Shall we dance? Do it for free in Weehawken!

Shall we dance? Do it for free in Weehawken!

Hudson Reporter, 22-Mar-15

Keeping fit in the colder months has been a real challenge for many people. Now Weehawken residents can get some exercise on the dance floor and maybe make some new friends at the same time.

Free dance classes are available at the Nutrition Center each Wednesday evening from 7 to 9 p.m. The dance instructors are Restie Dantis and Lisa Purdy, and judging from a recent session, their teaching is not only invigorating but fun, too.

Dantis has been performing since the age of nine, some fifty one years of experience. The dances he teaches include the two-step, and ballroom and Latin dances in the American and international styles.

His goal is to help learners, in a short period of time, to enjoy themselves when they go dancing in social situations and to bring greater pleasure to their lives.

Purdy learned Ballroom and Latin dance styles in Taiwan, and immigrated to the USA.

She met Dantis at the Nutrition Center. Later Purdy took the lessons from Dantis to improve her Ballroom dance in International and Latin styles. She has been taking his private lessons since 2010, and became Dantis’s dance partner.

**Today** is Registration Deadline for **Free Public Library's Circle Time and Story Time Programs**

Weehawken's 12 Highest Assessed Properties

Weehawken's 12 Highest Assessed Properties

NJ.com, 11-Mar-15

By Kathryn Brenzel

Over the past year, Weehawken's waterfront has grown--and so has its average property tax bill. 

The average bill was $12,250 in 2014, a nearly $2,000 increase from the previous year and the highest in the county, according to data released by the state Department of Community Affairs.

Mayor Richard Turner told The Jersey Journal that the average is "skewed" by the waterfront. "If you get rid of the waterfront, we wouldn't be highest," he said.

Over the past year, a number of new large-scale projects have joined the township's waterfront--such as The Estuary--meaning that there are more, higher- assessed properties to spike the average, Turner told NJ Advance Media.  

"The average tax bill is meaningless to the average homeowner," he said. "We have a booming waterfront, so it skews all the numbers."

A majority of the highest assessed properties are located along the Hudson River, according to the township tax assessor's office. The top two assessed properties are 1000 and 1200 Harbor Boulevard, massive 10-story office buildings at Lincoln Harbor.

The buildings--whose central tenant is banking giant UBS --are owned by Hartz Mountain Group, which started buying up property along the waterfront in 1985, said Allen Magrini, senior vice president of land use and development at Hartz. He said the waterfront has dramatically changed in the last 25 years, transforming from a train terminal to a destination that is accessible by ferry, light rail, bus and car. He said Hartz's two office buildings are largely responsible for the change.  

"They were the anchors. They allowed us to bring a lot of the infrastructure that wasn't there," he said. "Those buildings were really the catalysts."

NJ Advance Media obtained a list of the highest assessed properties in Weehawken through an Open Public Records request to the township tax assessor's office. Here are the top 12, rounded to the nearest decimal:  

1. 1000 Harbor Boulevard:$80.5 million1000 and 1200 Harbor Boulevard are two 10-story office buildings in Lincoln Harbor. These blue glass buildings, owned by Hartz Mountain Group, are home to several different restaurants and businesses, including UBS.  

2. 1200 Harbor Boulevard: $53.8 million 

3. 300 Boulevard East: $49.3 millionThe office building overlooks the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, and has multiple tenants. The building functions as a data center and telecommunication facility.

4. RiversEdge, 1500 Avenue: $35.6 million This 236-unit luxury apartment building opened in 2009. It is one of several of Mack-Cali Roseland's projects at Port Imperial. The developer just opened another building nearby, RiverParc. 

5.The Estuary, 1600 Harbor Boulevard B: $27 millionDevelopers Roseland and Hartz Mountain opened the first of its three buildings in April 2014. Building B was the second phase of the luxury apartment complex. 

6. 1919 Park Avenue: $23.9 millionThis office building is located next to 300 Boulevard East, and is home to a number of businesses, including CenturyLink. 

7. Sheraton Lincoln Harbor Hotel, 500 Harbor Boulevard: $22.4 millionThe Sheraton Lincoln Harbor Hotel is located along the waterfront, just steps from the ferry and a light rail station.    

8. The Estuary, 1600 Harbor Boulevard building A: $22.3 million

9. The Estuary, 1600 Harbor Boulevard building C: $21.9 million

10. The Avenue Collection, 700 Avenue at Port Imperial: $18.1 millionThis is the future sight of the third building to be constructed as part of the waterfront condominium community, The Avenue Collection. In July 2014, developer Lennar opened the first of its planned five buildings at Port Imperial. Condos in the seven-story, 74-unit condominium building, 1000 Avenue, range from $1.1 million to $3.9 million, according to the community's website. The second building, 1200 Avenue, is already under construction. 

11. 1500 Harbor Boulevard: $11.8 millionLocated at Lincoln Harbor marina, the office building is home to the Lincoln Harbor Yacht Club. 

12. Tower Plaza, 4100-4106 Park Avenue: $8 millionThis shopping center lies in the shadow of the iconic water tower and includes a Pathmark, an A&P, a Supercuts and several other businesses.

Weehawken resident opens video advertising studio

Weehawken resident opens video advertising studio

Hudson Reporter, 1-Mar-15

By Art Schwartz

When theater major Steve Day moved to New York City from Kansas, his goal was to become a Broadway director. As is so often the case, it didn’t quite work out that way. Instead he wound up founding a group of companies at the forefront of the exploding industry of online video advertising.

His companies – Motion Capture NYC and ideaMachine among them – have worked with Starbucks, DC Comics, Intel, Verizon, and many other leading corporations, creating award-winning animated ads for the Internet and other applications. His Whiteboard Animation Studio creates the familiar ads depicting a hand rapidly drawing an image and bringing it to life.

“We are part of a movement that as of five years ago didn’t exist, which is online video advertising,” said the 38-year-old Weehawken resident. “Five years ago you couldn’t stream a video very well, nor could you even stream it on your Blackberry. Now all these devices came out, so online video advertising is exploding. One out of two people on the internet right now is on YouTube. It’s on course to surpass Google. Everybody is on the internet and they’re all watching videos, and business is behind the curve in realizing that eyeballs are going in that direction. Viewership is growing 30 percent faster than advertising spending. That puts us in a great place.”

Recently his companies animated the Avengers characters for The Marvel Experience, a traveling theme park. They motion-captured Elmo for an Xbox game. They provided animation for ESPN’s Espy Awards.

None of this was what he planned.

The road to animation

With an undergraduate theater degree from Oklahoma Baptist University and an MFA from Baylor, Day and his wife moved east in the mid-2000s to help a Baylor acquaintance with some productions in New York.

“I came to New York for theater, but it was hard to make a living in the theater,” he said. “I was doing web design and graphics design to make a living.”

That lasted about three years. Then his father-in-law asked Day to help out by directing a series of interactive videos for a company called Vertical Learning Curve. That’s an online program that allows people to earn a master’s degree in business by participating in a series of courses they design themselves, much like a choose-your-own-adventure video game. The VLC project took Day about five years to complete.

Creating the videos involved extensive work with motion capture – the process of filming live action and turning it into animation. After the project ended, “I had a motion capture system, a really skilled crew, and we wanted to keep it going so we would just take jobs here and there,” he said. “One of the jobs we took was whiteboard animation.”

With all the pieces in place and the industry growing at an astonishing rate, he doubled-down on creating video ads, establishing sister companies for the various services they offered: whiteboard, motion capture, animation.

“The funny thing is that my experience creating a masters-in-business program prepared me very well to start a business,” he said.

At the same time, he had experience in directing for the theater. How did that translate to directing for video?

“The skill set of the director is still the same,” he said. “There are a lot of similarities between theater and animation: music and even dance or movement, character journeys, costumes, design, sound effects. To communicate the message and the story is the most important thing.”

That said, there were some key differences. One is that time moves much slower in creating animation. Also, “I was surprised to discover that these [video] artists had never experienced a [live] audience before,” said Day. “In the theater when we would tell a joke we would immediately know if the joke was funny or not. If we did something dramatic, people would laugh or cry. In the theater you have a direct relationship with the audience. With animation you have the most indirect relationship with the audience you can imagine.”

The golden place

Day bought a home in Weehawken about four years ago, around the same time he founded his studios. “It’s a great town,” he said. “I like to say it’s the closest thing to suburban living that’s 15 minutes from midtown.”

His intertwined companies operate out of Brooklyn, with 22 employees currently. Day said his ambition is “To dominate the online video advertising market. Historically it didn’t exist and I have no doubts it is exploding right now so we really want to take advantage.”

“Other aspirations would be directing for an animated film or TV show,” he added.

What about live theater?

“Theater doesn’t pay.”

Fair enough. Recently his companies have dabbled in live action and special effects work, in addition to animation. Is that a direction he sees them going in?

“We’re getting a bit more into that but these are highly competitive arenas,” said Day. “The other thing is that in animation, believe it or not, there are still things that nobody’s ever seen before, and that’s a huge competitive advantage. So that’s why my focus is there. I realize I’m in this golden place, this golden opportunity.”

Weehawken School Closes on Friday Due to Weather!

Weehawken Schools were closed on Thursday and Friday.

Thursday closing made sense because of the snowstorm. And lot of schools around NJ were closed on that day.

But Friday's closing did not make sense to many parents. For some reason, only Union City, Weehawken and West New York were closed on that day. Many parents preferred that school should have opted for delayed opening instead.

Please share your thoughts.