Submitted by Rich_Bullfrog_3005 t3_10jhcst in Newark
Downtown and a bit of Ironbound have become too expensive for most Newark residents to rent/buy. As more people move here due to close proximity of NYC, Central Ward etc will become more expensive. In your opinion what parts of Newark will never gentrify?
Running for office?
Would sooner walk across broken glass.
It’s going to happen to all wards eventually. Once people realize the size of homes in the south and west wards and the prices drop back down to reasonable levels, you’ll see it take more shape. The south ward could benefit from a light rail to Weequahic park. That would speed things up drastically.
It’s already happening though. If you look on a site like Zillow or Redfin there isn’t much stock in Newark at all. Nobody that knows Newark is going to pay 450k for a house on S. 17th street. Someone is buying houses.
Weehawchic and Clinton hill will be last . Lower Broadway and Roseville will be first. Eventually it will all gentrify just like JC.
Weequahic isn’t nearly as bad as some of the spots in the west ward. Especially the areas on the hillside border and near the park
Great ideas!
That someone is corporations that are buying the homes up to rent them. All over New York you see signs on telephone poles advertising "We'll buy your home"
The areas furthest away from trains. White people dont ride buses
Love me some old-fashioned anti-bus classism /s.
As a white Newarker, I take the bus frequently, given its convenience and network density in Newark. It's also so much better to get up to Bloomfield and Montclair than the Montclair Boonton Line. The 62 bus to the airport is also cheaper and more convenient than the AirTrain.
Of course I'm aware of the demographic anomaly that I am on a bus. Sometimes it feels like my confident bus riding indicates that I'm not an outsider to those around me.
Have you taken the buses from Port Authority? Its really striking. The gate for the 107 will be 99% black. The gate next to it (Leonia) is 90% Asian. Really a case study on racial segregation in this state.
Lol sounds like a grad student thesis in the making.
I've managed to never step foot inside the PABT. Wherever I've lived in NJ is either more convenient by train and/or doesn't have PABT bus service given the train service.
Man living in north jersey, using public transit, and never having to step foot in PABT is honestly an achievement to be proud of and I’m entirely serious. That place is one of the worst public buildings in the country
Occasionally I walk by it on my way to NYPenn and think of going in just to see the horror. Not yet though.
West ward, they never seem to do much on that side of town.
I grew up over there and always noticed how it was being neglected growing up.
Y’all remember that development that was supposed to be built in both the empty plots of land that grove street goes between. Years later and still got nothing, I rather see a Walmart now than wait for housing to come right there
Thats been a shitshow forever. For years that site was home to the Pabst brewery, super visible from the parkway. Once it closed it got scrapped and became a massive eyesore that sat there for over a decade. When they eventually did tear it down they apparently did not properly remediate the building for pests. Rats flooded the surrounding neighborhood by the thousand, and it's been a huge problem ever sense. Meanwhile that land just sits there. The whole thing just sucks.
Dang! That rusty bottle was my moms beacon to get home when ever she ventured “too far” west! 🥹🥹🤣
West Ward has the oldest housing stock and is the furthest from train and light rail. I'd guess the strip west of West Side Park headed towards Grove Street will have a hard time attracting investment.
That area and most of the section of Irvington that borders it looks depressing as hell
Give it another 50yrs and the whole city and surrounding cities will gentrify ...in 10yrs it will start to spread in from the Oranges , Elizabeth and Bloomfield.
You're already seeing massive projects grow in East Orange, Orange, Bloomfield, Union, Westfield, Montclair, etc. It feels like once Jersey City prices skyrocketed (by some metrics it's the most expensive city in the country ahead of NYC), the market's eyes swiftly shifted to Newark and its environs.
I never thought I’d see Seth Boyden become a movie studio so at this point anything is possible
Forest Hill, since it doesn't need gentrification. Old money FTW.
The stretch of Broad Street between Lincoln Park and South Street!!
(I grew up bouncing around some of the “Plaz” buildings there) I’ve driven by there a few times lately and I feel like there are more drug addicts in that small stretch now, than there were over 25 years ago when I was 12… (back when the Walgreens was just a huge empty lot with overgrown weeds and broken glass). I saw a documentary on HBO Max (“Life of Crime 1984-2020”) not too long ago that followed some drug addicts from like the mid 80’s to 2020 in the Newark area. At one point they were there, on broad street, shooting up! I swear I saw the same scene a week ago when I drove by… one guy was stretched sideways on a set of stairs, while the other guy was looking for a vein to poke in the crease of his big toe 🤦🏽♂️… Sad!! Just Sad…
It seems like some of these areas are already gentrified and will do so but not so much with white residents, I’ve seen some decent newly done apartments in this area. People also think black people can’t truly be gentrifiers.
I hate to say this, but that seems to be the subtext of this post, along with many things posted on this sub.
The truth is, ‘gentrification’ is probably going to look a lot different in Newark than it does in other cities.
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It won’t. Developers haven’t found their footing yet as the round of large scale projects is just taking off. Once the receipts come in and developers get to see medium term performance; they will identify one or 2 locations and concentrate there. Then we will see a sudden flurry on building activity that will radiate out from these centers. Look at DT Brooklyn and DT JC as prime examples of this. Developer need funding from banks and investors and those entities rely on performance to be comfortable with parting with their money. That is why you see builders cluster. My guess is the centers will be DT Newark along the light rail lines connecting into lower Broadway effectively connecting Penn and Broad st.
That’s all well and good. However the South and West wards are primarily residential, which is why I said those will be the last. There isn’t enough space in those wards to build say…a Vermella. So you aren’t going to see those types of developments there. You may get some modernized fill in houses in empty lots, but that’s about it.
Gentrification won’t look the same in the south and west wards, simply because of the nature of the existing housing there. As long as there is no commuter friendly solution to get to NYC, those two wards will lag behind. At the same time, there are houses for sale, but it’s not Tom from Kansas who works in the city buying those houses. That means, at best the South and West wards will be more mixed, but not ‘gentrified’ in a traditional sense. It may become a little more white due to younger millennial and Gen-Z being priced out, but that’s it. How would the existing minority homeowners be moved? Just because the houses are being bought by minorities doesn’t mean they aren’t being improved.
The definition of lunacy is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results; that is what the fight against gentrification is. Anti gentrifiers are trying to preserve the status quo in the face of overwhelming incentives in the opposite direction. They will never succeed! Their track record is abysmal which is why I think they are so hateful and bitter.
You can’t stop people from getting what they want; you need to focus on giving people what they need.
Here is what I would do if:
I can see you’re ignoring the important ideas here and you’re sticking to your belief. The point is, it’s not the same and it’s not going to look the same as anywhere else. It doesn’t matter what you would do, it is what is. This isn’t about anti-gentrifiers, at all. Gentrification is a nice way of saying whiter. It’s not going to happen like it did in any other city, because minorities own those homes and they’re not leaving; and for what? What reason do they have to leave?
You’re citing Jersey City, but I can tell you don’t spend much time there. Large parts of Jersey City are not gentrified, only downtown (Paulus hook), Exchange place/the waterfront are gentrified. Marion, Greenville and other parts simply aren’t and they’re pretty much the same as they’ve always been. Why? Because they’re residential areas where minorities own the homes and have for years.
The status quo in Newark would be slum lords owning those houses in the south and west wards. That is simply not the case anymore.
LaMonica McIver, councilwoman of the central ward, specifically believes this unfortunately. She thinks gentrification only occurs when POC are displaced by white people. If it’s POC doing it to other POC it’s not gentrification according to her.
Very
Everything has the ability to be gentrified it just depends on if city hall thinks that all the new voters will keep voting the same administration in if so they will go along with the kicking of the current residents out and giving tax breaks to developers . If not there will be an anti gentrification movement among the politicians
Mostly areas outside the downtown/ Ironbound/ Branch Brook park… those will stay poor for at least two generations
This is an interesting question.
Y do I feel like I know you 🤔
🤨
😆 I got a couple of buddies that are in IBEW 164 and are from Newark… that’s all 🤷🏽♂️
I was in 164 for years myself
Nice! Good shit!
Yea those identifiers narrow it down for sure, it’s a brotherhood within the brotherhood.
If we didn’t know each other, I definitely wouldn’t be surprised if we knew the same people
None.
Everything east of MLK blvd (High Street) & Elizabeth ave corridor will be gentrified. West of that line, I can't see gentrification in: *Lower Clinton Hill *Fairmount *West Side *Springfield Belmont *Woodside (Broadway from Cemetery to Belleville) but all bets are off if Newark- Paterson Light Rail takes place. All these neighborhoods are nowhere near Rail transportation. Broadway Woodside lost it when they closed the North Newark station on the Boonton line. Whether it's mass or light rail. Gentrification tends to follow rail and certain RowHouse patterns. Both are absent in these neighborhoods.
GhostOfRobertTreat t1_j5kutmf wrote
A different way to ask this question is “Which areas of Newark will never be nice enough for people who don’t live here now to choose to live here in the future?” I don’t like that kind of thinking.
We should be pushing for all areas of the city to be nicer, safer, cleaner, and more attractive. And we should be pushing and implementing policies that allow for people who live here now to stay here. That’s inclusionary zoning through income-restricted units in new developments. That’s rent control for older units. That’s some of the programs Invest Newark is rolling out to turn Section 8 vouchers into down payments. That’s job training and opportunities for current residents to increase their income.
If people want to move out because they got a better job and want to move to a nicer neighborhood, good for them. The problem is when people get pushed out of their neighborhood because they can’t afford the rent or some other crisis. That’s what we need to solve for.
The mindset that X neighborhood is poor and should stay poor so the poor people can keep living in poor housing is bad. I know that’s not what people explicitly mean when they argue against “gentrification” but in practice that’s what it means.
We need investment without displacement. We need new people from NJ, the rest of the country and the rest of the world. We need to have housing and job opportunities for everyone. And we need to work hard as we can so that anyone who moves out of their neighborhood is doing it because they WANT to and not because they HAVE to.
End of rant.