council President Joyce Watterman, who supported Pompidou x and traveled to Paris to meet with Centre Pompidou officials last year, has not commented on the state’s decision to pull funding.