on top of the fact that other bars on the ground floor of residential buildings in Newark are extremely loud as well.

Um who do you think owns the nightlife in Manhattan, Washington Ave in Hoboken, or Grove Street... the rent in those places are extremely high for a mom and pop place to open up and the people running those places tend to be corporations.

Corporations have realized they can raise the rent alot more when there are things to attract the high earners, and part of the attraction is night life. Small landlords are the ones that care more about loud noise not the big corporations.

Eh downtown, like in most cities in the US, is just for business. The neighborhood that really offers a manhattan style midtown experience is the Ironbound. It has the large collection of bars and restaurants, its walkable, upscale housing, etc. The only thing it doesnt have is the skyscrapers/office buildings.

I agree with 66nexus, it is much more important to have a string of active buildings over just one or two super tall buildings. We should not be putting all of the pent up demand in a few buildings as they just end up becoming islands and not pushing success to other parts of the city.

These projects go a long way to making the downtown area feel more lived in

Honestly ridiculous that landlords actually spent money to cover up those buildings. Downtown has such a tacky feel because of these coverings as there was never much consistency between the coverings from building to building, and when you consider how not every building did a cover it just looked sooo out of place.

Happy they are embracing the older architecture, should bring back some class to downtown and hopefully change how people view the city as we start to embrace the classic look

I mean yes they are. Manhattan is having the same issues. I go to the Financial District often for work and once in a while go to Midtown... both places are pretty empty compared to what they were back in the pandemic.

Hell, I was just in Midtown for a random social event last month and when I left at 2 in the morning, the streets were extremely empty... this is a part of the region that is and was the most 24 hours area of the city (when I say city here, I include urban Jersey as well).

Newark had a much more active downtown office scene back before the pandemic. You saw them out and about during lunch alot, especially near Halsey. Now the only area of downtown that is pretty much at pre-pandemic foot traffic is the university areas.

Will it come back, maybe... I do not know if companies will go fully remote, but I can see many companies pushing for more in person work as we start to see the pandemic come to an end...maybe not full 5 days a week, but more around 3 to 4 days in the office and one or two days from home.

The issue here is that Newark's rent is reflective of the region's wealth not the residents. Developers aren't trying to attract Newarkers, but people from the region. Its a complicated situation, but its one that people kinda forget... Newark doesn't exist in a vacuum and by allowing market rate housing, you are opening it up to the NY/NJ market and not the Newark only market anymore.

That is why rent is seen as high for Newarkers, but it is still a bargain for the region

To be fair, these were NY prices like 4 years ago. NY prices now are 2 to 3 thousand dollars more... so its still a bargain... just not for newarkers or NJ residents

I think you are thinking about NJ Transit.

the reason for lack of integration is that its a holdover from when NYC's subways were essentially run by two competing companies and the path was unofficially the third subway company in the region. Because of this weird competition, the path never integrated with the other systems and has been treated like the step child.

There is alot of holdover from that time too, like a planned extension of the path to Grand Central that was abandoned because the company that ran the east side subway system bought the underground land rights up to like 100 feet in order to prevent the path from building as the deeper the tunneling the more expensive it would be, etc.

While I dont think the Path should be run by MTA, I do think there needs to be a standard fare that is transferable to all the systems in the area. Does not make sense to have like 6 different transit systems and all have their own fares and price points for monthly plans

This, its basically a holdover for when the Path used to use Amtrak tracks before switching over to its own tracks and using a third rail...so instead of treating it like what it is, a subway line, it just gets classified as a commuter line when it really doesnt act like one since it doesnt go into the suburbs and connects major employment centers in the urban core

Im sure they are working on it. The amount of money they would leave on the table with hockey fans expected back in the area soon would make this endeavor a waste in my book