Up for 75 years, it was the signage that anyone who had passed through Jersey City’s Journal Square since the 1950s had seen.

“They’re working on the interior,” he reassures one customer who asks when One Journal Square will be finished. “I actually saw four P.C. Richards big box trucks dropping off appliances.

Mayor Steven M. Fulop and the Jersey City Redevelopment Authority (JCRA) introduced an ordinance at Wednesday’s City Council ...