Regarding the design, I think we should compare what is proposed with the likely counterfactual rather than with some ideal.

Consider the likely options with rental buildings. Typically, rental apartment towers are thrown up with the least consideration for exterior aesthetics. Painted concrete, ungainly proportions dictated entirely by interior design, PTACs galore. Or some design that is touted as contextual but value-engineered to the hilt.

Here we have a developer willing to spend some more money on the design. Note for example the way the tower cantilevers over its base floor in the renderings.

But the building is not contextual, the critics say.

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Who here among us would wish the iconic (Broad and Academy) Prudential Plaza had never been built? And yet, does it look like any building around it? Did it look like anything around it when it was built in 1960?

I'm reminded of a Douglas Adams quote about technology, which can readily be paraphrased to apply to the built environment:

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A set of rules that describe standard (NIMBY) reactions to buildings:

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1. Anything that is already built in your town when you are born is normal and ordinary and just a natural part of your world.
2. Anything that is built when you are young is new and exciting.
3. Anything built after you're 30-35 or so is against the natural order of things.

I generally do sympathize with regard to sidewalks, but it's McCarter Highway -- who really wants to be walking on the sidewalk there next to multiple lanes of fast-moving traffic? The pedestrian traffic would be mostly at the corner and on Market St. Instead of a parking lot, we have a building that will add 400+ residents downtown. How is this not good? The cladding on the parking podium isn't bad either. Boraie looks to be doing a pretty good job of it, though of course one can't be sure until it's finished. But note too what appears to be a grand entrance on Market St.

I’m here at 520 Broad. I asked the man at the desk about Calvin Souder’s law firm and he said I was at the wrong building.

I would really like to make this, but I have a work meeting I can't get out of next Tuesday at around the same time :(

This development has Parkinson's. How does it take six months to build out a 2K sq ft. space after you've taken over a year to open? What have they been doing all this time?

Anyone want to take bets on which will happen first? Halo topping out or all these restaurants actually opening -- and for more than two seconds, unlike the pop-ups on Halsey?

I don’t agree with the demands here. Some of these speciality eateries have a relatively low rate of succeeding in general, and now post COVID? Retailers downtown are struggling. And inside Gateway? Fuhgeddaboutit. What’s the occupancy rate of that complex these days? When I walk through there I could hear a pin drop.

I hope the dumpling and cookie shops can simply do well enough to stay in business. If it’s good for business they’ll stay open after 6. If not, not. They’re on razor’s edge, and we want to make more demands ? Come on. And if you want the businesses on the street to do better, 6pm close times for the complex are good for the business on the street.

>newarkermag.com/2022/0...

Crazy that its in such demand, yet there's vast empty lots just a block away.

So if in you’re an industry with glamor and prestige, you get a tax break. That sounds sensible.

This doesn't work as a causal argument. For a causal argument, you need to estimate the counterfactual. If JC had built less housing, the prices in JC would likely be even higher.

Housing is MUCH more affordable in parts of the US where there are fewer restrictions on building and construction that drive up the price.

I suggest Matt Yglesias' book The Rent is Too Damn High: https://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B0078XGJXO/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+rent+is+too+damn+high&qid=1671828970&sprefix=the+rent+is+too%2Caps%2C130&sr=8-1

Although I'm not keen on the design, I hope this moves forward. I am really puzzled by the design choices here though.

Fear of crime in much of the US Is far out of proportion to the actual probability of its occurrence. This should not be a factor in your decision-making about a Newark internship.

This is very much a believe-it-when-I-see-it sort of thing.

Do the problems in that immediate area really have much to do with the 7-11? The park across the street appears to be the closest thing Newark has to a permanent homeless encampment.

Is this taken from a building ? Or drone?

Paramount Assets rocks. Now if they could only buy the Griffiths Building from Yanky Tauber and rehab it for real.

Is it illegal to sell turtles?

Oh I meant the link for the meeting.

Would be great if there was a clickable link rathe than this JPEG!

At least it’s not a cookie cutter apartment building, which is more than can be said than most of the crap going up around the country, case in point a lot of what is being built in Harrison.

Id rather have 2-3 copies of something reasonably interesting than your standard balcony-and-PTAC marred facade.

The copycat issue is a problem we want to have.

Typical NIMBY bullshit. I wish I was there to speak. I thought the next meeting was in November. I think we should start organizing a Newark YIMBY group to attend any and all such meetings and provide a counterweight to this nonsense.

Didn’t members of that James St group also oppose the new NJIT dorm, Maple Hall, because NJIT was replacing an empty burned out old school school? Those people act as though Newark was a site of ancient ruins to be preserved for archeologists.

Reminds me of the NIMBYs who opposed the 1 South Willow development in Montclair. They preferred a long vacated social security building, a parking lot and a tire shop to a six story mixed use development. That new development has totally transformed that corner, breathing new life into what had been one of Montclair’s uglier blocks.

The collective impact of NIMBYism is a major reason why housing is so expensive. We must find ways to limit their perverse impact every way we can.

See for example: https://www.econtalk.org/katherine-levine-einstein-on-neighborhood-defenders/

In terms of proximity to transportation, downtown Newark is second to none in New Jersey.

With JC and Harrison, you of course have to rely on the PATH train, which can be overcrowded. Also getting to midtown on the PATH is annoying. The 33rd street PATH station is unpleasant if there's any kind of wait as its just a platform. And on weekends, the PATH from 33rd through Hoboken is a fine example of the unique combination of f-ckery that is US public transportation. The last 1/5th of a mile of track into Hoboken, the train creeps along at 5 mph while screeching at 150 db. And the whole time, you're thinking, I don't even have to go to Hoboken, and how in the hell does the Port Authority manage to lose $200M per year on a system built 100+ years ago when they can't even maintain a normal schedule on weekends?

By contrast, in Newark of course, you have more options with NJ Transit, which, sure, is more expensive but is also a lot more comfortable.

Urby is a good option if you don't mind having a wall for a kitchen and a closet for a bedroom.

For a lower cost but still solid option, check out Teachers Village.

If this decision happened in an affluent suburb, I would strongly disagree with it and think it was noxious but understand the underlying motivation. But here in Newark? Absurd to the nth degree. Newark’s population hit its peak in the 1930s and fell to its nadir in the 1990s. What possibly could be the interest in putting restrictions on someone interested in investing in that neighborhood? It would be a little like preventing someone from making food donations from Walmart, arguing it had to be from Whole Foods.

Not all of us. I for one love rotting buildings and vacant lots. I especially love them in the vicinity of the largest rail station in NJ, eighth busiest in the nation. I think it’s a great use of land to keep that area at exactly the density it is right at the time when I moved in. Anything is too expensive and offensive if I can’t afford it. I’ve never taken a course in economics, the law of supply and demand to me mean if the people demand it government must supply it.