On the Gold Coast

By Colleen O'Dea

The resurgence of New Jersey's largest city, Newark, became concrete on a cold morning in the fall of 2014. Deputy Mayor Baye Adofo-Wilson was walking past the Prudential Center downtown when he came across a group of women in their late teens to early 20s camped outside the hulking arena, waiting, they said, for 2PM — not the time, but the Korean pop sensation.

"You spent the night on a Newark street to get tickets?" Adofo-Wilson says he asked them. "Where are your parents? Who okayed this?"

The significance wasn't lost on him: Suburban girls spending the night on the street in a city with historically high rates of poverty and crime. "When we were growing up, these were rough streets. Things have changed."

Jersey City, just six miles away, is turning around, too. A much older group of suburban moms embraced it last September, when 15 graduates of the city's last remaining all-girls Catholic high school held an unofficial reunion at a restaurant downtown. This is a place none of us would have visited as students 35 years earlier, and the transformation could not have been more remarkable.

When I was growing up, downtown was dingy, with decrepit low-rise apartments, vacant factory buildings, empty lots, and few people on the streets. Today's downtown has gleaming high rises, sparkling brownstones, street fairs, inviting restaurants, and sidewalks filled with dog walkers, couples with children, and professionals on their phones.

New Jersey's two largest cities are very different places than they were at the end of the last century. They aren't alone. Hoboken led the way, but Harrison and Elizabeth are other urban places firmly shaking off their old manufacturing backgrounds and somewhat sketchy reputations that include relatively high crime rates. These Garden State cities are becoming chic places to live.

These cities are close to New York City, with lower priced rents and a quick ride into Manhattan. City planners have capitalized on these assets.

"Even more than location, location, location, these places have access, access, access," says Thomas Dallessio, AICP, the president, CEO, and publisher of Next City, who also teaches land-use and infrastructure planning at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. "You can actually get to Manhattan faster from Jersey City than you can from Brooklyn."

A NJ Transit train arrives in the Harborside Light Rail Station in downtown Jersey City. Photo by Colleen O'Dea.

Jersey City's main downtown street, Christopher Columbus Drive, at Jersey Avenue. Photo by Colleen O'Dea.

Brick City boom

That Newark is growing is amazing, given its fate over the latter half of the 20th century. Newark's population peaked at 442,000 in 1930, with factories and breweries employing thousands, a thriving insurance industry, a bustling shopping district, an active nightlife, and a brand-new airport.

After the Great Depression, manufacturing plants began closing and poverty started to set in. The construction of two interstates hastened the exit of businesses and the middle class to the suburbs.

Six days of rioting in the summer of 1967 dulled any luster left in the Brick City. Crime went up and population went down — it bottomed out at 274,000 about 15 years ago.

Things first started to change in the 1980s. In 1986, then Gov. Thomas H. Kean called for a world-class center for the performing arts. Eleven years later, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center opened, with a 2,800-seat main stage and two smaller theaters.

Then came the Prudential Center, home to the New Jersey Devils hockey team, in 2007. Newark officials brought in two hotels nearby, as well as a few restaurants and some apartments, helping to stoke growth.

With these projects as a foundation, Newark's 2012 master plan, Our City, Our Future, declared an ambitious goal: "Newark will set a national standard for urban transformation."

Looking to 2025, its objectives include adding more businesses and housing for another 50,000 new residents by creating bright, walkable places that the graduates of its several colleges will find inviting. The city has also adopted major redevelopment plans for the downtown, riverfront, and other neighborhoods.

The state, for its part, has provided nearly $1.2 billion, primarily in tax incentives, to subsidize 48 major projects, according to an analysis from the subsidy watchdog group Good Jobs First.

Especially helpful was a program that targeted incentives to urban areas with transportation hubs like Newark's Penn Station, which has both Amtrak trains and the NJ Transit rail and bus lines operating there.

These helped convince Panasonic and Audible to relocate into new spaces, Wakefern Food Corp. to build a new warehouse, and Prudential Insurance to expand into a new glass tower downtown, where the city has focused most of its efforts.

From 2011 through 2015, the city issued certificates of occupancy for 1.3 million square feet of office space, 200,000 square feet of retail, 25,000 square feet of industrial space, and 1,115 housing units, according to Adofo-Wilson's office.

Its emphasis has now shifted somewhat to mixed use and residential developments, nearly all in highrise towers. Last fall the city had 926 units of housing under construction, with another 4,437 in the pipeline.

"We're trying to grow the city in a way that helps existing residents through job creation and by becoming a 24-hour city," says Adofo-Wilson, the deputy mayor for economic and housing development.

One example of both is Teachers Village. The project encompasses multiple low-rise buildings near the Prudential Center with 214 residential units — with educators as the target tenants — three charter schools, a day care facility, and 65,000 square feet of retail in 20 different businesses. Dallessio praises Teachers Village as a model to be copied, because it concentrates a number of different uses the city needs to thrive.

"You need to grow the middle and upper class," Dallessio says. Some of these people will be entrepreneurs "willing to take a risk" and the others will patronize those businesses and help them to survive.

Walkability is key, he adds, because millennials "are lackadaisical about driving." They want to live close to trains and buses and use them or walk to work and social scenes.

To that end, Newark has found a developer to transform 22 acres of parking lots and vacant property between the Prudential Center and Penn Station into open space surrounded by new development. It will also include a footbridge over the train tracks and busy McCarter Highway, linking it to the city's Ironbound section, a vibrant middle class neighborhood, Adofo-Wilson says.

Newark recognizes that a vibrant downtown is not enough to revitalize a city, so it created the Model Neighborhood Initiative in 2014, he says. This plan centers on two of the city's poorest neighborhoods at a time, refurbishing homes, improving business districts, and increasing police presence.

"The message is getting out there that these are safer places than they once were," Dallessio says.

Still, when much of the industry left, it left behind vacant factories, tainted land, and large swaths of abandoned train tracks. By the 1970s, Jersey City was stagnating.

Today's transformed downtown is attributable to the foresight of former city planning officials and the effectiveness of their plans, says Maryann Bucci- Carter, AICP, acting director of Jersey City's Division of Planning. "It is largely the forward thinking that is embodied within these documents that has shaped the city," she says.

A 1965 plan had called for the redevelopment of the waterfront after the decline of the railroads, and a 1975 plan provided the concept for the 400-acre Liberty State Park, a mix of open space, ferries to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and the historic Central Jersey Railroad Terminal, which have helped the waterfront's resurgence.

Probably most important for Jersey City's redevelopment is its location. Jersey City once only had great views of New York's picturesque skyline. Now it has an impressive waterfront skyline of its own. It also has three subway stops and ferry service providing access to New York's employers, culture, and entertainment in as little as 10 minutes.

"Transit-oriented development is a guiding principle" that the city has used for years in targeting growth, Bucci-Carter says. "The city has unparalleled access to various mass transit facilities, as well as access to an extensive statewide roadway network. Transit has played a very important role in the development of the city."

Planning officials also have relied heavily on the state regulations that allow for the adoption of redevelopment plans in distressed areas, Bucci-Carter notes. Of all New Jersey's cities, Jersey City has benefited most from the New Jersey Economic Development Authority's five major incentive programs, with the state providing about $3 billion in subsidies for 139 projects totaling more than $5.4 billion over the last two decades.

David Donnelly, executive director of the Jersey City Redevelopment Authority, says that the first really big boost to the city came from a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Urban Development Action Grant, which led to the huge Newport development, whose construction is still not completed. Begun in 1986 by the LeFrak Organization, which is still the developer, Newport is the transformation of 600 acres of rail yards and defunct warehouses into a bright, bustling community. Anchored by the three-story Newport Centre Mall that opened in 1987, the mixed use community includes eight office and 13 apartment towers, two hotels, a marina, and open space. The 37-story Newport Tower was the tallest building in the city at the time, though more recent development has knocked it down to fifth place.

Jersey City's Newport development transformed 600 acres of rail yards and warehouses into a bustling mixed use community. Photo by MaryAnn Bucci-Carter.

"When the economy was good, [development] continued," says Donnelly. It slowed down during the 2008 recession, "but there was still development, simply because the transportation network is so good."

The tallest building in Jersey City's young but growing skyline — and in the state — is the Goldman Sachs Tower at 30 Hudson Street downtown. Completed in 2004, it stands 42 stories tall and is a probably the most distinctive structure along New Jersey's Hudson River waterfront, also known as New Jersey's "Gold Coast."

"We've seen one of the better renaissance stories in terms of urban areas," says Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop. "We have a very, very diverse population, and that includes people of all backgrounds and professions."

Many say Jersey City's success is also due in large part to a unified planning strategy carried out by former planner Bob Cotter, FAICP — who retired earlier this year after more than 30 years — and his staff, even as the politicians in city hall came and went.

The city is also committed to working with developers. "We try to be quick and efficient when they come in," Donnelly says. "If they are not going to make money, they are not going to build a project. But we are also able to say, 'Hey, you need to be responsible about your project. The city needs open space or affordable housing.' We are realistic and pragmatic."

Some have complained that developers have gotten too much from the city, though that has changed in recent years, says Courtenay Mercer, AICP, a planner and almost 20-year resident of downtown (she is also the co-chair of the 2017 National Planning Conference host committee).

For instance, a just-approved residential project will get a city tax abatement and state subsidies in exchange for setting aside 20 percent of its housing units for people of low and moderate incomes. Hudson Exchange West is under construction just a half-mile from the Grove Street PATH station.

"That's really exciting," says Mercer, the principal of Mercer Planning Associates. "It's one of the first inclusionary buildings in downtown," a place where studio apartments rent for as much as $2,500 a month.

Last fall, builders were in the process of constructing 6,000 units of housing, with another 18,000 planned. Fulop predicts this will drive his city to surpass Newark as the state's most populous — Newark's population exceeded that of Jersey City by just 18,000 people in 2015.

The skyline of Jersey City, taken from Rockefeller Park in Battery Park City in Manhattan in 2013.At the far left is 30 Hudson Street (Goldman Sachs Tower), Jersey City's tallest building. Photo by MaryAnn Bucci-Carter.

Over the last few years, Jersey City has started to attract development beyond downtown, thanks in part to the aggressive use of city tax abatements. Under the city's policy, certain buildings pay a fee — known as a payment in lieu of taxes — based on the building's annual gross revenue for a period of between 10 and 30 years instead of taxes.

The developer also pays into the city's affordable housing fund. This can lead to an annual savings of more than $1 million a year for large projects. While some have criticized the process, city officials say most would not have been built without the tax savings, so the properties would have remained vacant and paying little or no taxes. The earliest projects to receive a break are now fully on the tax rolls.

"We are trying to lift up every neighborhood," Fulop said. "We try to use every tool in our possession at the state and local level." A revised tax abatement policy has established geographic tiers, with the most generous for developing the areas of Journal Square and the West Side, and the least for downtown. The program has led, over the last decade, to 200 new start-up businesses and 14 million square feet of new tax-abated office space.

Donnelly says "some of the most aggressive incentives" are available to office towers and other projects that do not bring children into the school system and to those that agree to provide a certain number of affordable housing units or pay into the city's affordable housing trust fund.

Journal Square, roughly the city's geographic center and already a strong shopping and office district, has become the next destination in large part because it is home to a PATH hub and major bus station.

The remaking of the area from one of predominantly low-rise shops and mid-rise office buildings to include shiny residential towers is possible due to the Journal Square 2060 redevelopment plan, adopted by the city council in 2010. Construction is just about complete on the first substantial new construction at Journal Square in decades. A 54-story steel and glass tower visible from miles away and dwarfing everything nearby, the building is one of three high rises to comprise a project called Journal Squared. In total, the project is slated to include 2.3 million square feet of retail, restaurants, parking, and 1,800 residential units in towers. Three more towers, rising around 70 stories with 1,500 units, are planned.

Next up for Jersey City: A master plan revision, expected to be completed by 2020.

"We believe the city stands at the precipice of establishing a national identity, says Bucci-Carter. "We want that identity to reflect the character of the culture of the city and character of the people who love it. ... We are not sure where it will take us, but we believe that asking these questions is a major part of our role as city planners."

Colleen O'Dea is a lifelong New Jersey resident and Jersey City native. She is an editor at New Jersey Spotlight covering housing issues, and a freelance writer.