Byron Nicholas

Background

About Byron Nicholas

Byron Nicholas, PP, AICP is the Chief of Hudson County, NJ’s Planning Division where he oversees or is directly involved in a variety of County planning functions including the County’s Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy, Vision Zero Initiative, the new Comprehensive Planning Process, and Environmental and Greenway Planning projects and initiatives. Byron also serves as the County’s Planning Board Director/Secretary. Byron has over a decade of experience covering a wide range of multi-modal planning, policy, funding, and design at the regional and municipal level. Prior to this role, he served as Supervising Transportation Planner for Hudson County, New Jersey, where he was the former Hudson County Executive’s Designee to the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority (NJTPA) MPO. In this role he served as the Vice Chair of the Regional Transportation Advisory Committee, managed the transportation planning program, and advised County leadership on equitable transportation matters, including the Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act, the County’s Ferry Assessment, and the County’s Trucking Study. Byron is the creator of Grid City Planning, LLC, and its subsidiary blackandurban, an online platform for POC planners and forward thinkers to document solutions to problems facing our communities. He is also a co-convener of the BIPOC Planning Collective, an affiliate of Planners Network. Byron is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP), a licensed Professional Planner for the State of New Jersey (PP), holds a Master of Urban Planning and a BA in Environmental Design from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and is currently the Planning Accreditation Board’s Vice-Chair as the AICP Young Planner Appointee.