Jersey City to get its own slice of Hoboken's Cake Boss

Reena Rose Sibayan/The Jersey JournalBuddy Valastro of the reality TV show, "Cake Boss, " in Hoboken, arrives in Bayonne to deliver the cake to Buon Appetito Restaurant in Bayonne where reality series "Jersey Shore" star Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi is holding a belated Mother's Day celebration for her mother, Helen. Jersey City will soon be getting its own slice of Hoboken's "Cake Boss."

Sometime next year, Buddy Valastro will be expanding his century-old family baking business to the Lackawanna Center, an 8-story industrial building outside the Holland Tunnel on Grove Street in Jersey City.

The "Boss" will take over 30,000 square feet on the ground floor of the Center in order to build a state-of-the-art baking facility and distribution center. A larger headquarters for the bakery's administrative offices is also in the works.

The storefront at Carlo's City Hall Bakery on Washington Street in Hoboken will remain to serve customers and of course, for tapings of the TLC reality series now in its third season.

"It's exciting...," said Jonathan Ratner, Vice President of Emmes Asset Management, LLC which co-owns the Lackawanna Center. "He now has international demand and he's basing his business expansion out of our property."

It is not yet clear when the Valastro's will be moving in, but construction has already begun on their new digs.

Courtesy of Emmes Asset ManagementA rendering of the Shops at Lackawanna, a new retail project that could bring several new businesses to the Lackawanna Center in Jersey City."Cake Boss" is one of several new tenants who could be moving into the Lackawanna Center in the coming years. Emmes Asset Management is in the planning stages of a new project called "the Shops at Lackawanna" which aims to revamp the ground floor of the building with 200,000 square feet of new retail businesses.

The plan will have to go through the Jersey City Planning Commission before construction can begin, which could take some time, according to Ratner.

The building owners have also begun a four-phase capital improvement project. Phase one has already started with infrastructure and elevator improvements. Next up, construction will begin on two new parking lots with room for 300 spaces each.