[NYguy]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...seball-stadium

Newark to Get Apartments at Site of Defunct Baseball Stadium




By David M Levitt
July 31, 2017

Developers of a mixed-use project at the site of a failed baseball stadium in Newark unveiled plans calling for as many as 2,000 rental apartments and 400,000 square feet of office space, part of an effort to revive the downtown of New Jersey’s largest city.

Lotus Equity Group named four architecture firms that will collaborate on the design for the 2.3 million-square-foot (214,000-square-meter) development, which also would have retail stores and open space, according to the preliminary plans. The site of the former Bears & Eagles Riverfront Stadium is within walking distance of trains to Manhattan and campuses of Rutgers University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

“We want to tap into different experts,” Ben Korman, chief executive officer of New York-based Lotus, said in an interview. “We wanted to tap the knowledge around us, and, to a degree, from around the world, for a quality middle-class workforce neighborhood. Each one will bring their own sensitivity, but ultimately work together in making it work.”

Newark is seeing an influx of real estate investment a half-century after riots tore apart the city and scared away developers. Projects include a new office tower for Prudential Financial Inc., a redevelopment of the abandoned Hahne & Co. department store into a mixed-use property with a Whole Foods Market, and a residential high-rise being built across the street from the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.

Architects for the stadium project include Michael Green, whose firm has been at the forefront of constructing buildings from wood, and Enrique Norten’s TEN Arquitectos, whose projects include New York’s Mercedes House and a campus for Mexico City’s Centro University. Last year, Lotus hired Vishaan Chakrabarti’s Practice for Architecture and Urbanism to plan the site and help design the project’s first phase. Minno & Wasko Architects and Planners is the architect of record.

Lotus on Monday also released a rendering of the development, which shows people gathered in a courtyard with cafe tables and blossom-covered trees, surrounded by a ring of office and apartment buildings. The developer aims to start construction sometime next year.

https://archpaper.com/2017/07/newark...redevelopment/

What will be replacing Bears stadium is a dense, mixed-use development made up of residential, office, retail, and cultural space, with an emphasis on community-centered programming. Two housing blocks and one commercial office block will make up the master plan’s superblock; a piazza in the middle will hold retail shops and host public programs. There are also plans to bring another cultural venue into the site, which will tie the development back into the city and the surrounding institutions.

Pedestrian movement will be prioritized. Parking garages will be relegated underground, streets will be designed with the pedestrian and non-automobile transportation in mind, and there are plans to only have one shared street for automobiles running through the site.

The site’s proximity to educational institutions, certain tech industries, and transit infrastructure (Penn Station is 15 minutes away by train) will help attract Manhattanites looking to move out of the city as well as those who work in Newark, according to Korman.

“It is a transforming project,” Korman said. “Ultimately the vision is to create a significant project that would serve as a model for others to follow.”

The designs and plans are scheduled to be completed by mid-2018, with groundbreaking tentatively aimed for early 2019.

http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/20...t_in_newa.html

Korman said the project will include 1,400 apartments, which would be subject to the city's requirement that 20 percent be set aside for people of low or moderate incomes.

There would be a 400,000-square-foot office tower marketed to technology firms, taking advantage of the city's growing reputation as a tech hub. Korman is also a partner in C&K Properties, which 11 years ago acquired 2 Gateway Center, the first building to contract with the city's Newark Fiber public-private venture to provide internet access to its tenants.

In some ways, Korman said the stadium project is a reaction to the Gateway office complex, which was built amid a climate of anxiety in the aftermath of Newark's 1967 violence and has been criticized as insular and uninviting to anyone but the people who work there.

By contrast, Korman said, the new project would invite the city in, with its large, open courtyard -- "the piazza," he called it -- accommodating open air markets, galleries and even film screenings, all open to the general public.

"These are different times," Korman said.

The complex will also include 120,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space, mainly intended for small or medium-sized shops and restaurants. And there will be an entertainment venue that Korman said would be comparable to Brooklyn Bowl, the 600-capacity concert hall and bowling ally in that borough's Williamsburg section.

Those kinds of uses, Korman said, will encourage pedestrian traffic from inside and outside of the complex. And, he said, the complex will also generate street life along McCarter Highway on its northern edge, across from the Passaic River, an area now bereft of almost any commercial activity, pedestrian-oriented or otherwise.

"The thought was also that, not only should it be housing for the city of Newark, but it should also also have commercial activity on the site," Korman said. "It should be an asset that should be embraced by the people that live in Newark and it should be embraced by the people who love Newark and work in it."