Oh yeah, why bother investing in the state's largest city?...let's just keep building condo's and strip malls over the last remaining square foot of wetlands in NJ until there's nothing left. I guess you'd rather see the Devils and Nets leave the state huh?..some facts, the Arena will cost $300 million to build. Of that $300 million, Jeff Vanderbeek is putting up $100 million of his own money to get this thing off the ground. He's investing in Newark because he and the city know it will eventually pay itself off, at which point it becomes a major source of revenue and jobs for NJ's largest city(and by the way, it's not just an sports arena, it's an office complex/entertainment venue as well). But then again, I guess he's just another one of those 46 year old retired investment bankers with $100 million to throw away, what the heck does he know about business??
The taxpayers have been "investing in the state's largest city" for decades now, and the place is a freakin' dump. The school system is a disaster, and outside of a small area downtown there is hardly any viable private business of any consequence. If it weren't for subsidized institutions like colleges and hospitals (and now an arena, too), the place would be no different than Camden.
To top it off, the City somehow manages to get away with collecting property taxes based on property assessments that date back to the 1950s.
The city's only real claim to "fame" is that it made the front page of the Wall Street Journal during their last mayoral election a couple of years ago -- under a banner headline that referred to Sharpe James as "Newark's Mayor Mugabe."