New Location of Hard Grove Faces Setbacks

If you were in downtown Jersey City yesterday afternoon/evening, you probably noticed that Newark Avenue from the Grove St. PATH station to Barrow Street was blocked off and there were a lot of trucks on Columbus, blocking traffic and going back and forth.

Why? Well, it appears that construction workers on the empty lot next to the new Hard Grove location on Newark Ave, dug too deep and ended up damaging the foundation beneath the building, destabilizing the structure. Workers noticed the facade seemed to be tilting and alerted officials who deemed the building in danger of collapsing and evacuated 8 buildings in the area.

Luckily, everyone is fine and workers spent the evening dumping truckfulls of dirt near the lot at the foundation which helped stabilize it. The streets have been reopened and people were let back into their buildings. However, more permanent measures will be needed to properly stabilize the building and make sure it's safe for occupancy and continued work which probably means a pretty hefty delay for Hard Grove.

Considering the other permit delays and construction issues that seem to be a problem for almost all the new restaurants opening up, I'm going to guess Hard Grove won't be opening until sometime next year.

*UPDATE*
Hard Grove made an official announcement via Facebook that they are pushing back their soft and grand openings. They had originally had the soft opening scheduled for the 23rd and the Grand Opening scheduled for Oct. 30th, but have said the new dates are yet to be determined.