My thoughts on the Arc Tower Meeting

Submitted by DrixxYBoat t3_10vs31h in Newark

Holy shit this meeting was long and fucking stunk.

It started at 6pm and as of 10:50 they finally voted on it.

The James Street Historic Commission backed themselves into a corner with their bully mentality and their outrageous testimonials.

I feel like they slowly talked themselves out of a win by getting increasingly more emotional and honestly unhinged at certain points. Like bro 💀

Their members just kept coming back to back to back to bitch and moan about why we need to preserve a crumbling building in a historic district that serves nobody except 27 old people and 5 random mfs who have lived in Newark for 2 years but want to talk about preservation and "what the city needs".

Fuck outta here.

Moreover, the gentrification arguments were the worst for me as they're just dumb.

Gentrification is not when you build new things. Gentrification isn't even when other people move to the city.

It deals with displacement percentages, political policy, and school-to-college-work pipeline.

You can tell a lot about a city that's being gentrified by its school system and the type of support the kids have, and news flash nps is on the up and up, despite what people might say.

All in all, I cannot believe this shit got approved considering how shit the meeting was and how incompetent I personally felt the board members were.

There were many fantastic pro-Arc tower testimonials but I truly felt like the board didn't have the balls to stand up to James Street lmao.

I think the tides turned when ole boy said, "If this board approves this project, then the historic commission should just dissolve itself because clearly we don't matter."

That was meant to be a gotcha moment but the implications is now that the Central Ward planning board cannot approve projects unless the historic commission agrees with it.

Man, what a day.

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Comments

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Newarkguy1836 t1_j7k8uxz wrote

James St SHOULD dissolve. What a bunch of self righteous garbage!

Among the testimonial bs...

  • "We don't oppose the tower, we just want it shorter..."

  • "Those aren't really "affordable units"....

  • "Where will they park? Walk 1000 feet? OMG! The 1,000 foot walk inconvenience exposed these morons as elitist scum that whose lives revolve around the auto! What's 1,000 ft from the ark tower? Newark Public Library. St Michael's Hospital. McGovern's Bar, the new Prudential Building and swahili's restaurant across from njpac. The idea of walking a block to a parking lot offended James Street people as if you asked for jelly instead of "Grey Poupon"!

*The complaints of gentrification were complete joke given every single James Street person was an old elitist White Collar professionals. Some even architects. Not one person speaking from James Street was blue collar.

  • One lady went unhinged & started the whole Black & brown (apparently the left has married Hispanics to blacks & we are now a last name to "black". 'Blacks & brown this" " Black &Brown that") ..will suffee if Arc got approved. *I didn't know so many Jewish residents live in the James Street area, you would think they were the ones opposing, but most were in favor.
  • you had this one white clown from Union Street, nowhere near Ark. He look like a burnout LOL, and he opposed the project based on parking. Because obviously he to relies on his automobile and has never heard of mass transit. In the end, it was a win for ark tower & the city.
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Marv95 t1_j7juqca wrote

"If this board approves this project, then the historic commission should just dissolve itself because clearly we don't matter."

Because you don't matter, nor should you matter. Go away. You're holding downtown and the city back along with the dregs. Time to move forward. Hopefully they don't decrease the size of this thing like they did with Theater Square.

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Nathanial_Jones t1_j7k0biv wrote

There is value imo for historic preservation and having a community group to advocate for it, but it becomes an absolute joke when they utilize that position to obstinentinly object to good projects on grounds entirely unrelated to that issue.

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TrafficSNAFU t1_j7m698n wrote

Bingo. Historic preservation isn't a bad thing but when they start to view their own communities as personal fiefdoms, then they have lost the plot entirely.

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Ironboundian t1_j7kmqzs wrote

One Theater Square was decreased in size due to economics, not the historic comission.

"Conceived in 2005 to have 28 stories, the project was later revised to reach 44 stories, and then re-drawn again for 22 stories."

https://www.nj.com/essex/2018/10/newark_rising_22-story_tower_opens_in_brick_city.html

and

"Lawrence P. Goldman, former NJPAC CEO who leads the arts center’s redevelopment corporation, said the continuing economic slump has both delayed and forced a downsizing of One Theater Square."

https://www.nj.com/essex/2012/09/high-rise_near_njpac_in_newark.html

I'm not saying the Landmarks Comission is perfect....but it's unfair to say they had anything to do with the final size of the NJPAC tower

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Kalebxtentacion t1_j7kz1z8 wrote

I wonder why the tower was downsized, I originally thought the city just didn’t want tall buildings. The funny thing is if the tower was 44 stories that would had been the jump start for a new wave of taller development, but now we got halo and hopefully arc for that now.

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Ironboundian t1_j7l1vm0 wrote

The Articles are clear that the reason it was downsided was due to economics. That likely means that the cost of construction at the time and given the rents at the time did not justify all those additional units all that additional steel and glass and so forth.

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Kalebxtentacion t1_j7kyrja wrote

With the final site planned approved I don’t think the tower will be downsized. Plus the height limit is 1,000 feet plus I believe

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