From the NY Times:
Not Hot Just Yet, but Newark Is Starting to Percolate
You live where?
Such is the reaction that Ron Saleh and other new residents of this long-suffering city inevitably get when they tell friends they have moved here from New York, Hoboken or one of the region’s manicured suburban bubbles.
But the question, frequently delivered with an expression that combines awe with disgust, is often followed by another: You pay how much?
…
After four decades of economic stagnation and bad publicity, New Jersey’s largest city — stuck in the public imagination as a place of stolen cars, ailing public schools and a busy international airport — is sprouting stylish new restaurants, art galleries and bars that dispense $10 cocktails.A new indie music festival is expected to draw thousands to the heart of downtown next month, and city officials say that applications for 22 condominium projects have poured in since January, twice the number for all of 2006, with Shaquille O’Neal, Queen Latifah and Tiki Barber among those kicking around development proposals.
Though its struggle against blight and crime is hardly past, some residents say Newark is enjoying the kind of psychic rebirth that has helped transform scores of other downtrodden cities into nesting grounds for the young, the creative, and, with time, the well-heeled. Adjectives like bohemian and funky are increasingly tossed around, and even some skeptics are starting to believe in the moniker Newark adopted two decades ago: Renaissance City.
“I think there’s a growing sense that it’s cool to live here,” said Joseph Aratow, a real estate broker who has persuaded some of his deep-pocketed clients to give their vacant commercial property to gallery owners in the hope of encouraging more artists, and the people who love them, to migrate here.
From the Star Ledger:
Soaring condo market
Most of the housing built during Newark’s nearly decade-long construction boom has been two- and three-family detached homes.
So when Baye Adofo-Wilson proposed building 19 condominiums in Newark’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, his financial backers and city development officials frowned on the plan.
“No one believed a condo market would work in Newark. Everybody thought we were crazy,” said Wilson, executive director of the Lincoln Park Coast Cultural District.
To secure financing for the project, Wilson had to agree to sell the six townhouses as well as 13 condominiums on Washington Street before construction began. Much to the surprise of the financial backers, the condos sold out in the pre-construction phase.
“Newark has outgrown the two-family homes,” Wilson said. “Now a diversity of people want a diversity of housing.”
Condominiums are coming to Newark in numbers that could reshape the evolving landscape of the city.
In the first five months of this year, Newark has 22 condo projects totaling more than 770 units before the planning board. From 2002 to 2007, only 155 condo units were approved.
“This is a sign of the revitalization,” said Mayor Cory Booker, who has been critical of the type of homes that sprouted all over the city, derisively calling them “Bayonne boxes” in his State of the City speech earlier this year. “There wasn’t a condominium market in the city of Newark and now, in a matter of months, we are seeing a market.”
Been thinking soon seeling the co-op and buying a 4-family near Rutgers Newark where I want to goto grad school.
The Forest Hill section in Newark is really nice, Iron Bound section is more densely populated and is one of the best places to eat out. I haven’t been to other sections of Newark lately but I heard that they are getting better.
It seems that Newark cannot successfully follow areas like Jersey City, Greenpoint/Williamsburg, and the South Bronx as Newark is much farther from these other gentrifying areas to NYC. Young professionals will still want to fill up those places before coming to Newark.
In addition, Newark lacks a big enough waterfront area in which to anchor off. Its river is too small and the Newark Bay is filled out by the container port, styming any possible waterfront development growth.
Thus, overall, I’m still skeptical that real estate in Newark will rise much above inflation.