A new baseball stadium for the Giants is a possibility for a dilapidated section of the southern waterfront.
Another project, called Bergen Arches, would bring buses, trucks and cars to the southern waterfront near Jersey City.
Construction of a 550,000-square-foot building on Hoboken's southern waterfront may start this year if a lease being negotiated with John Wiley & Sons, the publisher, is completed.
He became famous for saying that the southern waterfront of the Tagus river in Portugal "is a desert".
Most buildings facing the street passing north of the area are surrounded by walls, while open gardens surround those facing the southern waterfront.
The company, with separate partners, also plans to build 550 more units on Hoboken's southern waterfront and an equal number of units in Fort Lee.
A wealthy land owner, John Middleton, proposed the leveling of Second Street through Rincon Hill to improve access to the southern waterfront.
For the first half of the 19th century, the Harlem River basin had remained relatively unaffected by the commercial growth commonplace along the island's distant southern waterfront.
Efforts to revive Hoboken's long-dormant southern waterfront were snarled in a debate between the city and community groups for more than a decade.
The activity so far has taken place on the southern waterfront.