Sentence Correction

With a new park, stadium, and entertainment complex along the Delaware river, Trenton, New Jersy, is but one of a large number of communities that is looking to use its waterfront as a way for it to improve the quality of urban life and attract new businesses.

A) is looking to use its waterfront as a way for it to improve the quality of urban life and attract
B) is looking at the use of its waterfront to improve the quality of urban life and attract
C) are looking to use their waterfronts to improve quality if urban life and attract
D) are looking to use its waterfront as a way of improving the quality of urban life and attracting
E) are looking at using their waterfronts as a way of improving the quality of urban life and attract


Hi All,

Could you please help me explain why the right answers are right and why the wrong answers are incorrect ? why should we use "are" instead of "is" because in the first half of the sentence... "is but one of the " is used. Please help ! Thanks!

OA: C

"With a new park, stadium, and entertainment complex along the Delaware river, Trenton, New Jersy, is but one of a large number of communities that..."
f you read this part of the sentence closely, you will see that what should follow after this is a description of the communities that New Jersey is a one of, not New Jersey itself. So the next part should start with "are". This leaves us with options C, D and E. D can be easily eliminated as communities that "are" looking to use "its" is wrong.
Which leaves us with C and E.
C)Communities that are looking <invisible forward> to use their...
as against
E) Communities are looking at using... usually, looking at should follow a noun or a pronoun. So this is also wrong.

So the answer is C.

With a new park, stadium, and entertainment complex along the Delaware river, Trenton, New Jersy, is but one of a large number of communities that is looking to use its waterfront as a way for it to improve the quality of urban life and attract new businesses.

Good Question, also quite ambiguous.

To my understanding they are assuming that Certain community at New Jersy is one of the many communities that are looking to use their waterfronts to improve quality of urban life and attract. Hence referring to Communities in the later part of the clause.

Understanding what 'that' refers to will solve the problem. But i am not able to decide why 'that' refers to communities. I have not read any rule which says that 'that' refers to noun which lies closest.

May i know the source of question.

hi all,

i guess "that" refers to communities (not NJ) ... becoz it obviously cant refer to NJ.
Since they are talkin abt "a xxxx number " it shud be plural

With a new park, stadium, and entertainment complex along the Delaware river, Trenton, New Jersy, is but one of a large number of communities that is looking to use its waterfront as a way for it to improve the quality of urban life and attract new businesses.

A) is looking to use its waterfront as a way for it to improve the quality of urban life and attract
B) is looking at the use of its waterfront to improve the quality of urban life and attract
C) are looking to use their waterfronts to improve quality of urban life and attract
D) are looking to use its waterfront as a way of improving the quality of urban life and attracting
E) are looking at using their waterfronts as a way of improving the quality of urban life and attract

IMO:C

Final solution at one place:

Important: The purpose of this post (and all the other posts by me) is to give a complete solution to all GMAT-Prep Verbal questions at one place. Sometimes students have to wade through dozens of posts to get to the final answer. My posts will give one complete and crisp solution required to arrive at the correct answer by eliminating the wrong one. Some of the content in these posts may have been taken from various other sources (discussion forums).

With a new park, stadium, and entertainment complex along the Delaware River, Trenton, New Jersey, is but one of a large number of communities that is looking to use its waterfront as a way for it to improve the quality of urban life and attract new businesses.
(A) is looking to use its waterfront as a way for it to improve the quality of urban life and attract
(B) is looking at using its waterfront to improve the quality of urban life and attract
(C) are looking to use their waterfronts to improve the quality of urban life and attract
(D) are looking to use its waterfront as a way of improving the quality of urban life and attracting
(E) are looking at using their waterfronts as a way of improving the quality of urban life and attract

Focus on the sentences below:

1. One of my (friend / friends) (is a doctor / are doctors).

CORRECT: One of my friends is a doctor.

Here we are talking about one person only.

2. This is one of those (book / books) that (was / were) published last year.

CORRECT BOOKS... WERE

This might sound awkward... normally we might want to associate ONE... WAS...

But here, THAT as a pronoun refers to BOOKS... hence we need WERE ... also, WERE gives the logically correct meaning.

3. He is one of those sportsmen who (does / do) modeling assignments.

Correct: DO

This might sound awkward... normally we might want to associate ONE... DOES...

But here, WHO as a pronoun refers to sportsmen ... hence we need DO... also, 'DO' gives the logically correct meaning.

4. He is (one of / only one of / just one of / but one of) my friends who (is a doctor / are doctors).

CORRECT: He is (one of / only one of / just one of / but one of) my friends who are doctors.

This might sound awkward... normally we might want to associate ONE... IS... But here, WHO as a pronoun refers to FRIENDS... hence we need ARE... also, ARE gives the logically correct meaning.

5. He is the only one of my friends who (is a doctor / are doctors).

CORRECT: He is the only one of my friends who is a doctor.

Watch out: Here THE ONLY ONE means there is only one person... so IS.

In the sentence "...Cleveland is but one of a large number of communities on the Great Lakes that is ..." "that" acts as a relative pronoun for communities, so 'are' is required rather than 'is' ... Eliminate A and B...

D says 'are (plural) ... its (singular)' ... wrong. 'its' should be 'their' for communities.

E is not parallel ... 'improving' and 'attract' are not parallel. Also, the correct idiom should be TO IMPROVE and not as a way they can improve. Whenever there is a purpose, intention, goal, desire etc. to be stated, we use TO + VERB.

C: correct