HOBOKEN -- A battle may be brewing between city officials who have moved to acquire Hoboken's last working shipyard for use as a waterfront park and NJ Transit, which supports a plan by the property's new owner, New York Waterway, to use it as a ferry maintenance yard.

Unless an agreement is reached, the competing plans for the Union Dry Dock site pit the Hoboken City Council and Mayor Dawn Zimmer, a member of Governor-elect Phil Murphy's transition team, against the state transit agency that Murphy will control when he is sworn-in in January.

On Monday, the council authorized a proposal by Zimmer to acquire the Union Dry Dock property on Sinatra Drive through a negotiated purchase or, if necessary, condemnation under the city's power of eminent domain.

The 130-year-old shipyard occupies about 3 acres of riverfront land between 10th and 11th Streets, which the city wants for another link in its chain of waterfront parks and walkways opposite the Manhattan skyline.

On Wednesday, Zimmer reiterated her commitment to push ahead with the acquisition despite having just six weeks left in office. Zimmer will step down as mayor at the end of the year, after she declined to seek a third term.

"I am mayor until Dec. 31," Zimmer said. "And I'm going to continue to try my hardest to do what's best for the people of Hoboken."

While Zimmer will be gone, the political ally she endorsed, Councilman Ravi Bhalla, was elected to succeed her. And in addition to voting with his council colleagues to acquire the dry dock property on Monday, Bhalla has pledged that as mayor he will follow-through on Zimmer's ongoing open space initiatives.

Hoboken was among Hudson County's heavily Democratic communities to support Murphy on Nov. 7, and the governor-elect was in the Mile Square City the next morning to thank voters there, when he appeared with Bhalla and Zimmer. Murphy later named Zimmer to the Urban and Regional Growth Committee on his transition team.

A spot on a transition team often preceeds an appointment to a cabinet position, a move some believed was the reason Zimmer announced in June that she would not run for re-election. Asked Wednesday whether she would argue for the waterfront park from inside the Murphy administration if given a post, Zimmer declined to discuss hypotheticals. She also declined to say whether she would have to recuse herself from the dry dock or other Hoboken issues if named to Murphy's cabinet.

NJ Transit has weighed in on the side of New York Waterway, and informed the city that it was in discussions to buy the dry dock property from the company, which would prevent the city from seizing the site and insure that it remained available for ferry maintenance.

NJ Transit released a statement Thursday asserting the importance of ferries for normal and back-up commuter service.

"Optimizing the availability and use of ferries is a crucial part of a coordinated trans-Hudson transportation strategy to meet the future travel needs of New Jersey residents," the agency stated.

In a reference to this year's so-called "Summer of Hell," the agency added: "The recent summer Amtrak infrastructure repair program at Penn Station New York provides just one example of how ferries provide critical additional Trans-Hudson capacity and transportation alternatives that helped move thousands of commuters between New Jersey and New York safely and efficiently."

Despite officials' stated desire to acquire the dry dock site for parkland, the city failed to negotiate the purchase of the property with its previous owner. Then on Nov. 3, New York Waterway finalized a deal to buy the site for $11.5 million, with the intention of leaving it largely as is, to repair and maintain its ferry fleet.

New York Waterway says it is losing its current maintenance yard in Weehawken on property adjacent to its ferry terminal there, because the owner of that land, Lennar Properties, is moving ahead with plans to develop the site as housing.

New York Waterway's chairman, Armand Pohan, warned the City Council on Monday night that the $11.5 million his company paid for the drydock property would be just a fraction of the city's overall costs of acquiring the site if it decides to seize the property against the ferry operator's will.

"The power of condemnation is a formidable tool. It gives you the right to tell a property owner, 'Get out,' For this, however, you must pay," Pohan told the council. "You are not talking about relocating a pizzeria. You are talking about a unique piece of property and use which, incidentally, must be located on the water.

"Now you must identify another site for us to relocate and pay the costs of that relocation. Good luck to you, because after looking for the past 10 years, I can safely say that there is no other suitable deep-water site anywhere between Fort Lee and lower Jersey City."

Pohan added that 2,000 of Zimmer's and the City Council's own Hoboken constituents commute on his ferries, which are an integral part of the trans-Hudson transportation network.

A spokesman for the city, Juan Melli, acknowledged that NJ Transit also has power of eminent domain and could acquire the property from Hoboken, if necessary. But Melli said the city remained hopeful that an agreement could be reached that would satisfy all the parties, possibly by finding an alternative site for a ferry maintenance yard.

"NJ Transit's power is greater, the state trumps the city," Melli conceded. But, he reiterated, "The city still wants the property."

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