HOBOKEN -- Mayor Dawn Zimmer wants to double the size of a park planned for the city's industrial southwest corner, and to do that has set her sights on a piece of property belonging to the owners of one of Hoboken's biggest and most established businesses, Academy Bus.



The Zimmer administration says it has met with the lot's owners to negotiate the purchase of the 1-acre lot, which is adjacent to the the planned site of Southwest Park on Observer Highway. For their part, Academy's owners released a statement Friday saying they looked forward to "a constructive and informative discussion" with city officials over the fate of the property, which the city values at about $4-5 million.

But the administration has already had to go to court to acquire the initial one-acre property for the park, using its power of eminent domain to take the land in 2013 from another private owner, Manhattan-based Ponte Equities, after the two sides could not negotiate a deal. Under state law, municipalities can invoke their power of eminent domain to seize private property in the name of the public good, in exchange for its appraised fair-market value.



Following the eminent domain process, which required the City Council's approval, the administration then had to fight Ponte's appeal of a $5.4 million purchase price decided by an arbitration panel, before the city finally won a favorable ruling from a jury in November that reduced the price to $4.5 million.



If a deal can't be struck for its adjacent lot, a similar battle could ensue, with Zimmer spokesman Juan Melli stating Friday that the administration was prepared to use, "all legal means available," to acquire the property, including the city's power of eminent domain.



The lot is officially owned by Jefferson Street Partners II, L.P., a company owned by the owners of Academy, said Adam Dvorin, an Academy spokesman. Academy's owners, the Tedesco family, could prove formidable foes.



With more than 1,000 buses in a dozen U.S. cities, Academy bills itself as "the largest privately owned and operated transportation company in the US." The company was established in 1968 by Frank Tesdesco, whose father Pasquale was in the bus business, and Academy is now run by Frank's sons Francis and Mark Tedesco. The company's Hoboken headquarters dominates the city's northwestern corner, with an office on 15th Street surrounded by acres of parking for Academy's familiar blue-and-white commuter buses and its silver charter coaches.



The Academy lot being sought by the city is on Observer Highway, immediately west of the planned park site, across Harrison Street. The lot is an open expanse of asphalt, surrounded by a chain link fence topped with razor wire, with an appearance softened somewhat by hedges. Nothing was parked there Friday afternoon. A quonset hut that serves as an Academy maintenance shed sits at the lot's southwestern corner.

The lot owners noted in a densely worded statement Friday that another meeting with city officials was being scheduled following an initial session in January, "to engage in good faith discussions so that the property owner can fully understand the City's intentions with regard to the property, and the affects that such an action would have on the remainder of the owner's property as well as the operations of the owner's tenant."

Southwest Park is important to the Zimmer Administration not only to provide public open space in an area well away from the city's park-lined waterfront, but also as the site of an underground retention basin to mitigate flooding.

The City Council authorized a real estate appraisal of the Academy lot as a first step toward its acquisition. Melli, the Zimmer spokesman, said in an email that the administration anticipates the value will be about the same as the initial lot acquired for $4.5 million. Whatever the final price, whether negotiated or awarded by arbitrators or a jury, Melli said the city was determined to acquire it for the new park.



"The City will use all legal means available to advance acquisition," he said.



Members of the public walking past the lot on Friday said the area could use a park. Yilun Luo, 19, a freshman at Stevens Institute of Technology who lives just up the Palisades from the area in Jersey City's Heights neighborhood, said the vacant, fenced off Academy lot would make sense as parkland.



"Since I came here one year ago, this area has been closed," said Luo, a Freshman student of finance who is from northern China. "So, maybe they will open it up and make some improvements so people can use it."



Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.