Transit-Oriented Development in Newark, New Jersey
Examine a map of Newark, New Jersey, and you’ll see a compact city that
enjoys a number of distinct advantages.
miles—may be its most obvious.
its
long,
navigable
frontage
Its proximity to Manhattan—at eight
Next, its very walkable layout, followed by
along
the
Passaic
River.
These
types
of
advantages are abiding; they transcend social and economic trends, and pay
certain
dividends
to
residents
and
generation, in good times and bad.
local
businesses,
from
generation
to
And when times improve, a dense fabric of
transit infrastructure may become Newark’s greatest draw:
because the city
has two downtown train stations—Broad Street and Pennsylvania—positioned like
bookends at either edge of the business district, and a newly expanded light
rail system that connects them.
It also has the remnants of a classic
Victorian street plan, laid out with wide avenues that once carried, and
could yet again, a vast network of electric streetcars.
Taken together, the
promise of this thorough infrastructure is strong, and it has not been lost
on the planners who imagine Newark’s future.
These days, many of Newark’s headline development projects are located
in
walking
distance
of
the
city’s
downtown
transit
infrastructure.
The
Lefcourt Newark Building—a stunning, soaring, 35-story art deco tower that
was
vacant
renovated,
through
and
two
converted
of
the
city’s
a
317-unit
to
hardest
decades—is
rental-apartment
now
beautifully
building,
with
a
light rail stop (the Military Park Station of the old Newark City Subway)
located partly in its basement.
In a sign of today’s times, the building’s
owner landed in foreclosure proceedings last fall, besieged by creditors who
had
financed
the
costly
redevelopment
in
times
of
easy
credit;
yet
the
building itself remained 80% occupied, commanding some of Newark’s highest
residential rents, and standing out like a jewel among the handful of dusty,
Lower-Manhattan-like towers and canyons that make up the blocks just west of
Newark’s Pennsylvania Station.
Across Military Park—Newark’s town green since its Puritan days in the
17th century—the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) has its own light
rail stop, located along the expanding system’s new surface line.
NJPAC
opened to celebrations in 1997, and was one of the first major components of
the city’s ongoing redevelopment drive.
Located about halfway between the
two downtown train stations, it was a natural place for a stop on the new
branch
of
the
city’s
light
rail.
In
the
adjacent
blocks,
remnants
of
downtown Newark’s stubborn challenges survive, in a scattering of fenced-in
parking lots and disused buildings.
But after more than a decade of its own
success, the home of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra now appears to be
serving its envisioned role as a springboard for major, adjacent development
projects.
This part of downtown Newark is coming together; you can feel it.
And highlighting investor confidence in the area’s residential real estate
market are two major projects that have recently been announced near NJPAC:
One
Rector
Street,
a
25-story,
mixed-use
building
that
will
include
152
condominiums and 6,000 square feet of retail space; and a 44-story tower at
Two Center Street, expected to become the city’s tallest building, with 328
rental apartments, and more than 22,000 square feet of commercial space.
It
is
not
surprising
that
the
first,
tepid
steps
of
market-rate,
residential developers into this once-overlooked city have been downtown.
The city’s transit connections are concentrated here, and the area’s lower
land costs, when compared to Hoboken or Jersey City, provide an enticing
development opportunity.
The area is also home to a number of its own points
of interest, including NJPAC, the Newark Museum, a high concentration of
office space, and the Rutgers and N.J.I.T. campuses (though, technically,
these latter blocks are often called University Heights).
Building on this
foundation, in 2008, the city published a redevelopment plan for the blocks
around Broad Street Station, located at downtown’s northern edge.
Perris
Straughter, a senior planner at the Newark City Hall, played a lead role in
the project, which was drafted in consultation with the architectural firm of
Skidmore Owings and Merrill.
redeveloping
the
Area,
Straughter described a multifaceted approach to
combining
plans
for
numerous
parcels
ownership, and drawing broadly on a number of T.O.D. principles.
with
diverse
Traditional
post-war parking requirements have been relaxed for new developments in the
blocks around transit facilities; densities have been increased; mixed uses
are now encouraged; and the needs of pedestrians are prioritized.
One of the earliest phases of implementation is the ongoing demolition
of the once-notorious Baxter Terrace housing project, a low-rise development
which formerly occupied a semi-rectangular parcel on the western edge of
downtown, bounded by Sussex Avenue, Nesbitt Street, Orange Street, and the
backyards of buildings on Dr. M.L.K. Boulevard.
for
construction
of
medium-density,
mixed
In its place, the plan calls
use
development,
including
a
significant component of affordable housing units, as well as market-rate
housing.
When finished, the development will reconnect the blocks along the
east side of Olmsted’s Branch Brook Park (including Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe’s 1960 glass and aluminum Colonnade apartments and the limestone gothic
Cathedral
Basilica
of
the
Sacred
Heart),
with
the
University
neighborhood (including the campuses of Rutgers and N.J.I.T.).
Heights
Theoretically,
the successful redevelopment of the Baxter Terrace site could weave into
existence a seamless urban fabric between the city’s central business and
academic districts and its significant stock of large, attractive homes in
the North Ward.
Such thoughts point to a more distant horizon.
If experience is any
guide, it could be a decade or longer before the development potential of
downtown Newark begins to approach build-out.
In addition to the major
parcels that remain undeveloped, the central business district includes a
generous scattering of surface parking, vacant lots, disused industrial sites,
and other types of neglected or underutilized parcels.
But a number of the
city’s other neighborhoods are already quite vibrant, and potentially in need
of new spaces.
Addressing the development needs of such communities could
prove to be prescient.
Darius Sollohub, an architect and assistant professor
at
Architecture
NJIT’s
reweaving
College
a
of
network
thoroughfares.
of
mass
and
Design,
transit
is
through
particularly
the
city’s
keen
on
principal
Presently, NJ Transit operates a light version of Bus Rapid
Transit (BRT) on two of the city’s major arterials—Bloomfield and Springfield
Avenues—known as the Go Bus.
These routes lead out through the city’s low-
rise neighborhoods, west of downtown, where residents have been underserved
(or un-served) by rail since the Public Service streetcars disappeared in the
early 1950s.
The Go Buses are distinguished from the ordinary NJ Transit fleet by
their distinctive color scheme, improved seating, fixed and limited stops,
and the promise of faster service.
Essentially, BRT seeks to capture a
number of the benefits of light rail or streetcar service at a fraction of
the cost.
As the director of NJIT’s graduate program in Infrastructure
Planning, Sollohub has been conducting a study of BRT usage along the city’s
Springfield Avenue corridor, where he has found heavy demand for the service.
Partly as a result of the study’s findings, Sollohub is also involved in
ongoing discussions with community leaders and private developers about the
possibilities for T.O.D. style development.
historic
heart
of
the
city’s
One potential site lies at the
Springfield-Belmont
neighborhood:
a
parcel
adjacent to the busy Go Bus stop, where Springfield Avenue crosses Irvine
Turner Boulevard.
Discussions have included strategies for balancing the
T.O.D. design and density priorities with the parking and traffic needs of
potential anchor stores.
In
the
North
Ward,
the
oldest
part
of
the
city’s
through a deep cut which was once the Morris Canal.
light
rail
runs
The City Subway, as it
was long known, channeled surface streetcars into the shallow canal bed, and
led them to a tunnel that ran beneath Raymond Boulevard to Pennsylvania
Station.
Today, the light rail makes surface stops every few blocks between
NJIT in University Heights, and the city’s distant northern boundary with
Bloomfield Township.
Just east of the right-of-way is the large, landscaped
expanse of Branch Brook Park; to the west are mostly the backs of low-rise
industrial buildings that once lined the canal, before its abandonment in the
depths of the Great Depression.
It is interesting to imagine how some of
these
from
parcels—so
long
divorced
their
practical
location
beside
a
functioning waterway—might one day be repurposed, given their proximity to
both the newly modernized light rail and an immense, Olmsted-designed green
space.
Perris Straughter, senior planner at City Hall, is already thinking
about it.
Downtown Newark, with its blocks set off by two major train stations,
could be seen as an organic example of T.O.D.
The assortment of development
projects that draw on proximity to the transit infrastructure is not new.
Rather, it is the rediscovery of value in a pattern that has characterized
the neighborhood for at least two centuries—a place where, even before the
railroads, traffic on the Morris Canal and Passaic River spurred development
in these same blocks.
neighborhoods
is
Meanwhile, the T.O.D. potential of Newark’s other
noteworthy,
particularly
for
land
that
lies
in
distance of the city’s light rail and early BRT infrastructure.
coming
years,
as
the
benefits
of
sustainable,
urban
walking
In the
environments
are
rediscovered, it will be increasingly difficult to ignore the inherent value
of Newark’s infrastructure, where many of the building blocks of sustainable
communities are already thoroughly established.
Theo Mackey Pollack is a graduate student at Rutgers University, and a 2010 N.J.D.C.A./Wells
Fargo Housing and Community Development Scholar, with a placement in the City of Newark’s
Department of Economic and Housing Development.