Historic New Jersey Yacht Club Has New Lease Agreement

The Bayonne, N.J. City Council in March voted to authorize a 10-year lease agreement with the Atlas Yacht Club of Bayonne, Inc. The club is a nonprofit corporation which operates a private boating and yacht facility. Its most recent lease deal expired at the end of 2020.

A historic New Jersey yacht club has entered into a new decade-long pact with the city that it has operated from since the early 1940s.

The Bayonne, N.J. City Council in March voted to authorize a 10-year lease agreement with the Atlas Yacht Club of Bayonne, Inc., The Reporter reported. The club is a nonprofit corporation which operates a private boating and yacht facility. Its most recent lease deal expired at the end of 2020.

According to the ordinance passed by the city council, the club has been operating on the land since May 23, 1942, on the waterway between Bayonne and Staten Island that connect Upper New York Bay to lower Newark Bay and the Arthur Kill, The Reporter reported.

It was founded in the early 1930s, on part of the former Port Johnson Coal Docks which were built in the 1860s by the Central Railroad of New Jersey to supply coal to Hudson County and the surrounding region, The Reporter reported. Homes are constructed on the dock, which juts out into the water, with boats docked in front.

The private club has boasted a number of prominent citizens as residents, including artist John Noble, The Reporter reported. Noble lived on a houseboat in the club until the early 1980s, and became famous for his work of the various shipwrecked vessels that were rotting in the nearby harbor.

While the club existed on the land since the 1940s, there was never any formal lease between the Atlas Yacht Club and the city until 2011, the Hudson Reporter reported. In that year, the City Council entered into a lease with the club, through which the club paid the city $460,000 over the ten-year period, The Reporter reported. That lease agreement expired on Dec. 31, 2020.

The new lease runs retroactive from Jan. 1, 2021, until Dec. 31, 2031, with the club paying the city a total of $625,000 over the course of the next ten years, The Reporter reported.

During the public hearing for the new lease reported on by The Reporter, resident Mike Morris advocated the council approve a longer lease agreement, pointing to the history of the yacht club in Bayonne.

“It’s an area that is absolutely historical,” Morris said. “It is valuable to the city of Bayonne. I believe that a ten-year period is not enough. It probably should be for 100 years. It’s a place where you can actually go down and look at and almost travel back in time. It’s magical. John Noble’s artworks hang in the Library of Congress. Some of the greatest artworks that he commissioned in his lifetime were along First Street.”

Morris told The Reporter the small village of buildings on the docks with accompanying boat slips “colorful and beautiful,” encouraging those in the city to view it from the adjacent walkway. He also noted that a longer lease agreement was needed to prevent a potential future administration that is hostile to the club from opting not to renew it.