Traffic Jam Investigator Offers Ulterior Motive Four months after the streets of Fort Lee, N.J., were suddenly gridlocked, speculation continues to swirl about what really motivated allies of Gov. Chris Christie to engineer the mess. For some clue-seekers, a construction site at the west end of the George Washington Bridge has spurred a collective "Aha!" Just a block from the three lanes that usually funnel traffic from Fort Lee onto the bridge lie 16 acres of prime land that form the centerpiece of the borough's grand redevelopment plan. Two neighboring projects there promise to spend about $1 billion to create a complex of luxury apartments, stores, offices and entertainment facilities. Known as The Modern and Hudson Lights, the projects are easily the biggest things happening in Fort Lee. Or at least they were before Mr. Christie's associates purposely tied up traffic in the borough in early September. The fallout has cost several people their jobs and shone an unflattering light on the behavior of the governor's closest advisers. It has also drawn scrutiny to the developments. The standing explanation is that Fort Lee's mayor, Mark J. Sokolich, a Democrat, was punished for not endorsing Mr. Christie, a Republican, in his re-election campaign last year. But for some journalists and close observers of New Jersey politics who have studied the matter, that answer does not seem weighty - or juicy - enough. And how, some wonder, could these high-level political maneuverings have been about anything but those big-budget building plans - even though there is no evidence to back up such a theory? One of the big selling points for the developments is their easy access to the bridge. If two lanes were closed permanently, residents could see significant delays. Adding to the intrigue is the roster of developers and financiers involved, and the colorful history of attempts to build on the land over the last half-century. The buzz around the State House in Trenton has drawn the attention of the legislative leaders who are investigating the Fort Lee traffic affair. "The actions taken and the response that it generated are so disproportionate to the failure to get an endorsement from the mayor of Fort Lee that it raises my suspicion that this was done for some other reason," said Assemblyman John S. Wisniewski, a Democrat leading one of the investigative committees. Mr. Wisniewski said the developments were not a focus of the committee's investigation. But, as a real estate lawyer himself, he said he knew that the large sums of money involved in building often fueled corruption among elected and appointed officials. "A real estate development of this size involves a lot of money," Mr. Wisniewski said in an interview on Friday. That it could be the key to understanding why two executives at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey - Bill Baroni and David Wildstein - would have schemed to disrupt traffic around the bridge for four days last fall "is as plausible a theory as any," he said. The only direct reference to the developments in the documents gathered in the investigations so far came in a desperate plea Mayor Sokolich sent to Mr. Baroni, who was the deputy executive director of the Port Authority, on Sept. 12, the fourth straight day that traffic was snarled in his borough. Near the end of the two-page letter, Mr. Sokolich asked, "What do I do when our billion-dollar redevelopment is put online at the end of the next year?" That query highlighted just how sensitive a matter the project was to Mr. Sokolich. In private communications turned over to investigators, members of Mr. Christie's inner circle called Mr. Sokolich an "idiot," but the only allusion to punishment was a call for "traffic trouble in Fort Lee" from Bridget Anne Kelly, a deputy chief of staff who was fired last week. "They were really mad at the mayor about something, but it's not clear what that something was," Mr. Wisniewski said. In an interview in his law office last week, Mr. Sokolich said that he did not know what he had done to draw such hostility other than declining an entreaty to endorse Mr. Christie. If the development projects are completed, Mr. Sokolich will get credit for an accomplishment that eluded several of his predecessors. In the early 1970s, when Burt Ross was the mayor of Fort Lee, he was offered a $500,000 bribe by a developer named Norman Dansker who wanted zoning variances to build a retail and office complex on the 16-acre site. Mr. Ross alerted federal authorities, then wore a recording device in a sting operation that led to the conviction of Mr. Dansker and several other executives. Harry Helmsley, the real estate mogul who owned the Helmsley hotels, later bought the land but did not build on it. His widow, Leona, sold the property in 2003 to a developer. But that developer's plans failed to materialize too. By 2009, the elected official of Fort Lee had decided to press for something to be built on the site and solicited bids from developers. They selected SJP Properties to construct the entire project. But Tucker Development, an Illinois builder that owned rights to the western half of the site, sued the borough and SJP. The settlement of that suit left Tucker to build Hudson Lights, which will include 143,000 square feet of retail space and 247 apartments. Tucker broke ground in October, but construction has not yet begun.. The Modern, which lies just east of Hudson Lights, will have two 47-story towers of rental apartments, the first of which is scheduled for occupancy by the end of this year. But people involved with the two developments said they doubted that the traffic-knotting scheme had anything to do with the project. Billy Procida, a developer who said he was an investor in a fund that owns part of The Modern, said he thought there was "zero chance this has anything to do with the redevelopment project." He said the theory that it did was "bizarre," but no more bizarre than another that was circulating in Trenton about Mr. Sokolich's brother having been a lawyer involved in the redevelopment project. The mayor has only one brother, Fred Sokolich, who runs a real estate brokerage downstairs from the mayor's law office. Reached there by phone this week, Fred Sokolich said he had made one call to the company leasing space in Hudson Lights. It was on behalf of a friend who owns a bagel shop and was interested in opening one in the new project. As for playing a role as a broker of apartments in the new towers, he said, "It would be nice to be involved but I'm not expecting anything." Then, the mayor's older brother added, "I know my limits."