Barbara and Lee
By Tara Ryazansky Photos by Max Ryazansky
Skye Lofts South Usually downsizing is, well, a step down, but when Barbara and Lee Vargas gave up their Bayonne home for a new apartment at Skye Lofts South last December, they considered it a step up. The couple are lifelong residents of Bayonne who got together in high school. “We were homeowners here in Bayonne for 20 years,” Lee says. In that house they raised a daughter who is currently at Penn State and a son who now has a young son of his own. “Life has different phases and stages,” Lee says. “We just didn’t need a house anymore. We’re empty nesters. I remember this one time, while we were still at the house. Usually when you’re in a house full of people you have that background noise. Everybody was gone, and Barbara and I sat there, and it was like dead silence. It was weird.” “I did not like that,” Barbara says.
40 • BLP ~ SPRING 2020
What she did like were the changes that she had been noticing in Bayonne. Barbara works for National Construction Rentals, where she facilitates rentals of the temporary fencing that secures construction sites, so when a new building goes up, she’s usually one of the first to know. “Jimmy Davis is doing a wonderful job letting all of the development go on,” Barbara says. “It should have happened a long time ago.” The couple are well aware that a lot of Bayonnites aren’t as thrilled as they are with the abundance of development. “You’ll get some people who are longtime Bayonne residents who live in a box, who don’t tend to like change,” Lee says. “The problem is that if you don’t change with the times you get left behind. What’s happening here now should have happened 20 years ago when Hoboken was being developed. Bayonne’s the last community to start developing. People in Bayonne see what’s going on, and it’s hard for them to adjust because everything’s going up at one time.” “You get people who are in a bubble, but then you get people like us who are like, ‘Keep going, keep going’,” Barbara says. “People who I speak with in Bayonne, when I mention where I live, the question that they have is, ‘Is it affordable?’ Yeah it is.”
