THE NEW NEWARK
Jersey’s biggest city attracts new residents with affordability, art and amenities
WHEN Isabel Livingston opened a shop in Newark’s Teacher’s Village development in 2015, she had no intention of moving there, too. She had grown up in Newark but left some 15 years ago in search of better public schools for her daughter, eventually settling in Maplewood, NJ.
It didn’t take long for Livingston — whose shop, Closet Savvy Consignment, is a brick-and-mortar version of her luxury consignment business — to change her mind. She moved into Teacher’s Village, a mixed-use project from RBH Group, three months ago.
“After seeing all the improvements in the city of Newark, and the [tightknit] community at Teacher’s Village, it seemed like a no-brainer,” she says. “Newark is the place to be.”
The city, which has long struggled with a declining economy and a violent reputation, is newly in the spotlight. Crime in the city is at its lowest rate since 1967. Investors have poured around $1.7 billion into residential, commercial and industrial projects, according to the city’s Department of Economic and Housing Development, and bougie businesses like Whole Foods are opening their doors. Add to this a burgeoning arts scene, its proximity to Manhattan (30 minutes away) and a major airport, and it’s not surprising that even Vogue caught whiff of the change, recently calling the city “one of the most unexpected locales to be considered a travel destination.”
Eager developers are landing on underutilized office towers and commercial buildings, taking
advantage of cheap land prices that result in relatively affordable apartments for renters and buyers.
According to The Marketing Directors, a New York-based brokerage and development advisory, while rental prices have risen 17 percent over the past 10 years, they’re still up to 40 percent cheaper then rents in Jersey City. Available rentals at higher-end Newark properties, it found, range from $1,593 for a studio up to $2,553 for a two-bedroom.
The Marketing Directors is leasing luxury apartments at a University Heights development at 24 Jones St., which start at $1,645/month for a studio. Since opening last fall, 12 percent of incoming residents have decamped from New York City, according to Angela Ferrara, executive vice president of The Marketing Directors.
“The escalating price of real estate in New York is encouraging people to think more broadly about the perimeter around the city,” says Jon Cortell, vice president of development at L&M, which recently converted the abandoned Hahne & Co. department store, built in 1901 at 50 Halsey St., into a mixed-use project. It’s now on the market with 160 rentals. “[Newark] is a city of great buildings that nobody has noticed,” he says.
Forty percent of Hahne & Co. apartments are earmarked as affordable housing; market-rate onebedrooms start at $1,800/ month. The building also holds 100,000 square feet of commercial, community and office space, including an already opened Barnes & Noble College bookstore and Whole Foods, and a Marcus Samuelsson restaurant debuting later this year.
Cortell says L&M worked closely with community leaders and local politicians to reopen the iconic building, and arranged a lease with Rutgers University to open an arts incubator, Express Newark, on the second floor.
It’s also converting the art deco New Jersey Bell office tower at 540 Broad St. into a 265-unit apartment building, expected to open in 2018.
RBH Group’s Teacher’s Village, which launched in 2013, includes 204 rentals, shops, charter schools and a daycare facility. In tandem with the building of the project, the firm repurposed a former steel mill in the Ironbound neighborhood, at 212 Rome St., into creative manufacturing space. RBH courted AeroFarms, a vertical farm startup, to be the anchor tenant, according to Ron Beit, founding partner at RBH. AeroFarms now occupies 69,000 square feet.
RBH is in the financing stages for Four Corners Millennium, which would turn underutilized downtown buildings into residential, hotel, office and retail spaces.
Additional developments include a 168-unit apartment at 36 Rector St., dubbed One Riverview, from Boraie Development and backed by Shaquille O’Neal, who’s from Newark. Another born-andbred resident, Queen Latifah, has partnered with GS Developers to build a 115-unit project at 650 Springfield Ave., known as Rita Gardens.
This January, the city and developers Edison Properties and J&L Companies, Inc., unveiled plans to turn a 22-acre site known as Triangle Park into Mulberry Commons, a $100 million project with public space, retail and restaurants, expected to open by summer 2018.
And Dranoff Properties has teamed up with the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) at 1 Center St. for its One Theater Square project. The 22-story tower, which will hold retail space and 245 rentals when it opens in 2018, is the first new-construction residential skyscraper built in the city since the 1960s.
NJPAC, which owns the parking lot that will be transformed into One Theater Square, owns two other adjacent sites on which it plans to partner with developers. According to John Schreiber, president of NJPAC, the company was inspired by the arts district formed around the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in Fort Greene. Not that he expects Newark’s transformation to mirror Brooklyn’s. “Newark is not Brooklyn,” he says. “Newark is Newark.”
Still, the close-knit arts scene is reminiscent of Brooklyn’s pre-gentrification days. “It’s still affordable to be here, and there’s more space,” says Jasmine Wahi, co-founder and codirector of the 2015-opened Gateway Project Spaces, a 30,000-square-foot facility with studios, an artist residency program and gallery space inside the Gateway Center, an office complex above Newark Penn Station.
“There’s [safe] space to talk about the impact art has on the Newark community, and the impact the community has on art,” says Wahi.
Although co-director, Rebecca Jampol is a Newark resident, Wahi herself hasn’t made the leap from Brooklyn — yet. “I am planning on moving to Newark,” she says. “I love this city.”