‘TODAY WAS A GOOD DAY’
City leaders announce details of Cook School revitalization project, touted as ‘progress’ for city
TRENTON >> All that was missing was the rapper’s presence.
“To quote the great American philosopher Ice Cube, ‘Today was a good day,’” councilman Jerell Blakeley said.
Standing underneath a black-roofed tent pitched in front of the dilapidated William G. Cook School as the rain poured down, city officials and redevelopers discussed the grand vision for the historic schoolhouse, a red-brick building with busted-out windows in the city’s Wilbur section.
The Cook School, on the first block of Cuyler Avenue, was constructed in 1910 and sat unoccupied for decades, serving as a shooting gallery and temporary respite for drug addicts and weary vagabonds, officials said.
Over the summer, more than 100 volunteers, led by East Ward councilman Joe Harrison, cleaned up the property as part of his “silver shovel economic plan” to salvage the schoolhouse which was set for demolition.
Mayor Reed Gusciora toured the building last year and said it must be completely gutted, with parts of the roof caved in.
Now plans are in motion for KCG Development to turn the property into 29 mixed-income lofts.
The project is part of a broader partnership with Roland Pott of Trenton Makes Inc. to construct another 28-unit building called Clinton Lofts, at the corner of South Clinton and Hamilton avenues.
Pott said the project was approved by the council and planning board some eight years ago but never got offthe ground due to funding issues.
The Clinton Lofts and Cook School projects have now been merged together, and officials said they’re anxious to see them through this time.
“This will be a transformative project in this neighborhood,” West Ward councilwoman Robin Vaughn said.
“This is an example of the mayor andthe council working together for the best interest of the city,” said Gusciora, speaking from a podium surrounded by renderings of the projects.
Earlier this month, the city council unanimously approved the deal with KCG, which agreed to shell out $124,000 for the schoolhouse.
It was a win for Mayor Gusciora’s administration which, weeks earlier, suffered a deflating setback when council nixed a $4 million proposal from Hamilton-based fiber-optics manufacturer Princetel.
Princetel wanted to purchase and revamp a crumbling stretch of the capital city’s famous Roebling property.
But the deal went kaput after the legislative body, fearing the Princetel deal wasn’t by the book, demanded an additional appraisal and for the company to sign off on pay-to-play paperwork acknowledging it hadn’t made political donations to curry favor with the Gusciora administration.
Gusciora said during Friday’s news conference that, though it was his administration’s position that the city’s pay-to-play ordinance doesn’t apply to the redevelopers, KCG Development went ahead and signed off on the pay-to-play forms.
An appraisal was also conducted, and even though the fair market value came back lower than what the council hoped to get for the Cook School property, KCG ponied upmore to get the deal done, city officials said.
South Ward councilman George Muschal said the council is “for these projects, provided everything is done right.”
“I get along great with the mayor. We have our disagreements and agreements, but when we work as a body of seven, I think we’re untouchable,” he said. “We should all be patted on the back.”
Joel Silver, the vice president of development at KCG, said his employer specializes in refurbishing old buildings into apartments, and has done so in cities around the U.S.
The company plans to apply for low-income housing tax credits and historic tax credits to offset the costs of the projects, city officials said.
KCG hopes to go before appear before the planning board for the first time in the next two months, Silver said, and will spend part of that time getting feedback from residents who live in the neighborhood about what they envision for the schoolhouse.
“We’re thrilled to be here in Trenton,” he said.
KCG has brought aboard Pott, a local developer behind the Clinton Lofts project.
hat project as initially proposed was to build 22 apartments with space for office or retail space.
Pott told the Times of Trenton back in 2013 that the project required grant money from the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency to proceed and without itwould need to be reconfigured.
He said those subsides “dried up” delaying the project which is now back on course.
Pott said the municipal paperwork paving the way for the Clinton Lofts is “already on books.”
The mayor said he and his team are committed to attracting more redevelopers to tackle other abandoned properties in the capital city.
Harrison planned to reach out to Princetel CEO Barry Zhang to encourage him to make another run at the Roebling deal.
Blakeley, the only other council person who supported the Princetel deal, said the Cook School once represented “blight and broken promises” and is now an indication of “progress.”
He hopes there’s more to come for Trenton.
“At the end of the day, we must learn to work together or wewill perish as fools,” he said, quoting MLK Jr. “Progress is coming, and this is just a symbol of it.”