Posted on 04/15/2015 9:55:20 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The “homeless billionaire,” a world-renowned architect and the future of Brick City.
Newark is building again. Yes, that Newark—the city in Jersey that burned after the ’67 riots, the one that helped to define “white flight,” that struggles still with almost impenetrable unemployment and homelessness and crime. That city is building.
And here it all is—its past and present and future—pouring through Irene Hall’s floor-to-ceiling windows downtown: the whites and browns of the Old First Presbyterian Church, founded in 1666; haggard red brick facades with windows sealed off by cinderblock; the neon blue lights of Hotel Indigo, which opened last year in a long-vacant, century-old building near the busiest intersection in Brick City.
“The colors are amazing,” Hall declares on this late February morning.
Though the five-year-old Courtyard Marriott, just up the block, doesn’t take Hall’s breath away, it is the first new hotel built in Newark’s downtown in 40 years.
If the story of Newark’s revitalization is all about buildings, Hall, a 60-year-old principal at a charter school here, is living inside one of its newest characters....
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Newark’s problem (beyond the obvious) is that there are more attractive, safer alternatives close by. Outside of a transit hub, it serves little purpose.
They aren’t the first city to try to attract people with money to feed a large population of gibsmedats; there is still so much stigma associated with Newark nobody would want to admit living there.
On trick Newark will need to pull off is bringing all the law firms back to downtown from Becker Farm Rd.
The North Shore of Staten Island is supposedly the new DUNBO for families. Much less expensive than Brooklyn and convenient to the City.
Sure...and bringing banking jobs back, and cleaning up Penn Station, and improving on-time flights at the airport, and walling off the downtown from panhandlers...
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