It doesn't have any zoning variances so whatever the broad street redevelopment plan requires by default is what it would have for affordable units.

I care about housing affordability, but there are a million other good reasons to allow construction of market rate housing. The people who will live in this project will pay taxes in Newark, and probably not drive. If you don't allow construction in cities (which necessarily have lots of buildings already), people are going to live elsewhere. Opposing redevelopment of cities is supporting greenfield development in suburbs.

As for parking lots, those should be built on too, but it's harder for cities to force people to give up the land they own if they aren't willing to sell. They're currently against New Jersey law, but land value taxes (as opposed to property taxes) could penalize people for sitting on land they're not actively making money from and just waiting for the price to go up.

Not even government cars, giant government, SUVs.

Agreed, I really find it weird the amount of personal investment people seem to have in this project. I’m not sure what’s driving it. I can think of lots of things that I would go to a public hearing over, and actually have, like razing historic construction to replace it with parking, but this one has me scratching my head.

Not exactly the same thing, but the exemption from rent control for new residential construction for 35 years is part of the law here.

I personally told you that well before you made that comment. So fair enough to owning up to a mistake, but in general, if something doesn’t make sense, it’s good to know that you have the right story.

If this were a project with significant affordable housing, I would agree that it’s important to build. I don’t believe that it is, from memory, and I’m having difficulty finding anything that says anything one way or the other right now. I’m still not sure I would agree that it’s important to build where existing buildings are, given the number of giant parking lots downtown.

It's not dishonesty, it's ignorance that I corrected immediately upon finding the right information.

The reddit post is just a render of the completed project, not the article about the commission. No one mentioned the 1899 townhouse in any of the comments I responded to, so excuse me for thinking the (also old) building on the corner would be the one demolished for a tower which is on that corner.

I use sidewalks for both walking and scootering. Haven’t really seen it be a problem. Ideally, there would be a safe place to ride them. That is not the sidewalk, but since there isn’t…

I’ve never come even close to being hit by a scooter.

If you don’t understand how saying “this is a historic building,” and then showing a different building that doesn’t fit the description of the one mentioned to be at issue isn’t a dishonest argument, I don’t know what to tell you.

“There is a historic building we think should be saved. — “The largest part of the footprint isn’t historic.” — “OK…?”

The reason rents increase despite relatively impressive construction is that Newark isn't its own housing market. Newark and JC are building a lot, which indirectly causes gentrification (by improving public services mostly), but the NYC metro area's supply has not kept up with demand even a little.

17 years of experience living downtown within a couple of minutes’ walk from this spot would seem to be a fine way, however.

Many new buildings have gone in recently. You might think that housing supply would bring down rents, but I was recently threatened with my largest rent increase ever living in this building, and rents in the immediate area was the excuse given.

It’s also alarming how few older townhomes are left in this city.

Cars are king, pretty much anywhere, and the leadership of the city rides around in them, and parks illegally all over the place, breaks traffic laws, etc. I’m generally supportive, but that is a bad look, and I think it extends to all sorts of transportation policy here.

The story in this town seems to be that you only use transit until you manage to get a car.

Vibes are not a good way to evaluate projects. It'll have 344 residential units with 417 beds. Hundreds of potential Newark taxpayers will be kept out to preserve three townhouses.

Both this site and the adjacent parking lot should be turned into towers, but the developers only own this site. If you demand they go elsewhere and buy land from a compant that someone else in this thread said charges way over market rate, itll just not get built.

I have to assume that the leadership of the city just doesn't care. It is sad.

It's the building in the majority of the footprint of the tower, but here is the other side. The second one looks kind of nice and I wouldn't mind if they left the front up, but it's really nothing incredible, and the first and third definitely suck. I don't know if all three townhouses are on the chopping block through.

Edit: only the first of the three townhouses will be demolished. I think it's ok looking, not actively ugly but not worth preventing hundreds of homes to preserve.

That building absolutely does not give me “hundreds of homes” vibes, and there’s a big parking lot right across the street.

That does not look like in 1899 townhouse to me.

Behold, a historic building. I oppose demolishing ornamented victorians or anything with cool masonry because we'll never be able to build like that again, but this is incredibly generic and quite ugly.

The existing facade sucks. I can't imagine anyone is actually sad to see it go.

Edit: I mistakenly was looking at the building in the majority of the towers footprint. The actual building the commission wants to preserve is the first of these three townhouses. It's not actively ugly, but I don't think it's worth blocking the construction of hundreds of homes over.

Let’s all attend tomorrow meeting and see what happens and let’s all speak during the Public section.

The sad thing is that it’s true if JC had this tower proposed it would had already been approved, they build towers like these left and right.

The preservation committee isn't the final say. They oppose EVERYTHING proposed in the James street section of Newark. They opposed the demolition of Warren Street School. (So did I) NJIT skipped the opportunity to build a 20 story building around the old castle-like school & incorporate it. Instead,NJIT continued with its decades old tradition of bland 5-8 story wide squared "building blocks" .

Btw...Does anyone else think NJIT campus architecture is bland depressing &dystopian? Just look at the "Greek village". What a joke.

But I digress. Newark approved the development anyway despite preservation objections. Hopefully Newark planning board offers carrot stick suggestions to the developers ,incorporate the facade of the old building, or hopefully the approve it anyway. The developers did EVERYTHING right. Arc follows all Newark zoning regs. (THEYRE ASKING FOR ZERO VARIANCES)

That block really could have used this.

Newark shoots itself in the foot once again. Who knows what nonsense transpired behind the scenes.

Goetsman (EDISON PARKFAST) owns all vacant property in Downtown. Even if the parking lots don't say "EDISON".....EDISON OWNS THEM thru other "owners"...actually part of EDISON PROPERTIES LLC or whatever holding company.

He charges robbery prices to sell his land, developers won't deal with EDISON.

Apparently they are GOOD DONORS TO EVERYONE IN CITY HALL.

City hall won't punish them on their defiant demolitions or do anything to compell EDISON to develop their properties.

Nope. Developers DON'T NEED NEWARK. NEWARK NEEDS DEVELOPMENT.

Unless a compromise is found and the facade or part of is incorporated in the Arc, don't be surprised it it winds up in Journal Square, JC. Or worse, along JC west side on Newark bay redevelopment on rt440. A symbolic middle finger 45 stories tall towards Newark.

Yeah an historic building that is next to a school and can fall down at any moment. I rather be happy knowing that someone is doing something to prevent kids from getting hurt

Yep a two story old building that is next to a busy school and can collapse at any moment and hurt a lot of innocent kids. But let’s keep it because it’ll be impressive and bc it’s historic, easy for people to say that when they’re not the ones to do it bc no developer wants to reuse this building