Quote:
Originally Posted by metronewark
Last Friday NJPAC officials announced a preliminary agreement with Dranoff Properties, a developer from Philadelphia, to build a $200 million building at Two Center Street, directly across the street from the arts center entrance. The building will have 250 apartments, retail space and parking for more than 700 cars.
Isn't this what downtown Newark is missing, residents? 
Reference:
NJ.com |
The key terms are underlined. I hate to be pessimistic, but I looked at several mid-rise/high-rise condo projects that were planned for Newark when I was the preconstruction director for a major GC in NJ, and the numbers don't work. The construction costs in Newark are the same as in Jersey City, yet they can't command the same rents and sales prices- hence there's no money left for the developer (and they don't generally work for free). They all think they'll go and get wage concessions fro the unions to make the numbers work, but the unions basically tell them to go scratch- there's plenty of work out there for them without having to lower their wages for the "pleasure" of working in Newark. Now you've got a developer coming in from Philly who thinks he's got all the answers, but he'll soon find out that it's not gonna work.
BTW, Newark doesn't exactly make things easy for the developers either- they've got a minority participaction program that is literally impossible to make meet without spending ridiculous amounts of money. This only makes it harder to make the project budgets work.
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