JERSEY CITY -- A vacant set of buildings that for 50 years housed a rope factory is slated to become residential housing, with the City Council tomorrow scheduled to give initial approval to a 30-year tax break for the project.

The $94 million planned development at the Whitlock factory site would bring 330 apartments, 70 percent of them set aside as affordable housing, to an area of the city that has become a real-estate hot spot. The roughly 7-acre site is located at the foot of Lafayette Street, about a mile northwest from the entrance to Liberty State Park.

The city has planned real-estate development on the site since at least as far back as the administration of Glenn D. Cunningham, who was elected mayor in 2001. In a statement, Mayor Steve Fulop said he is "proud" to bring the project, known as Whitlock Mills, to fruition.

"Not only are we preserving a piece of our city's history and bringing further development away from the waterfront, we are also adding hundreds of affordable units at a time when our residents need them most," Fulop said

The deal up for the council's OK would allow the developers -- Edward Martoglio's RPM Partners -- to eschew traditional taxes for 30 years and instead pay a percentage of their annual gross revenue to the city (5 percent for the affordable units, 11 percent for the 100 market-rate apartments). The developer stands to save about $13 million over the course of the 30 years.

The city says it will collect $330,455 the first year Whitlock Mills opens, versus $152,905 it collects on the property today.

The site was home to the Passaic Zinc Works in the late 19th Century, then it was taken over in the early 1900s by the Whitlock Cordage Co., which made rope largely for maritime use. The company dissolved in 1961 and at least one building on the site housed a factory outlet store that decade.

The Cunningham administration in 2003 awarded a 40-year tax break to a company to develop the site into dozens of townhouses. But the project languished for years. In April 2007, the then-developer said it hoped to have some buildings open by that July.

The New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Agency foreclosed on the site in 2012.

The council meets tomorrow at 10 a.m. at City Hall, 280 Grove St.

A World War II-era ad seeking women to work at Whitlock Cordage Co. in Jersey City.

Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.