Neighborhoods in Newark are beginning to see a flurry of redevelopment, a decade after the city’s downtown gained vogue.
NEWARK — Construction workers in the South Ward of Newark, one of New Jersey’s most distressed areas, are busy converting a long-abandoned bank into an apartment building and poets cafe.
A decrepit mansion in the Central Ward built by a Newark beer baron before the turn of the 20th century is being revamped as a “makerhood,” a first-of-its-kind co-working residential and retail space.
Siree Morris, a developer, recently finished erecting six three-bedroom apartments on a formerly vacant lot. Next up: condos made from shipping containers and an affordable-housing complex named for his slain brother, Michael, on the street where they grew up.
While the downtown corridors of Newark, a poor industrial city burdened by decades of disinvestment, have been on the rebound for years, much of the rest of the city had been largely left behind.