Page 24 - RE-NJ

22 JANUARY 2026
Steven Fulop w was as slated to step down
as Jersey City’s m m ma ayor on Jan. 14, 2026,
following 12 2 y y yea e rs in the offi ce and
ei eigh gh ght t ye yea a ar ars s as as as a a a c c cit it ity y y councilman.
Courtesy photo
LOOKING BACK
Fulop, outgoing Jersey City mayor, refl ects on
policies behind historic development boom, affordability push
Editor’s note: This story fi rst
appeared on our website, RE-NJ.com,
on Dec. 31, 2025.
By his own admission, Steve
Fulop was skeptical of the
development community when
he joined the Jersey City Council in
2005.
His view today, as he winds down his
third term as mayor, is indisputably
different.
“In 2013, I started to think more
about the fact that a healthy city is a
growing city,” Fulop said, alluding to
his fi rst year as mayor, after having
built relationships on the council,
in the private sector and elsewhere
as part of a “good, on-the-ground
education” on how cities grow.
“We wanted to be recognized as a
world class city with arts, culture
and nightlife — and development
was key to that.”
The shift was pivotal for a
municipality that, since Fulop took
offi ce, has become even more fi rmly
entrenched as the epicenter of
commercial real estate investment
in New Jersey, most notably in the
multifamily space. Developers in
By Joshua Burd
Jersey City have completed more
than 45,000 units of market-rate
and affordable housing in the last
10 years, according to the mayor’s
offi ce, while the city has tens of
thousands of additional units under
construction or approved for future
projects.
Fulop, who leaves offi ce on Jan.
14, has famously leveraged that
demand to expand development
beyond the city’s downtown and
waterfront neighborhoods. He’s also
taken major steps to boost access
to affordable housing, as his team
notes, while spearheading high-
profi le, public-sector investments
that supported major social, cultural
and quality-of-life initiatives.
The decisions weren’t universally
popular. Fulop knows that well, but
his conviction is as strong as ever
that Jersey City is better off after 12
years of pro-growth policies.
“I realized that even those loud
voices on social media don’t refl ect
the larger community,” he said,
especially after winning three
mayoral elections. “If you were to
look at the Facebook crowd during
those campaigns, you’d think I was