Jersey City Makes a Statement With Fireworks Over the Hudson

JERSEY CITY, N.J. — Sometime around sunset on July 4, the national anthem will start to play, setting off a carefully choreographed fireworks display above the Hudson River. The production clocks in at 20 minutes and 30 seconds (give or take a few seconds) and includes thousands of individual fireworks launching from barges on the river.

For years, the fireworks bursting above the Hudson have served as a bridge connecting both sides of the river on Independence Day, but the event, sponsored by Macy’s, had been put on by New York City. Now, though, the looming Manhattan skyline is intended to be the backdrop, as thousands of people gather on Jersey City’s waterfront for a daylong event.

“What else could you ask for on the Fourth of July?” said Phil Grucci, the chief executive and creative director of Fireworks by Grucci, the company his family has owned for six generations, starting in Italy in 1850. The company produces fireworks displays across the country for the Fourth, and for the past several years, that has included Jersey City. When city officials came to the company, Grucci said, they asked for a show that would put them on “a national-class level, not a municipal, smaller-type performance.”

Jersey City had once been known as mostly working class and industrial, shaded by New York’s shadow. But in recent years, the city has boomed with a rush of upscale development and a swell of new residents, with officials positioning the city as an alternative for professionals living in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Jersey City has sought to make itself a center of gravity in the region. And city officials are using Independence Day as a way to make a thunderous declaration of their ambitions.

“It’s a great opportunity for Jersey City as we’re building a larger city,” Steven Fulop, the city’s mayor, said in an interview. “You’re seeing more than just large buildings on the waterfront. You’re seeing growth, and arts and culture thriving.”

Beyond carnival rides and bounce houses, the event, which the internet company Private Internet Access is sponsoring, will have food trucks, beer gardens and a concert stage where the rapper Snoop Dogg will be the headliner. “It brings that worldly layer we’re looking for,” Michael Satsky, a New York City nightclub owner and an organizer for the event, said of this year’s festivities with the added attractions. “In the future, it’s really adding on to this and setting the bar higher and higher.”

New York City moved its fireworks display back to the East River in 2014, after several years on the Hudson. “Now even more New Yorkers will get to take part in this extraordinary celebration, against the backdrop of the Brooklyn Bridge, the harbor and our skyline,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at the time. (This year, thousands of fireworks, including neon-colored pinwheels and pulsing hearts, will launch from barges lined up on the East River between East 23rd and East 40th Streets.)

Jersey City revived its Fourth of July event in 2013, and a state government shutdown last year forced officials to shift it north along the waterfront from its old location, Liberty State Park, to Exchange Place.

Beyond the fireworks, the plaza at Exchange Place has been a focal point for growth, as well as the consternation that has come with the city’s evolution.

There are plans to renovate the plaza, adding green space and playgrounds and creating more of a destination on a bustling strip of the waterfront. Yet the plans have touched off a controversy with a proposal to make way for the renovation by moving the towering Katyn Memorial, a tribute to Polish soldiers massacred during World War II, that had been in the plaza since 1991. Some in the community, frustrated by changes, pushed back, drawing the attention of high-ranking Polish officials, starting a spat between them and the mayor. (A détente was reached with an agreement to move the statue about 200 feet.)

The city anticipates a crowd of about 100,000 gathering in the plaza and spilling over into the streets around it. The event’s organizers described its location as ideal: towers in Manhattan lit up across the river, the Statue of Liberty visible in the distance, and Ellis Island nearby.

Grucci said the production took months to orchestrate, from matching fireworks to songs to writing the thousands of lines of code required to set them off at a precise moment. The devices now include a vast array of shapes and colors that go beyond the colors of the rainbow. The show will include one of the company’s more recent developments: fireworks that will explode in the shape of the letters U, S and A.

Independence Day is an all-hands-on-deck time for the Grucci family and company, with even the highest-ranking employees deploying to events across the country, including in Hawaii and Florida. Grucci will be at festivities in Boston, and his son will be a captain on one of the barges on the Hudson. “No picnics in the Grucci family this time of year,” he said.