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The "similar" walk refers to a PHer's walk to their car and the relative safety that person enjoys compared to someone doing the same thing at the oh so scary Beacon. It's taking an every day activity and framing it to provide perspective. I can extend the comparison to walks around the development (which have shown to be equally as safe), but it would be redundant. The comment was made in response to another person's misinformed statement about the Beacon and not intended as a dig against PH (a neighborhood I happen to really appreciate). The truth is that JC is an urban environment and crime happens, but to suggest that such crime is more the reality for JC west of the turnpike, is pure folly.

Enjoy your walk.

MrWolf wrote:
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A similar walk? I wasn't aware that PH was a gated, secure parking lot.

I'll take my chances walking around PH at night, you Beaconites can enjoy your uh, "safer" evening parking lot strolls

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I think the current JC administration and the police are doing much better than Booker's administration is doing in Newark -- though I like him! That administration just lost one of their own to gun violence -- meanwhile -- did you read the article just today about how low JC's murder rate has gotten? Offhand, I can only think of one murder downtown last year.

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Murders down in Hudson County for second straight year

by Michaelangelo Conte
Jersey Journal
January 02, 2008

There were 27 homicides in Hudson County in 2007, a drop of more than 25 percent from the 37 murders in 2006, officials said today.

It was the second straight year homicides went down, and a nearly 50 percent reduction from 2005, when there were 50.

There were 21 homicides in Jersey City in 2007, a reduction from the 2006 total of 24, Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said today.

In 2005 there were 37 homicides in the city, the highest number since 1982.

There were four homicides in West New York in 2007, one more than in 2006, DeFazio said. There was one murder each in Bayonne and Union City.

Seventeen of Hudson County's 2007 homicides were the result of shootings, said DeFazio.

"People are resorting to the use of a guns in incidents where in the past there would not be a firearm used," DeFazio said.

Most of Jersey City's homicides are related to gangs and drugs and occur in areas known for drug trafficking, said DeFazio.

He called the murder rate in Jersey City "surprisingly low . . . compared to other urban areas in New Jersey."

"I think there is to some degree more community and neighborhood action and I think the crime problem overall can only be confronted when neighbors or neighborhoods look after the people and are concerned about the people that live there," DeFazio said.

The challenges are massive, but I do think that the tide is starting to turn in Newark. One thing that is very encouraging is some of the quality of life initiatives the mayor and police have undertaken. Following a model that helped NYC prosper is a step in the right direction. It would be great to see the current JC administration take such a zero tolerance approach.

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Here's hoping you are right. I don't know anyone who wouldn't want to see Newark succeed, but the challenges are massive. There are certain cities that just can't seem to turn themselves around. (Jersey City is a definite exception but still has a way to go.)

Let's meet back here in exactly 15 years and see what happened.

People scoffed at people flocking to Jersey City in the early 90s thinking they lost their minds as JC was supposedly undesirable. The same will happen with Newark when 15 years from now, it will be another "it" location. It pays (literally and figuratively) to be a prescient pioneer.

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You're kidding, right? Up until this point, there have been zero crime issues at the Beacon and I can comfortably say that one is much safer walking to their car late night (in the Beacon parking lot), than doing a similar walk on certain blocks in PH. This recent summer's rash of assaults and muggings downtown illustrates this point. Attempting to elevate a development like Metropolis, while diminishing other successful developments because you're fearful of their neighborhoods is nonsensical.

The mind truly boggles ......

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To me, it sounds as if maybe one problem is that the cost of renovations pushes market-rate rents so high that regular people really can't afford the units.

To me, $2,500 for a two-bedroom that's a half hour commute from Manhattan sounds pretty expensive, even if the amenities are good.

Yes, and JC is still broke and nickel / dime our sewers, roads, crime and education. Shame JC Shame - Its well overdue to give Healy the ass for his administration's mismanagement!

Newark is NOT the fastest growing City - Jersey City is:

Among localities, Jersey City ranks at the top. For the past three years, Jersey City led all municipalities with the most construction and will continue as the top performer in 2007. Its construction office issued permits for $695.8 million of
construction through September. New houses accounted for nearly 60 percent of all activity. Jersey City had 1,935 authorized dwellings through September, more than
any other locality.

? Newark ranks second with $260.8 million of construction and also has the second highest number of authorized dwellings through September: 792 units. Work on the
new sports arena and several parking garages accounted for over $172.5 million, or 68.1 percent, of all reported work thus far in 2007.

i visited eleven80 a few months back when i was looking for a rental, the building is nice, rents are cheap but the area is not good. In the day it was ok, but at night(7-8pm) the streets were mostly empty with shady individuals and drunks standing around all over the place.

Not a place i want to live, ended up renting in metropolis tower in paulus hook, much crappier building but at least i dont have to worry about armed robbery everytime i go outside.

i think eleven80 is the same concept as the beacon, but even worse.

C'mon. These people are real people, and the reporter discussed with them, while you know nothing. They are happier than ever. The people who move to Stamford and Newark are saving money and benefiting from a much diverse environment than in that creepy Manhattan. I heard Madonna is getting a pied-a-terre in Newark :)
OTOH Ferry St is way better than Bergen Ave, even with the new and 'reconstructed' J Sq. I am thinking of moving there.

That is too a joke. That reporter couldn't have left the downtown/Penn Station area. I looked at properties in Newark a few times this Summer and decided against investing there after the SECOND time random people ran out of houses and started chasing my car. One house I looked at on 14th Ave had the calcified carcass of a dog in the backyard.

And that was before I ventured toward the Clinton/Avon area. Stay away from Newark, unless you move right into Downtown or along Ferry St. in the Ironbound.

Newark's Revival: It's No Joke
Oft-Ridiculed Spot Is Northeast's Fastest-Growing Big City

By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Staff Writer
December 31

NEWARK -- "You're going to get killed!"

That -- along with a "you're crazy" and "nice knowing you" or two -- was the kind of half-joking response that Chris and Ade Sedita heard from their Manhattan friends when the couple announced their plans to move from glittering New York to, of all places, Newark.

But as the pair sipped wine and nibbled cheese during an exhibit opening at their new art gallery in central Newark, they insisted they were crazy like a fox.

"They just didn't get it," said Chris Sedita, 28. "Something is finally happening in Newark. This place is coming alive again."

Harper's Magazine once ranked it the worst place to live in America; Money Magazine called it the most dangerous. And then there are the jokes.

But Newark just may have the last laugh. The city America loves to humiliate is on the cusp of a renaissance -- one that is taking a town that has been synonymous with crime, drugs and inner-city blight and transforming it into the nation's least likely symbol of urban renewal.

Forty years after the 1967 race riots marked the unofficial start of its steep decline, Newark is now the fastest-growing big city in the Northeast. After shedding more than 100,000 people in four decades, its population jumped nearly 3 percent, to 281,402, from 2000 to 2006, according to new U.S. Census data. That growth beat Boston, the District and New York while outpacing some cities out West such as San Diego and Long Beach.

Newark is reemerging at a time when its energetic new mayor, Cory Booker, 38, is winning some major battles in his war against entrenched corruption and crime. Part of a fresh generation of young, media-savvy black politicians, including the District's Adrian Fenty, Booker has come under heavy fire from the African American community for largely eschewing the black old guard in favor of young advisers of myriad races.

Booker has fought to win street credibility in other ways. He moved into a $1,200-a-month apartment in the gang-ridden South Ward. More importantly, he has pushed through major police initiatives that helped cut crime in half through the first half of 2007.

To be sure, Newark remains one of the nation's most violent cities, with a homicide rate three times as high as New York's. That reputation was underscored by the harrowing murders in August, when two teenagers and two 20-year-olds -- all said to be "good kids" by police -- were lined up in a schoolyard and shot execution-style. Three of the young people were killed, while the fourth survived.

Yet the number of murders in 2007 is down slightly from last year's record high of 106, and shootings have dropped significantly.

Meanwhile, the Passaic River, fouled and malodorous, still pungently flows alongside abandoned factories and violent housing projects in a city where more than a quarter of the residents live in poverty.

Even so, a stream of urban pioneers -- including those priced out of a stratospheric New York City real estate market -- makes clear that Newark is showing once-unthinkable signs of life.

"We've reached a turning point," said Booker, a Yale-educated Rhodes Scholar, with the conviction of a pitchman. "This next chapter of Newark is not about survival, it's about prosperity."

That would sound like hype were there not a growing body of evidence to support it. The October inauguration of a new sports arena, which lured the New Jersey Devils professional hockey team to relocate from the Meadowlands, is bringing tens of thousands of fans into the city center each month.

Meanwhile, a burgeoning art scene and the largesse of its most celebrated natives are affording Newark an unexpected amount of cachet. Basketball great Shaquille O'Neal, city officials say, is set to invest in a multiuse commercial project here. And this summer, locally born Queen Latifah strutted down the red carpet at Newark's grand performing arts center, the site of a star-studded premiere for the hit film musical "Hairspray."

The newcomers include thousands of Brazilian immigrants who have settled along the old Portuguese Ironbound district in recent years, revitalizing it with new South American steak houses and caf?s that have become a draw for patrons from across northern New Jersey. The rotting core of Newark is sprouting funky new eateries and artist lofts.

"Is Newark cool? Well, it's getting there," said Chris Sedita, who relocated with Ade, 29, nearly two years ago to join the arts scene here. "We went from paying a fortune for an apartment we could spit across in Manhattan to a place three times the size and half the price in Newark. Value is a pretty big motivator."

Though many are being lured here by prices half those of New York, five miles away, Newark's long-term prospects are likely to rest on larger developers who have long shunned the city.

The best evidence of change can be found inside the Eleven80 building in the heart of downtown. The long-abandoned art deco office tower, one of the city's tallest, is in the final stage of a $120 million renovation into an uber-luxurious apartment complex. It comes with a private bowling alley, in-house manicurists and steam rooms. The building is having no trouble drawing new tenants, including a few financial executives lured from Manhattan who are paying as little as $2,500 a month for two-bedroom units.
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"For me, it wasn't so much about the rent, it was about wanting a city experience that was more real," said John Ryan, 48, managing director of a financial services company who moved into Eleven80 last December. "New York has become all tourists and Disneyish. Newark feels safer to me than I thought, but it also feels more like a city should."

Newark's potential as a less expensive alternative to nearby New York has assisted its budding revitalization in ways that other blighted cities such as Detroit could never hope to enjoy. City officials caution that it has a long way to go, but experts say there are lessons in urban renewal to be learned here, mostly from one of Newark's most recent victories -- reducing crime. Booker and his new police chief, former New York deputy police commissioner Garry F. McCarthy, have blitzed the streets with a "zero-tolerance" policy modeled on the one credited with cleaning up its far larger neighbor. Handing out infractions for minor offenses including loitering and public urination has helped find and track suspected gang members and drug dealers while getting more illegal guns off the street.

Notoriously corrupt itself, the Newark Police Department is in the midst of an upheaval after the departure of Sharpe James, Newark's former mayor of 22 years who is now fighting a 25-count criminal indictment. A new data-tracking system is holding commanders accountable for crimes committed in their precincts. For the first time in a city infamous as a drug hub, the department has established an integrated counter-narcotics division.

Now a year in office, Booker has also sought to reform the bloated budget, in part by eliminating a host of no-show employees from the city's payroll and offering 200 voluntary retirements. But in the process he has butted heads with powerful elements in the African American community.

While Newark's city center and Ironbound districts are showing visible signs of a comeback, black leaders say poorer, predominantly black neighborhoods have not been so fortunate.

"Cory has not endeared himself to the African American community," said the Rev. Jethro C. James Jr., pastor of Paradise Baptist Church and a community leader. He cited a May incident when, after a shooting near his church, police officers swiftly arrived and set up a checkpoint, allegedly questioning elderly parishioners on their way to Sunday services.

"We never had this kind of treatment before by the police," he said. "This is Cory's doing. He needs to ask himself if this treatment is in the best interest of his community."

Booker insists he is doing what Newark needs.

"An 8-year-old girl was recently shot here -- does her mother feel like Newark is changing? No, of course she doesn't," Booker said. "This isn't going to happen overnight. But we've started something big, and it's going to get bigger."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ ... 2/30/AR2007123002505.html