Newark Activism – Myles Zhang

What kinds of tax breaks are we giving to redevelop Downtown Newark?
Who is getting them?

An investigative report on public funds for private profit.

“Free enterprise is a term that refers, in practice, to a system of public subsidy and private profit, with massive government intervention in the economy to maintain a welfare state for the rich.”
– Noam Chomsky

[1] Who owns the land around Mulberry Commons?

[2] If past predicts future, what kind of past tax breaks have we given?

[3] The problem is not tax breaks. The problem is: Who gets them?

[4] How can we ensure equitable economic development in Newark?
Five policy recommendations.

.

Artist’s rendering of Newark Penn Station expansion

Introduction: A Case Study in Edison Parking

The City of Newark borrowed $110 million to pay for a pedestrian bridge over Route 21. This new link between Mulberry Commons and Penn Station will allow travelers, event goers, and sports fans to walk directly from the trains to the games at the arena. Newark City Hall and the media are describing this as Newark’s equivalent and response to New York City’s High Line. This project follows on the already $10 million spent on building Mulberry Commons.

As part of misguided car-centered 20th-century urban planning, thousands of highways were built in our nation through low-income communities of color, to divide the less privileged in hundreds of places like Newark. Through the tools of public investment in public space, now is a moment to make wrong historical injustices like Route 21, Route 22, Interstate 78, and Interstate 280. Now is a historic opportunity for the urban form as tool of reparations.

However, what parts of the public – divided across lines of race, income, and home address – will benefit the most from this project? Will the benefits of this investment disproportionately go to a few people or institutions, such as Prudential Center patrons and Edison Parking tenants?

[1] Who owns the land around Mulberry Commons?

This map shows the location of the expanded Mulberry Commons in green. One company, Edison Parking, owns property on every side of this public space, except for the arena. The map notes Edison Parking’s land and the amount they pay in property taxes. Public records indicate the arena is on Newark Housing Authority land. The city assessed that property as worth $252 million and charges no property taxes.

In return for this $120 million investment, Edison Parking pays the city just $870,000 in property taxes, plus a variable amount each year in parking lot usage fees (source from public records). The interest payments on Mulberry Commons are at least four million per year. That is, it is likely the city spends more on services that benefit Edison Parking than Edison Parking pays the city in property taxes. It is time for the city to reassess the taxes of multinational corporations based in Newark, so that they pay their fair share.

Will Edison match this investment of public funds with improvements to their property? More importantly, who will pay Edison Parking to improve their property? What kinds of tax breaks or tax incentives for transit-oriented development will Edison receive to develop these valuable 11 acres of land?

For comparison, when public funds paid for the High Line in New York City, Edison Parking owned just two acres next to the High Line. They sold those two acres for $800 million in 2014 in one of the most expensive land deals in New York City history. In 2021, Edison beat its own record and sold off the assets it managed under the affiliate brand name Manhattan Mini Storage. The sale price was three billion dollars. How Edison distributed this three billion in sales is unclear because the company is not publicly traded on the stock market and therefore does not release regular annual reports. But this kind of money does give them a powerful war chest to spend in Newark: on campaign contributions, on lobbying politicians, and paying lawyers to reduce their tax liability.

If history is a lesson, that story of Edison Parking’s High Line in New York City will repeat itself with Mulberry Commons in Newark.

[2] If past predicts future, what kind of past tax breaks have we given?

The past is often the best prediction for the future. Here is how much several other new developments in Downtown Newark received in public funds and tax breaks:

Project	Public Funds	Year
Prudential Sports Arena	$200 million	2004 (source)
Prudential New Headquarters	$210 million	2012 (source)
Panasonic New Headquarters	$102 million	2013 (source)
Hahne’s Building	$129 million	2016 (source)
Mars Wrigley in Edison Parking’s Building	$31.5 million	2018 (source)
Shaquille O’Neal Tower on Rector Street	$29 million	2019 (source)
Hello Fresh	$37 million	2020 (source)
Fabuwood Cabinetry Corporation	$39 million	2020 (source)
Audible	$39 million	2020 (source)
Wakerfern Food Corporation	$27 million	2020 (source)
The Portnow at Newark Broad Street	$90 million	2023 (source)

And billions of dollars more…

The interactive graphic below visualizes an estimated 1.8 billion in tax breaks that the New Jersey Economic Development Agency handed out since 2007. Hover over individual dots to display the amount given for each project, and the percentage of project costs paid for with public funds. These are rarely direct and one-time cash payments from the state to the developer. Instead, they are tax breaks that reduce the developer’s tax bill over a period on average ten to twenty years.

For instance, Prudential received at least $210 in public funds to move their headquarters from Newark’s Gateway Center to Military Park. The move brought few permanent new jobs to Newark. The project instead shuffled office workers from an older building that Prudential rented to the current building Prudential owns tax free and rent free. Similarly, Amazon was promised upwards of seven billion dollars in tax breaks and public incentives to encourage them to move their second global headquarters to Newark. Mulberry Commons was advertised to Amazon as the prime real estate for them to build in Newark, with Edison again first in line to benefit from new construction.

This infographic is an estimate, not a statement of precise fact. The data is obtained from the New Jersey Economic Development Agency through my Open Public Records Act request. The data is unclear if certain payments to developers are one-time or recurring. So some figures above may be double counted because of lack of clarity in the New Jersey Economic Development Agency reports that are made public.

Based on historical trends, and the $120 million investment in a public park surrounded by Edison Parking’s land on all sides, we can assume Edison will receive multi-million (billion?) dollar tax breaks and tax credits to develop this land. The financing structure that allowed the companies in the above graph to obtain more than a billion dollars in tax write offs have not changed fundamentally changed since the program began. So, in addition to the $120 million in public funds already spent on Mulberry Commons, Edison will be eligible for and will receive further tax breaks. The proximity to Penn Station makes Edison Parking eligible for the Urban Transit Hub Tax Credit Program that gave Panasonic about $80 million.

The main justification for tax breaks is that: “If we do not offer them, then development will not happen.” This is argument is sometimes true, sometimes false. Thirty years ago, this argument was justified: Developers and outsiders were scared of Newark and needed to be rewarded with tax breaks to build here. In 2023, this argument holds less weight: Newark is already so attractive to development and investors that it is likely these developments would have happened anyway without tax breaks that total billions of dollars over the decades.

[3] The problem is not tax breaks. The problem is: Who gets them?

Tax breaks are an essential tool. Small developers and small business owners need them: for projects between 10 and 100 units. They have less in savings, and limited access to banks for loans. Historic buildings with expensive adaptive reuse need tax credits, too. The Hahne’s Building probably would not have been developed without tax credits, and nor would many other historic buildings that enrich the quality of our city’s neighborhoods. But tax breaks for Edison Parking, Panasonic (26 billion net worth in 2023), Prudential (35 billion valuation), Amazon (1.3 trillion valuation)? These companies own land worth billions of dollars, prime real estate in the world’s most expensive corners. Amazon pays little in taxes. The world’s wealthiest man Jeff Bezos paid no income taxes in 2007 and 2011. Why are we offering these companies more incentives to build in Newark?

Large corporations receive benefits not offered to smaller entities. Homeowners who renovate their properties do not receive tax breaks. Small developers creating infill housing, for example a 10-unit apartment building for middle income rent, do not receive tax breaks. Business owners who make improvements to storefront properties do not receive tax breaks. Only large properties apply for and receive tax incentives for adaptive reuse of historic buildings. Small owners of historic property do not receive these tax breaks. Big developers receive credits for building dozens of units of affordable housing. Small investors building or owning just a few units receive no such benefit.

Tax breaks for the very wealthy increase the cost of business for everyone else. When big players in Newark use public funds to pay for – in effect – 50 percent or more construction costs, then small players have trouble to compete. This approach inherently fosters monopolistic tendencies and undermines the core principles of fair play. It essentially amounts to corporate welfare disguised as a public benefit, with keywords like diversity and inclusion used to disguise the underlying lack of genuine diversity and deep exclusion perpetuated by these tax breaks. Incentives primarily serve to solidify the positions of larger players, further exacerbating the inequality that has plagued our city for decades and preventing new, more diverse players to emerge. To mitigate this imbalance, we must consider either extending these incentives to a wider range of entities or eliminating them altogether.

Tax breaks must be used as tool to even the playing field, not make it more uneven.

[4] How can we ensure equitable economic development in Downtown Newark? Six recommendations.

This project is a stub, an expensive skywalk from Penn Station to Mulberry Commons, a project whose form recalls some of the most egregious strategies of urban planning whereby skywalks were built all over major cities to segregate white collar workers from city sidewalks. We have plenty of examples in close proximity to the proposed Mulberry Commons bridge, and their detrimental effect on the streetscape in downtown Newark is evident. The new bridge will not meaningfully connect with Ironbound. On the east side, a narrow staircase descends some 50 feet elevation from Penn Station to parking lots, again owned by Edison Parking.

1. Expand the quality of public space: A further investment should continue this “High Line” Park on a gentle slope down to street level in the Ironbound. Ironbound residents would then be able to walk from their neighborhood to Downtown Newark on a path without cars, crosswalks, or stairs of any kind. This will require the park to cut through Edison Parking’s lot in the Ironbound, and for Edison Parking to commit more of its land to public benefit. Otherwise, Edison Parking can erect a skyscraper at this location, blocking easy access between the Ironbound and this park.

2. Public accountability through public meetings: The park stops at Edison Parking’s property line. They could build towers here, cut off from the rest of the city as pockets of luxury in a city of poverty. Or they could build affordable housing here, accessible to all in an open neighborhood. They could build another Gateway Center here: isolated from the city and turned inward with skywalks that allow people to work there without ever setting foot in Newark. Or they could build a new neighborhood here that is linked from all sides into the street network of other neighborhoods. Everything depends on our power, as the public, to ensure public accountability in city planning.

3. Set aggressive benchmarks that corporate recipients of state aid must meet. And if they do not meet them, they should be required to repay. In Mulberry Commons, public funds to build the park should have been match with signed legal “memorandums of understanding” with Edison Parking, promising to develop within X number of years.

4. Make accurate tax assessments based on land value, instead of property value: We need an accurate re-assessment of Edison Parking’s land values. These valuable acres must be reassessed at fair property tax value now that this massive infrastructure investment gives them direct connection to mass transit. Edison Parking should also be required to sign legal agreements promising to develop these lands within a set number of years, or risk penalties. The city could also revise its tax system to charge higher rates on vacant land than on developed land. By increasing the carrying costs of owning vacant land, land bankers have more trouble holding their empty land and therefore more incentive to develop it.

5. Move from a carrot model of economic development (tax credits) to a stick model of economic development (tax fines): We must evaluate the necessity of tax incentives for undeveloped lots in Downtown Newark. The current model pays land owners to develop: a carrot. A future model could fine landowners when they do not develop: a stick. In times of economic crisis when financing is difficult, we should consider tax incentives to developers to stimulate construction. In times of economic growth when financing is easy, we should consider tax penalties for land owners who choose not to develop.

6. Move tax incentives to prioritize new development that is not in downtown. Since the landowner is receiving a valuable public amenity in Mulberry Commons and Penn Station, further tax incentives are no longer warranted. Incentives for developing these lots are already apparent, thanks to their proximity to multi-modal transit and a sizable public park right at their doorstep. With or without tax incentives, corporations have reasons to build in Downtown Newark.

Can we agree that these existing incentives are sufficient to encourage development? Can we agree that further incentives are unnecessary? Can we also agree that any future tax incentives should be redirected towards areas of the city in greater need of development, where investors genuinely require persuasion? Can we also agree that future infrastructure improvements, like public parks with greenways and skywalks, should likewise be redirected to the criminally underdeveloped areas of the city?

7. This list is not complete.

The public has invested millions in Edison Parking and dozens of other downtown players. Now is the time for Edison Parking and corporations like it to give back to the city.

Everything beneath the sun… Edison Parking’s land highlighted in red

No comments

The City as Carceral State

5 September 2023 Browse All Work by Date, Newark Activism, Urban History, Writing

Context: The following personal essay accompanied my application for the Gupta Values Scholarship from the University of Michigan. I am sharing it here because it speaks more broadly to my background, education, activism, and research interests.

Jail entrance gate

Entrance gate to the Old Essex County Jail

One out of every one hundred black men in my neighborhood of Newark, NJ is currently in prison. At least half have a permanent criminal record as formerly incarcerated people. Most charges are for drug use and possession, often marijuana records from when marijuana was illegal. My earliest memories of Newark are of the homeless walking down our street to the nearby food pantry and young men carrying boom boxes on their shoulders (this was before the iPod). I will always remember observing one woman as she passed our house each day. The first time I saw her, she had been recently evicted and dragged two suitcases behind her. With each passing week, the suitcases gradually grew lighter until – after several weeks – all she had left was a grocery bag of belongings, her dignity gradually stripped away. Up our street was the public housing project of Baxter Terrace – three-story red brick barracks where the urban poor lived under constant police surveillance. Most were unemployed and all were on public welfare.

I remember taking the train to school in the suburbs. In the span of only five miles, vacant lots and abandoned buildings in one of the nation’s poorest cities gave way to large homes on tree-lined streets in one of the nation’s wealthiest suburbs. The distance of five miles – or in some cases a single city street – was all that separated the poverty of my city from the wealth of its suburbs. At the city limits of Newark, a system of one-way roads, streets without sidewalks, and aggressive “neighborhood watch” signs separated the city from the suburb. On one block, apartment buildings, treeless streets, and bodegas that accepted food stamps. Just one block over, there were century-old trees and four-bedroom homes selling for up to a million dollars. Here in these suburbs, homeowners commuted to Downtown Newark each day and returned home each night, bringing home with them the wealth they made in the city. So little and yet so much separated these two worlds.

Martin Luther King described America in a 1968 speech he gave in Detroit: “There are literally two Americas. Every city in our country has this kind of dualism, this schizophrenia, split at so many parts, and so every city ends up being two cities rather than one. There are two Americas. One America is beautiful for situation. [….] But there is another America. In this other America, thousands and thousands of people, men in particular walk the streets in search for jobs that do not exist.” So much and yet so little has changed since 1968. The racial wealth gap is almost the same today as it was in 1970. In Newark, median black family income is less than $30,000. In Newark suburbs, median family incomes are over $100,000.

If not for these early experiences, I would not be studying architecture and urban planning. My current work and dissertation research examine the carceral state as metaphor and asks: What actions in urban history produced the polarized, divided, and unequal urban landscape? Much blame lies with architects and urban planners, who worked with banks, realtors, and powerful institutions to profit from inequality. The Federal Housing Administration’s 1930s maps of Newark and hundreds of other cities singled out urban areas to deny investment and suburban areas to invest. Institutions require enablers, the realtors to assess the racial composition of neighborhoods, city planners to collect data, and mapmakers to visualize all this information that justified segregation in history.

However, my interest in redlining is more than academic. The implications of this research feel real. The audience for this work includes people I meet and see every day: neighbors down the street who were denied home mortgages because of their race; my own parents who would have been denied a mortgage (if not for the personal intervention of the bank’s CEO); Newark public school children learning about the history of their city; first generation college students at the local Rutgers University; and people like me who grew up with asthma and elevated blood-lead levels due to environmental conditions. Work in the urban humanities and digital humanities must be accessible to people outside the ivory tower of Ann Arbor, people who will live every day with the consequences of decisions handed down from urban planners and architects.

One of my current projects examines Newark’s old Essex County Jail, and the possible transformation of this site from abandoned prison into memorial park. Built 1836, it is the oldest public building in the city, a national monument within walking distance of my home, and a historic site abandoned since 1971. The history of this site challenges us to think of carceral spaces as something that stretches back hundreds of years. Incarceration is an evolving institution from slavery to Jim Crow to the present that has taken different forms at different times, in a constant act of reproducing itself. As Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote in 1850 in the opening lines of The Scarlet Letter: “The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.” As authors also write in The 1619 Project, slavery and incarceration were fundamental to the American project and to the origins of a city like Newark. The city was founded 1666 by Puritan settlers looking to build a utopian “city on a hill.” Upon Newark’s incorporation as a city, the jail was their first act as new city. Advocating for the preservation of this jail widens the stories we can tell and voices we can include in history. All buildings tell stories, and the built environments we preserve or destroy reflect the communities we think are worthy of preservation or destruction. Demolishing a building and neighborhood erases the stories these places can tell about the people who lived and struggled there. In my mind, architecture can and must be an activist practice.

When I started this project in 2018, I was excited to make this history visible. The site is entirely overgrown with trees and largely invisible from the street. To visit it and understand its importance required trespassing on public land and bringing people inside. With the rigorous tools of architectural documentation, I photographed in secret every corner of the site and drew up detailed site plans that will assist in its preservation. All these resources are shared online at the website I designed: OldEssexCountyJail.org. Based on this work, the local architecture school has conducted several studios that examine this site, as well as the first ever concrete plan and cost estimate of how much preservation will cost. Based on this website, my historical documentation, and on-site interviews with me and former inmates of this jail, Discovery Channel will be syndicating this fall a fifteen-minute documentary about this site to national and international audiences with translation into twenty languages for several million viewers.

Beyond incarceration, my larger challenge is to make scholarship accessible to the public. The boundaries around scholarship are intellectual (writing too complex for general audiences to understand), financial (academic writing locked behind pay walls), and spatial (academic spaces that do not feel physically welcoming to outsiders). My other projects from films, to videos, building construction sequences, interactive models, urban history maps, and my several websites all attempt – through research methods identical to the Essex County Jail – to reach audiences historically excluded from elite spaces. For instance, my ongoing collaboration with Rutgers University in Newark will result in a recurring history of Newark course, open for free for anyone outside the university to join. Students will be expected to produce works of public scholarship and narrative histories that examine the legacies of redlining and incarceration. Teaching students from the immediate community at their local university, and including in the classroom the physical presence of community activists, breaks down traditional barriers around scholarship. The course will be taught the first time in summer 2024 and will be funded by the Mellon Foundation, Clement Price Institute, and Chancellor’s office. Up to $150,000 is possibly forthcoming from a National Endowment for the Humanities grant I wrote for Rutgers as co-PI. Collectively, my work – none of which is published in traditional academic journals – has had over seven million viewers in the past four years and about one hundred thousand monthly readers. Visit: MylesZhang.org.

Every year, a few dozen high school students from Newark go on to attend Ivy League universities; occasionally, one or two become Rhodes Scholars. But it is rare for any of them to return to Newark. The city is a space to escape from, in search of wealthier spaces where home ownership is easier and schools are better. Social mobility means leaving behind the city and its ghettos to enter the American mainstream. But for me, the American city – in all its inequality, injustice, and poverty – is the foundation to reexamine our history and to rebuild a more equitable society. The evidence of inequality and the justification for reparations is all around me, from the city archives I visit, to the city street I live on, and to the people I speak with every day. I am proud of where I came from because Newark provides me a foundation and framework to challenge institutions. After completing my PhD at the University of Michigan, Newark is the place I will return to and call home.

Old-Essex-County-Jail-West-Wing-Photo-by-Madeline-Berry

Interior of the abandoned old Essex County Jail

1 Comment

Who Owns Newark? A Case Study of One Building

1 November 2022 Browse All Work by Date, Newark Activism, Writing

“Between 2017 and 2020, 2,500 homes – more than 47 percent of the city’s one-to-four unit buildings – were sold to institutional buyers. In Newark, many of the properties were bought by completely anonymous investors, prompting the title of a report from Rutgers University law school, Who Owns Newark? Transferring Wealth from Newark Homeowners to Corporate Buyers.”

As documented in this 73-page report, anonymous shell companies are now purchasing majorities of Newark homes and commercial spaces. Properties that Newark’s Black and Hispanic residents would otherwise own are now going to absentee landlords and invisible owners. The higher rate of absentee ownership is directly linked to rent increases and higher rates of eviction, particularly of poor and middle-class Black families. (source)

Just two of these several thousand properties are located at 569 and 571-577 Broad Street. Their ambiguous and hidden ownership mirrors the larger transfer of inter-generational wealth out of Newark. A case study of just these two properties parallels one for one concerns identified in the report Who Owns Newark? (source)

The two-story building at 571-577 Broad Street sold in 2019 for 4.2 million to a company named 569 Broad, LLC (source). No information is available about this LLC, aside from its business address: 400 Kelby Street, 14th Floor, Fort Lee, NJ. The only other company cross-listed at this same address is Cross River Bank with assets totaling 9.9 billion. As identified in the Rutgers report, business owners often create LLCs and shell companies to hide the full extent of their holdings.

The three-story building at 569 Broad Street sold in 2022 for 4.25 million to a company named 569-571 Broad, LLC (source) No other information is available, aside from the owner’s business address: 831 Bedford Ave, #515. This appears to be a fifth-floor unit in a private apartment building with security bars on all windows up to the top floor. A public database search of businesses registered in New York City and New York State reveals no licensed companies operating out of this address.

Within the same few months that the new owner acquired both properties, all small business owners were evicted or their leases were not renewed. Both buildings, which were majority occupied as early as three years ago, are now abandoned. This could be a case of manufactured blight and manufactured decline, as the new owner is now claiming both buildings are too decayed to save and must be demolished. The ejected minority-owned businesses include: 1) Nujoom’s Hookah Lounge, 2) Seventy Sixes Barber Shop, 3) Las Delicias De Mi Gente Cafe, 4) Ahio Immigration Law Office, 5) Goddess Lounge Salon & Spa, 6) Subway Sandwich, 7) Lan Mark Juice & Kitchen, and 8) Panda Chinese Restaurant.

45-story skyscraper view from Broad Street

The question remains: Who bought these properties? Who is the owner? We still do not know. However, as revealed as a footnote in documents submitted for the October 3 Central Planning Board meeting, both properties are owned by the same developer, a certain Israel Weiss from Ocean View Management (source). This company has no website, no public business profile, and no list of past projects they have completed. In fact, the company has almost zero presence in internet search results. Despite remaining almost invisible, the developer is now proposing to build a 45-story skyscraper at this location. In a city with median family income 37K, 80% of the 344 units will be for incomes upwards of 100K, while the remaining 20% will be for incomes between 80K and 100K. Who will live here? Certainly not current Newark residents! Normally, projects this large and ambitious come from developers with visible public profiles and track records of previous skyscrapers.

Over five public meetings that Mr. Weiss convened with the city and with James Street Commons residents, not once did he show his face over 15 hours of Zoom. The developer still remains for most intents and purposes anonymous and invisible, pulling the strings behind the scenes and directing his lawyer Calvin Souder to speak for him by text message communication during meetings.

However, further research reveals Mr. Weiss’s 2014 interview (source) discussing techniques of rent collection as a landlord for BHI Properties in Columbia, NJ.[1] A 2014 article described the trend in and near Columbia, NJ of outside investors buying up hundreds of homes that would otherwise go to homeowners and converting these units from homes to rental properties. This is identical to the trend Newark now sees in 2022. From the article: “BHI Properties set up shop in 2005 when a New York City investor in the company noticed how cheap housing was in the historic town. Israel Weiss is managing the most rentals in Columbia.” (source)

In a story as old as this country, renters do not build up home equity to have a stake and property rights in the communities where they live. Add to this histories of redlining since the 1930s which, as documented by legal scholar Richard Rothstein in The Color of Law, systematically denied non-White Americans the opportunities and financing they deserved for homeownership. The continuing failure to give Black and urban Americans equal opportunities for home ownership and self-determination continues this history of racialized space. As Mr. Weiss clarified in his interview, renting to cash-strapped communities is more profitable than selling homes to them: “The rent those people are paying are higher than what a homeowner would have paid in mortgage. So they got to earn it somewhere. Obviously, they’re earning it and paying their rent every month.”

Who is this developer? James Street Commons and Newark residents do not know. One thing, though, remains certain: The developer does not want us to know him. The question remains: Why?

45-story skyscraper view from waterfront

[1] There are several people in New Jersey by the name Israel Weiss. This Israel Weiss is to the best of my research the same Israel Weiss as the person behind this project.

3 Comments

A park without trees creates a city without history.

4 June 2022 Browse All Work by Date, Newark Activism

Harriet Tubman Square has the largest and most impressive collection of old-growth trees in Downtown Newark. The oldest trees are over 100 feet high, four-feet diameter at the trunk, and up to 150 years old. The City of Newark’s current proposal is to cut every single tree in our park. The only historical precedent for this is the 1960s project that killed every tree in Military Park to build the parking garage now buried beneath. Based on details and architectural plans revealed through an Open Public Records Act request, this animation shows what is planned for our park:

Read the plans for the park.

Read our analysis of these plans.

We cheer for the historic Harriet Tubman Park for a new, prosperous, and most of all just Newark.

However, nobody should even imagine cutting down these 66 century-old trees, oaks, elms, sycamores, all of which represent our history and particularly African-American experience. In America, trees symbolize both freedom and brutal oppression, should any sensible person forget. Unlike any historic treasures – architectural remnants, shriveled old maps, aged documents, or battled artifacts – these trees are among our most valuable historic icons, standing tall for our children.

Tubman embodied the notion of reclaiming the symbolism of trees and woods as tools of freedom in the black tradition. In the antebellum America, abolitionists always voiced lyrics about glorious trees that bore the fruit of freedom. Dr. Martin Luther King famously said, “Even if I knew tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plan my apple tree.” Tubman was famous for knowing the terrain of trees, woods, and swamps along her journey to freedom. In Tubman’s biography by Sarah Bradford, the black Moses said, “When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold though the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.”

On the other hand, Billie Holiday sang about fruits produced by these trees: “Southern trees bear strange fruit/Blood on the leaves and blood at the root/Black bodies swing in the southern breeze/Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees/ …Here is a strange and bitter crop.” The blood of black men, women, and children who refused to remain silent, and who deserve justice, life, liberty, and love, over the hate that surround them.

Last year, Rutgers Newark restored the history and voices of Frederick Douglass in the Historic James Street Commons. Let us not forget, Douglas also said, “If Americans wished to partake of the tree of knowledge, they would find its fruit bitter as well as sweet.” It is unimaginable that Tubman will allow these venerable trees of knowledge to be annihilated.

No comments

Bulldozer Urbanism

14 May 2021 Browse All Work by Date, Newark Activism, Newark History, Uncategorized

As featured in:

1. Preservation New Jersey: Ten Most Endangered Historic Places May 18, 2021
2. After Warren Street School Demolished, James Street Named ‘Most Endangered’ May 18
3. Newark Historic District Designated as Endangered May 18, 2021
4. James Street Community Rushes to Stall NJIT’s Demolition of Historic School  May 6, 2021
5. Nothing Lasts Forever, Not even at NJIT   February 1, 2021
6. SHPO Delays NJIT’s Plan to Raze 4 Historic Buildings    January 8, 2021
7. NJIT’s Plans to Demolish Buildings in Historic District Temporarily Derailed   January 7, 2021
8. Old Jail Could Inspire Youth to Stay Out of Prison – But Only If It Survives   July 4, 2020
9. NJIT’s Plans to Modernize Its Campus Could Cost Newark Some History   March 12, 2020

James Street Commons Demolitions Completed and Planned

James Street Commons demolitions completed and proposed as of April 2021

Note: Visiting NJIT’s architecture school at age six and seeing students working there was what initially inspired my desire to study architecture. NJIT is an asset to Newark, and the school deserves the quality of campus architecture to match. I wrote and circulated this essay about NJIT’s under-performing campus design to members of NJIT and the Newark community. I am sharing it online, too, in the hope that future leaders of NJIT will collaborate with the community to create campus architecture that is culturally and historically sensitive to Newark.

A Pedestrian’s Observations

Experiencing NJIT’s campus from the street

In publicity materials and in meetings with Newark residents and historians, the New Jersey Institute of Technology emphasizes the quality of its campus architecture and its track record of historic preservation. The school highlights its Central King Building (formerly Central High School) and Eberhardt Hall (formerly Newark Orphan Asylum) as trophies of historic preservation.

However, beyond its fortified campus carved out during the 1960s era of “urban renewal,” the university is now escalating its demolitions in the neighboring James Street Commons Historic District. Listed since 1978 on the National Register of Historic Places, this neighborhood is the city’s first historic district and contains some of Newark’s most significant historic assets. The spending of millions of dollars on building demolitions is odd when NJIT faced a 35 million dollar budget deficit in the first half of 2021,[1] and when other Newark institutions and developers are following an opposite path of historic preservation.

As NJIT expands into the James Street Commons Historic District, there is concern that new construction will not improve the built environment. For instance, NJIT’s proposal for 240 MLK included few to no windows at pedestrian eye level. The entrance to the parking garage and trash collection was from the side of the building that faced toward the residential neighborhood. Several other structures in the neighborhood are also at risk or have already been demolished by NJIT, such as Mueller’s Florist, which was a former corset and tin toy factory built in the 1880s to 1890s. Similarly, NJIT acquired the c.1890 brownstone at 317 MLK for ~$450,000 in livable condition. In following weeks and months before NJIT received demolition approvals, windows were left open and removed, thereby accelerating decay and water damage. The current demolitions follow a longer pattern among hundreds of other buildings demolished in my neighborhood. This would all be okay if only there was better quality architecture to replace what is being lost.

I write this essay as a series of architecture observations followed by recommendations. Firstly, I provide examples of how NJIT’s current campus design is detrimental to neighborhood street life. Secondly, I document the neighborhood’s appearance before and after NJIT’s interventions through my photo comparisons of past and present. Thirdly, I provide examples of more sensitive models for alternative neighborhood redevelopment.

Completed in 2017, NJIT’s athletic facility is the newest building on campus.
The pedestrian view along the sidewalk has no windows.

Demolition of the 140-year-old Bowers corset factory in progress (aka Mueller’s)

Map of NJIT campus. Buildings that face toward the street with no windows at or near eye level are indicated with red lines. Surface parking lots and parking structures for commuter students and faculty are indicated with red squares.

1. Architecture of Fear at NJIT

NJIT’s newest architecture does not actively promote urban street life. For instance, Fenster Hall opened in 2004 at a cost of 83.5 million dollars. The architect Charles Gwathmey told the audience at the building’s dedication: “University buildings…have an obligation to give the campus a sense of place, and happily, that is what we are achieving here.” The main entrance to Fenster Hall faces inward to the campus community. Meanwhile, the side that faces toward the neighborhood and city is the parking garage and eight stories of bare concrete that rise straight up with no windows at ground level.

The photo above is the side of Fenster Hall that faces toward the neighborhood. The emergency police call box and video surveillance signs might make out-of-town car commuters feel safe. But defensive architecture perversely has the opposite effect of making local residents, who must live with this architecture, feel excluded and surveilled.

Activist and urbanist Jane Jacobs wrote that attractive and safe neighborhoods to live in will always have “eyes on the street.” In her ideal neighborhood, shop windows, apartments, and urban life always face to the street. In active and mixed-use neighborhoods where people both live and work, there is always 24-hour street life and therefore people looking from their windows onto the street at all times.

The blank walls and surveillance cameras surrounding NJIT’s campus can be justified on grounds of public safety. However, hostile architecture that turns away from the city eliminates eyes on the street and, ironically, encourages the kind of crime it was built to defend against. In successful campus architecture, there will be reduced need for surveillance cameras.

The side of Fenster Hall that faces toward the city discourages street life and looks like a fortress. There once was a brick mansion here like the Ballantine House or Krueger-Scott Mansion.

Metropolitan Correctional Center in Brooklyn
Google Earth street view image

NJIT Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering

Sidewalk view of NJIT Microelectronics Center

Warren Street School: NJIT says the building is too fire damaged to save.
The photo above shows the building after the fire.

Warren Street School before

and during NJIT’s demolition

Warren Street School before

and during NJIT’s demolition

Another project is the demolition of the Warren Street School for NJIT student dorms. NJIT announced demolition plans in fall 2020 on its website. The Warren Street School from the nineteenth-century is by Jeremiah O’Rourke, a resident of Newark and the same architect as Sacred Heart Basilica and some of the most important civic structures in the US. The Warren Street School passed preliminary review to be included on the National Register of Historic Places. It is also be included in Preservation NJ’s 2021 list of the ten most endangered historic sites in the state.

As a final image, here is a photo past and present of NJIT’s architecture school. At left is the Victorian structure named Weston Hall, built c.1886 as NJIT’s first home. At right is the architecture school that now occupies this site. Originally, Weston Hall faced toward the street and city. Now, the current building at this site faces away from the city and presents its rear toward the public street.

One of NJIT’s first homes at Weston Hall[2]

was demolished and now looks like this.

When NJIT’s architecture school hosted a Regional Plan Association conference in 2004, the organizers were afraid that Mayor Cory Booker and attendees could confuse the permanently locked street doors for the building entrance, shown above at right. A note was left on the door: “Mr. Mayor, please enter through the door inside the campus.”

2. The campus of NJIT before and after urban renewal

When the Historic Sites Council was reviewing recent demolition applications for old buildings in the James Street Commons Historic District, one of the commissioners asked: “If NJIT is taking something away from the community, what is it giving back?” This is a more fundamental question that goes beyond historic preservation. All buildings have a lifespan, and preservation is not always possible. But if a building is demolished, the building that replaces it needs to be higher quality and more actively contribute to the quality of street life than what was there before.

NJIT is a commuter school, and most educators who work at NJIT live outside Newark. This is unfortunate because Newark would benefit from having NJIT more involved in the local community. In some ways, NJIT community members who choose to live outside of Newark cannot be faulted because many Newark neighborhoods are not aesthetically pleasing. Therefore, it is in the school’s own interest to make the surrounding neighborhood a more pleasant place to live, walk, and work.

Unfortunately, the photo comparisons below illustrate that the walkability and aesthetics of my neighborhood have deteriorated since the 1960s. Universities are drivers of upward social mobility, economic growth, and knowledge production. NJIT deserves credit for this. However, the university’s built environment falls short of expressing progressive values. Architecture that presents a blank wall to the street does not benefit the city aesthetically. More crucially, this does not benefit the students’ educational experience either. Architecture that turns away from the city communicates to students that the urban environment is not safe and not worth engaging in.

In 1962, after over ten years’ preparation, the Urban Renewal Project NJ R-45 (Newark College Expansion), with federal capital grants of $7,674,309 and millions more of state and local bonds, displaced more than 1,300 families. Through eminent domain, the state demolished 87.5 acres of brownstones and historic structures next to the now James Street Commons Historic District. Five years later, the government expanded the urban renewal projects and displaced thousands more people for the campus of UMDNJ. The resulting civil unrest of July 1967 injured 727 people and killed 26. Newark’s reputation still suffers from the legacy of urban renewal.

These photos were all taken in 1960 immediately before the neighborhood’s demolition for NJIT. The wholesale demolition of old buildings, while unfortunate, was an opportunity to build back better. This opportunity was squandered with defensive architecture. Moving forward, NJIT must take every opportunity to shift toward a more inclusive and street-facing campus.

Mueller’s Florist in 1960[3]

Building demolition in 2021

Intersection of Warren and Summit Street in 1960[4]

The site is now a parking lot and building with no street-facing windows at eye level

Warren looking west to High Street in 1960[5]

The same scene today. The university bookstore here has no windows to the street.

Summit Street above Raymond Boulevard in 1960, home of a paper box company[6]

Now a multi-story parking garage for commuter students and faculty

251 to 245 MLK in 1964[7]

Now a parking lot for St. Michael’s and NJIT

Summit Street and New Street in 1960[8]

The winch used to lift up bales of hay is visible in the upper left of carriage house.

Fenster Hall now stands here.

Intersection of Bleeker and Hoyt Street in 1960[9]

Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering

3. A sensitive development model by Rutgers Newark

Rutgers made urban renewal mistakes in the past. But with a new university administration, the school is learning from past mistakes and becoming a better citizen of Newark.

Rutgers Living-Learning Community (Image courtesy of RBH Group)

Completed just last year is Rutgers’ Living-Learning Community on the full block just next door to the Hahne’s Building. At this site within the same James Street Commons Historic District as NJIT’s continuing demolitions, Rutgers inserted new student housing as infill within the urban environment. Existing structures at three of the four corners of the site help to mask the scale and mass of the new construction. The building is not too tall, includes ground floor stores, and employs brick materials and floor heights that mirror the neighboring brownstones and businesses from the nineteenth century. The result is a project of high quality that not only responds to its environment but actually feels safer and more pleasant to walk past.

Teachers Village (Image courtesy of RBH Group)

Similarly, the Newark Teachers Village by Newark-born Richard Meier looks toward the street and stimulates street life with ground floor activities. The project is a first in Newark because it is targeted at encouraging educators to live in the community where they work. The developer was selective about preserving some old buildings to create a more visually rich and organic streetscape of old and new. The average building is no higher than four to five stories and includes frequent setbacks and varieties of materials. Although construction of the NJIT campus displaced an entire neighborhood, there is the opportunity for new construction to resemble the quality of urban life that was lost.

Urban renewal done wrong:
NJIT’s Cullimore Hall on Bleeker Street

Most of the façade has no windows and detracts from the quality of street life.Those boxes at sidewalk level are mechanical equipment.

Urban renewal done right: Rutgers’ Bleeker St. brownstones just one block from Cullimore Hall.

These are a few of the brownstones that Rutgers fixed up and turned into university offices. The building entrances all face toward the city. Rutgers put a flowerpot at sidewalk level.

Urban renewal done wrong:
Warren Street School

This school was built in the 1890s by Jeremiah O’Rourke. NJIT demolished this landmark.

Urban renewal done right:
Old St. Michael’s Hospital

This hospital was built in the 1880s by the same Jeremiah O’Rourke. The Hanini Group is renovating this building.

Old St. Michael’s Hospital and Warren Street School are two vacant and landmarked buildings by the same architect, built with the same method of brick construction, in the same neighborhood, and at the same period of time. However, one of these buildings is being demolished by NJIT while the other is being saved. The Hanini Group is transforming St. Michael’s Hospital into apartments and an arts center. Adaptive reuse of the hospital might be more expensive than demolition, but the success of a project must not be assessed on profit alone. As a non-profit and educational institution, NJIT needs to think longer term about higher quality projects that might have lower profit margins.

Urban renewal done wrong:
NJIT Fenster Hall

Parking garage at Fenster Hall: The rock landscaping in the foreground and the bare concrete wall are unpleasant to walk past.

Urban renewal done right:
Rutgers Living-Learning Community

Rutgers’ new parking garage: There are street trees, brick walls, and shop windows at ground level.

What sets NJIT’s Fenster Hall and Rutgers’ Living-Learning Community apart is the attitude of the institution to the Newark community. Fenster Hall turns its back to Newark and expresses fears of urban life. Rutgers’ newest projects are part of the city and neighborhood at a later time when Rutgers reassessed its responsibility as an urban citizen. Infill housing and historic preservation put “creative restraints” on developers and institutions. When developers like Rutgers incorporate history into their projects, the process, approvals, and financial cost might be more difficult, but the project is universally of higher quality.

The priorities and values of an institution are reflected in the architecture it creates for itself. NJIT should be an asset to Newark’s economy with so many faculty and staff who genuinely care about Newark. The school deserves better architecture that reflects its commitment to Newark. NJIT and developers alike need to think about historic preservation and the pedestrian scale in all future projects.

“Transformation is the opportunity of doing more and better with what is already existing. The demolishing is a decision of easiness and short term. It is a waste of many things—a waste of energy, a waste of material, and a waste of history. Moreover, it has a very negative social impact. For us, it is an act of violence.”

– Anne Lacaton recipient of the 2021 Pritzker Architecture Prize

Endnotes and Image Credits

[1] https://www.njit.edu/pandemicrecovery/njit-fiscal-update

[2] https://newarkchangingsite.wordpress.com/ Images scanned from the collections of the Newark Public Library

[3] All historic images are from the Newark Public Library’s collection of photos by Samuel Berg: https://digital.npl.org/islandora/object/berg%3A96b40a0d-640a-46c0-bf48-8a232b155ccb

[4] https://digital.npl.org/islandora/object/berg%3Ab1889dcf-5009-4e8b-bbec-588c63fe3e9a

[5] https://digital.npl.org/islandora/object/berg%3Ae3100c3e-2ac2-4fb2-b42a-987ffbc0f781

[6] https://digital.npl.org/islandora/object/berg%3Ad65f7167-96a8-4e45-bb72-594ec57bf295

[7] https://digital.npl.org/islandora/object/berg%3Af94bf759-2be2-45dd-8e88-e3dd43ca8296

[8] https://digital.npl.org/islandora/object/berg%3Af58b08d8-f527-49d3-b841-2176bbba54d1

[9] https://digital.npl.org/islandora/object/berg%3A0286e6d3-b8ac-46b7-8968-5e8a39f863e2

No comments

Exhibition Design for the Old Essex County Jail

16 May 2019 Browse All Work by Date, Newark Activism, Newark History, Prison, Writing

Developed in collaboration with Newark Landmarks
and the master’s program in historic preservation at Columbia University

Warden’s House c.1967

Warden’s House in 2019

Jail entrance gate

Since 1971, the old Essex County Jail has sat abandoned and decaying in Newark’s University Heights neighborhood. Expanded in stages since 1837, this jail is among the oldest government structures in Newark and is on the National Register of Historic Places. The building needs investment and a vision for transforming decay into a symbol of urban regeneration. As a youth in Newark, I explored and painted this jail, and therefore feel a personal investment in the history of this place. Few structures in this city reflect the history of racial segregation, immigration, and demographic change as well as this jail.

In spring 2018, a graduate studio at Columbia University’s master’s in historic preservation program documented this structure. Eleven students and two architects recorded the jail’s condition, context, and history. Each student developed a reuse proposal for a museum, public park, housing, or prisoner re-entry and education center. By proposing eleven alternatives, the project transformed a narrative of confinement into a story of regeneration.

Inspired by this academic project and seeking to share it with a larger audience, I and Zemin Zhang proposed to transform the results of this studio into a larger dialogue about the purpose of incarceration. With $15,000 funding from Newark Landmarks, I translated Columbia’s work into an exhibition. I am grateful to Anne Englot and Liz Del Tufo for their help securing space and funding. Over spring 2019, I collaborated with Ellen Quinn and a team at New Jersey City University to design the exhibit panels and to create the corresponding texts and graphics. The opening was held in May 2019, and is recorded here.

My curator work required translating an academic project into an exhibit with language, graphics, and content accessible to the public. Columbia examined the jail’s architecture and produced numerous measured drawings of the site, but they did not examine social history. As the curator, I shifted the exhibit’s focus from architecture to the jail’s social history – to use the jail as a tool through which to examine Newark’s history of incarceration. As a result, much of my work required supplementing Columbia’s content with additional primary sources – newspaper clippings, prison records, and an oral history project – that tell the human story behind these bars. I worked with local journalist Guy Sterling to interview former jail guards and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka about his father’s experience incarcerated here during the 1967 civil unrest. The exhibit allowed viewers to hear first-hand accounts of prison life and to view what the Essex County Jail looked like in its heyday from the 1920s to 1960s. Rutgers-Newark organized seminars connected to the jail exhibit on the topic of incarceration in America, and what practical steps can be taken to change the effects of the growth of incarceration.

The finished exhibit was on display from May 15 through September 27, 2019. The exhibit makes the case for preserving the buildings and integrating them into the redevelopment of the surrounding area. The hope is that, by presenting this jail’s history in a public space where several thousand people viewed it per week, historians can build support for the jail’s reuse. Over the next year, an architecture studio at the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture and Design is conducting further site studies. Before any work begins, the next immediate step is to remove all debris, trim destructive foliage, and secure the site from trespassers. These actions will buy time while the city government and the other stakeholders determine the logistics of a full-scale redevelopment effort.

My interest in prisons drew me to this project. This jail’s architect was John Haviland, who was a disciple of prison reformers John Howard and Jeremy Bentham. In my MPhil thesis research about Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary, I developed my exhibit research by looking at the social and historical context of John Haviland and early prisons. As I describe, Eastern State began as a semi-utopian project in the 1830s but devolved by the 1960s into a tool of control social and a symbol of urban unrest.

Launch Virtual Exhibit Website

Myles Zhang

Gabriela Figuereo (left) Liz Del Tufo Right (center) and Rob Kesack (right)

Sergio Rodriguez (left) with Zemin Zhang, Newark Preservation & Landmarks Committee director

Introductory Text from Newark Preservation and Landmarks Committee

Current Site Photos with Installers CJ and Will

Left to Right: Myles Zhang, Zemin Zhang, Renée Steinhagen, Ellen Quinn

Current Site Photos with Maureen Beitler Photography Exhibit

Interactive surface parking map of central Newark

12 August 2018 Browse All Work by Date, Newark Activism

Explore an interactive map of the 300+ acres of parking in Downtown Newark. This map is part of PLANewark’s ongoing fight against the expansion of surface parking in Newark. Click the rectangle icon on upper right hand corner of map to view full screen. Click on individual, color-coded lots to view information on the property owner and acreage.

Interactive map of Newark’s blight of parking

Destruction of the James Street Commons: 1975-2020

This map (accurate as of April 2021) illustrates buildings demolished in one Newark neighborhood, the James Street Commons. When historians first considered this neighborhood for landmark status in 1975, there were 425 historic buildings. Even after earning landmark status in 1978, demolitions and urban decay continued. Rutgers, Edison Parking, St. Michael’s Hospital, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology have demolished dozens of old buildings, mostly to construct surface parking lots as an “interim” land use. It is time that the local and state governments be more proactive in preserving the city’s history.

No comments

Zoning and Affordable Housing in Newark

19 September 2017 Browse All Work by Date, Newark Activism

Featured June 2017 in this NJ.com news article about my computer simulation

In the summer of 2017, I helped oppose the gentrification and rezoning of a neighborhood in my city. The area was zoned for buildings no higher than eight stories, which was respectful of the small and community scale of the existing structures. City officials, however, proposed rezoning a large section of the area to permit structures up to eighteen story structures – four times taller than any other structure in the immediate area.

Motivated by profit, the J&L Parking Corporation lobbied the city to increase the maximum allowed height on their land. Though they had little intention to build anything, this zoning change would increase the value of their property when they decided to sell it in the future. In what is called “spotzoning,” the zoning changes were drawn to exclusively benefit J&L’s properties and the parking lots of the nearby Edison ParkFast corporation.

I created a computer simulation of how the area would appear if the proposal passed and the neighborhood was built up to the maximum density allowed by law . This computer simulation was shown to city officials to inform the planning process.

City Council Speech

September 19, 2017

I’d like to speak on why opposing MX-3 is consistent with supporting inclusionary zoning.

To my knowledge, 7 members of the City Council voted in favor of inclusionary zoning. This is an important move to protect our city most vulnerable residents and to preserve affordable housing in our downtown.

MX-3 and upzoning will jeopardize this important piece of legislation.

Why?

inclusionary zoning kicks in when (firstly) developers build structures over 30-40 units and (secondly) they request a variance to build this structure.

When an area is zoned for larger and taller structures developers can build more and larger structures WITHOUT requesting a variance to build larger. And when developers do not need to request a variance for height, it is less likely they will need to include affordable housing in their project.

In effect, MX-3 will remove the requirement to build affordable housing in the effected area. When zoning is overly generous to developers and zoning permits overly large scale, develops do not need variances. And when developers don’t need variances, they do not have to built affordable housing.

In addition, since MX-3 could be expanded to anywhere within a half mile radius of Penn Station, it is quite possible that MX-3 could be expanded in the future. In effect, this would eliminate the requirement for developers to build affordable housing in this area. Upzoning does not benefit affordability.

Secondly, what is sustainability?

Sustainability and transit-oriented development is not just about a short distance to Penn Station. It is not just about green roofs or any type of development.

Sustainability is about affordable housing that we the people can afford to live in. We don’t want luxury condos for the 1% in the MX-3 area. We want development that our residents and you can afford.

All of us can agree that WE ALL WANT DEVELOPMENT. But we want development that is 1. Affordable 2. Respectful of the Ironbound community. And 3. Respectful of our city’s diversity and history.

MX-3 is none of these things. It is about landbanking and benefiting the 1% wealthiest outside our city. I encourage you to strike down MX-3 and to encourage instead an open dialogue with the community about SUSTAINABLE and AFFORDABLE development in our city.

Developers should come to Newark and development should happen. However, we should not upzone entire sections of our city, in effect removing the requirement for affordable housing, undermining the inclusionary zoning we just created, and jeopardizing the recent master plan we created with public participation.

No comments

Say no to Edison ParkFast!

27 May 2016 Browse All Work by Date, Newark Activism

Newark’s parking and land use crisis

Edison ParkFast, among several Newark institutions such as Rutgers and the New Jersey Institute of Technology, engaged in the systematic destruction of our city’s heritage. In the James Street Commons Historic District, for instance, Edison ParkFast and Rutgers are the single largest contributors to demolition of historic properties from 1978 to the present. Both demolished dozens of historic Newark homes and factories. As Edison ParkFast continues to consolidate its properties into ever larger parcels, the question arises: How will this entity develop this land? Will future development respect old Newark and our history?

Too often, the name of progress is invoked to justify the destruction of old. New development, from Newark’s $200 million sports arena to Panasonic’s $200 million new headquarters, reveal that our new architecture is often out of time, place, and scale. Not often enough do Newark leaders realize that progress is enriched by using the past as the foundation for redevelopment efforts. One can walk through Brooklyn or preserved parts of Manhattan and compare those historic streetscapes to Newark. Newark once had the types and varieties of architecture that Brooklyn still does, but Newark followed the short-sighted path of demolition and urban renewal.

Click here for interactive map of Newark past and present.

Here is a speech I gave before the Newark City Council on 19 May 2016 in protest to Edison’s anti-urban practices:

Good evening ladies and gentlemen of the Newark City Council.

My name is Myles. I am a proud, lifelong Newarker.

Newark is a city surrounded by asphalt.

To the south lies our port and airport, comprising 1/3 of Newark’s land area. Our airport handles 40 million passengers a year. Our port handles over a million containers of cargo a year. Both pollute our air.

Our city is surrounded by highways: Route 78 to the South, The Parkway to the West, Route 280 to the North, and McCarter Highway to the East. Millions of car travel these congested highways every year.

Our urban core is buried in asphalt. Thousands of commuters per day. Millions of cars per year.

Edison Parking is beneficiary of this pollution. Their 60 thousand parking spots are valued in the billions. They make millions on the land of buildings they demolished often illegally. They pay no water bills; their water runs off their lots and into our sewer mains. For a company so wealthy; they contribute little to the health of our city.

One in four Newark children have asthma, far above the national average. Chances are that your children or the friends of your children also have asthma.

I, too, have asthma. Always had. Always will.

Enough is enough. It is time to develop our city sustainably. Public transportation. Public bike lanes. Public parks. Sustainable infrastructure.

Edison Parking is not a sustainable corporation. When our zoning board approves of the illegal demolition of our historic architecture, they are complacent in this violation of our law. When our zoning board sits silently as Edison Parking uses our lands for non-permissible zoning use, they are not upholding the laws they are subject to.

It is time to change. You, as our elected officials, are in a position to enact the change your public needs. You, as informed citizens of Newark, are responsible for holding corporations accountable to our laws.

This is not a question of complex ethics or morality. It is a matter of common sense. Edison Parking has and continues to demolish our heritage, pollute our air, and violate our laws. Edison parking is breaking its responsibility to the public. Will you hold them accountable?

Please consider the city you want for our children and our future.

Thank you.

Comparative views of my neighborhood, past and present

These views compare my neighborhood in the 1960s and today, hinting at the kind of human scale urban fabric demolished.

Central Avenue between Broad & Halsey in 11959, demolished by Edison Parking

Central Avenue between Broad & Halsey in 1978, demolished by Edison Parking

Corner of Central & Washington in 1959, demolished by Edison Parking

Washington Street between Bleecker & Central Avenue in 1978, demolished by Edison Parking

Mulberry & Market in the 1950s, currently owned by Edison Parking

86-88 University Street, demolished by Rutgers

Washington Street School for the Dead in 1978, demolished by Rutgers

Eagle Street in 1978, demolished by Rutgers

15 Burnett Street in 1978

University Street in 1978, demolished by Saint Michael’s Hospital for emergency parking

Park & Clinton Avenues in the early 1900s, currently a parking lot for Sacred Heart Cathedral

Temple B’Nai Abraham, demolished to construct parking for the Essex County Hall of Records

The 18000-seat Tivoli Theater in Roseville section of Newark, demolished to constuct low-income housing project

No comments

Urban Garden in Newark

24 November 2015 Browse All Work by Date, Newark Activism

By Maia and Myles Zhang

In time, we will wind our way and rediscover the role of architecture and man-made forms in creating a new civilized landscape. It is essentially a question of rediscovering symbols and believing in them once again. […] Out of a ruin a new symbol emerges, and a landscape finds form and comes alive.

– John Brinckerhoff Jackson, A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time (1994)

.

In the past 60 years, my home city of Newark, NJ has lost 40% of its population and nearly 50% of its buildings.

The timely and needed development of Newark’s land is prevented through a combination of flawed government policy, economic downturns, risk-averse landowners, and lax enforcement of land use laws. As a result, hundreds of acres of prime urban land remain undeveloped as vacant parking lots. There are over 300 acres of paved surface parking lots in my neighborhood (link to interactive parking map). This sub-optimal and low-density land use has consequences for city government (undeveloped lands are taxed less), housing (Newark has a shortage of quality affordable housing), and the environment (parking lots burden the city’s sewer system with surface runoff). American cities are unique in the world for being so built around, and effected by, the car.

One of Newark’s larger vacant parcels was an electric factory and has sat empty for nearly 40 years — 25 years as a decaying warehouse and 15 more years as wasteland filled with yellow crabgrass and decomposing trash. For five years, rusting demolition equipment and a towering pile of brick, steel, and construction debris moldered in the center of the lot — visible to the millions of commuters who pass this site yearly, watching day by day as the building gradually deteriorated into weeds.

Then our family decided to experiment with ways to bring a semblance of new life to this tired soil: a garden. Our proposal to cover this raw earth in spring flowers was denied by the site’s owner, who was afraid community access would weaken his ownership stake as an absentee landlord. Undeterred, on a quiet weekend with few commuters passing by, we slipped behind the barbed wire fence to sow under the smiling sun. The wondrous flower mixture danced out of the plastic seeder, humming a soothing rhythm. Thanks to more nourishing rain, hope germinated from the infant seeds. Soon, sprouts began popping up hesitantly. At first, the green shoots looked no different from the weeds, but with time they grew taller and flowers bloomed — clover, sunflowers, daisies, and Queen Anne’s Lace. Where once commuters walked pass, now they would stop and take photos of our work, with the city skyline rising in background.

Every June, the sanitation workers come with their oily machines and sweaty equipment to level the land of the flowers we planted. With hatchets, they destroy the flowering fruits of our labor and re-expose the rubble strewn dirt. With chainsaws, they chop down the trees that sprout from the chain-link fence. They leave the mauled flowers and trees strewn on the ground where they fall. Over the following weeks, the flowers and leaves dry in the hot sun and return to the dusty earth tones of the dirt from which they sprang. However, each new year, the flowers return more resilient than before, and with more numerous and larger blossoms. In earlier years, the seeds’ return required our help and gentle watering. These days, they return unaided, attracting the occasional bird. The cycle repeats… “Where flowers bloom, so does hope.”

Learn more about this project on GoFundMe.

This project was also featured in the spring 2018 edition of Sine Theta magazine.

.

Westinghouse demolition

Westinghouse demolition near Newark Broad Street Station

The Wesinghouse before demolition

The Westinghouse in the 1940s

“On Top” painting by Maria Mijares in 2008

Rubble in 2009

The chimney falls

Newark Broad Street Station

Now an urban garden

Urban Garden with Broad Street Station in Background

Urban Garden with Rutgers Law School in Background

What kinds of tax breaks are we giving to redevelop Downtown Newark? Who is getting them?

An investigative report on public funds for private profit.

Contents

[1] Who owns the land around Mulberry Commons?

[2] If past predicts future, what kind of past tax breaks have we given?

[3] The problem is not tax breaks. The problem is: Who gets them?

[4] How can we ensure equitable economic development in Newark? Five policy recommendations.

.

Introduction: A Case Study in Edison Parking

However, what parts of the public – divided across lines of race, income, and home address – will benefit the most from this project? Will the benefits of this investment disproportionately go to a few people or institutions, such as Prudential Center patrons and Edison Parking tenants?

[1] Who owns the land around Mulberry Commons?

Will Edison match this investment of public funds with improvements to their property? More importantly, who will pay Edison Parking to improve their property? What kinds of tax breaks or tax incentives for transit-oriented development will Edison receive to develop these valuable 11 acres of land?

If history is a lesson, that story of Edison Parking’s High Line in New York City will repeat itself with Mulberry Commons in Newark.

[2] If past predicts future, what kind of past tax breaks have we given?

The past is often the best prediction for the future. Here is how much several other new developments in Downtown Newark received in public funds and tax breaks:

Project

Public Funds

Year

And billions of dollars more…

[3] The problem is not tax breaks. The problem is: Who gets them?

Tax breaks must be used as tool to even the playing field, not make it more uneven.

[4] How can we ensure equitable economic development in Downtown Newark? Six recommendations.

The public has invested millions in Edison Parking and dozens of other downtown players. Now is the time for Edison Parking and corporations like it to give back to the city.

Context: The following personal essay accompanied my application for the Gupta Values Scholarship from the University of Michigan. I am sharing it here because it speaks more broadly to my background, education, activism, and research interests.

Who is this developer? James Street Commons and Newark residents do not know. One thing, though, remains certain: The developer does not want us to know him. The question remains: Why?

We cheer for the historic Harriet Tubman Park for a new, prosperous, and most of all just Newark.

As featured in:

A Pedestrian’s Observations

Experiencing NJIT’s campus from the street

Map of NJIT campus. Buildings that face toward the street with no windows at or near eye level are indicated with red lines. Surface parking lots and parking structures for commuter students and faculty are indicated with red squares.

1. Architecture of Fear at NJIT

The side of Fenster Hall that faces toward the city discourages street life and looks like a fortress. There once was a brick mansion here like the Ballantine House or Krueger-Scott Mansion.

2. The campus of NJIT before and after urban renewal

3. A sensitive development model by Rutgers Newark

Rutgers made urban renewal mistakes in the past. But with a new university administration, the school is learning from past mistakes and becoming a better citizen of Newark.

– Anne Lacaton recipient of the 2021 Pritzker Architecture Prize

Endnotes and Image Credits

Developed in collaboration with Newark Landmarks and the master’s program in historic preservation at Columbia University

Related content

Read my January 2021 article in The Newarker magazine.

Read this July 2020 article from Jersey Digs about my exhibit and the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s proposal to reuse this jail site.

Hear my September 2019 interview about this jail and exhibit from Pod & Market.

Interactive map of Newark’s blight of parking

Destruction of the James Street Commons: 1975-2020

I created a computer simulation of how the area would appear if the proposal passed and the neighborhood was built up to the maximum density allowed by law . This computer simulation was shown to city officials to inform the planning process.

City Council Speech

September 19, 2017

I’d like to speak on why opposing MX-3 is consistent with supporting inclusionary zoning.

To my knowledge, 7 members of the City Council voted in favor of inclusionary zoning. This is an important move to protect our city most vulnerable residents and to preserve affordable housing in our downtown.

MX-3 and upzoning will jeopardize this important piece of legislation.

Why?

inclusionary zoning kicks in when (firstly) developers build structures over 30-40 units and (secondly) they request a variance to build this structure.

When an area is zoned for larger and taller structures developers can build more and larger structures WITHOUT requesting a variance to build larger. And when developers do not need to request a variance for height, it is less likely they will need to include affordable housing in their project.

What kinds of tax breaks are we giving to redevelop Downtown Newark?
Who is getting them?

[4] How can we ensure equitable economic development in Newark?
Five policy recommendations.

Developed in collaboration with Newark Landmarks
and the master’s program in historic preservation at Columbia University

Read this July 2020 article from Jersey Digs
about my exhibit and the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s proposal to reuse this jail site.