I have been reading these series of articles, good stuff.

It?s about a 12-minute commute on the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail from Exchange Place on the Jersey City waterfront to the Martin Luther King Drive station in Bergen-Lafayette. But the difference in neighborhoods is light years apart.

The commute begins in the lap of Gold Coast luxury. The shimmering Mack-Cali building at 101 Hudson St. is home to several A-list tenants ? Bank of America, AIG Companies, and Verizon, included. Around a bend, the Windsor at Liberty House apartment complex is renting two-bedroom units for $4,000 a month.

Then, as if to signal the train is entering a radically different part of town, the light rail crosses a wide, barren expanse ? a 17-acre site now being remediated ? where for decades PPG Industries operated a manufacturing complex that polluted the air and soil with cancer-causing hexavalent chromium.

A few minutes later, the train pulls into the Martin Luther King Drive station, the heart of the black community in Jersey City. There are no high-rises in sight, and certainly no $4,000-a-month rentals.

There?s nothing off-putting about the immediate physical surroundings of the station.

There?s a vacant lot across the street on King Drive, and the block just to the north of the station has several shuttered storefronts.

But just south of the station, at what?s called the Hub, there?s a McDonald?s restaurant, a huge Extra Supermarket, a Family Dollar store and a few other businesses. Across the street, there?s a Dunkin? Donuts. And across the street from the Hub shopping center, a community group and a nonprofit developer are putting the finishing touches on 22 affordable single-family homes.

It?s when the totality of the 26-block Drive ? which cuts through the Bergen-Lafayette and Greenville sections of the city ? and the surrounding neighborhood are considered, that a more sober and somber image emerges.

This was once Jackson Avenue, a thriving commercial corridor in the '30s, '40s, and '50s, lined with furriers, haberdasheries, meat markets, bakeries and five-and-dimes.

Certainly not at its lowest ebb, which locals say was in the '70s, the Drive is now a pockmarked shell of its former self. One block can be a patchy quilt of shuttered storefronts, a vacant lot and a bodega while the next block over might feature a relatively new structure.

The side streets are also a mish-mosh of well-tended private homes and boarded-up eyesores.

One Claremont Avenue resident, who has done her best to maintain her home, has lived next to a vacant two-family house for more than eight years. She called the experience a ?nightmare.?

?People do drugs, drinking. They defecate at the building,? she said. ?One day they were even having sex in the alleyway.?

Crime and unemployment are the two biggest issues for locals.
Of the 18 murders committed in the city last year, 14 occurred in the South and West precincts, which cover the Martin Luther King Drive area.

?I don?t go on King Drive,? one longtime Jersey City resident who grew up in the area said. ?They shoot each other out there.?

There is what one public official called ?a sense of disorder? about the Drive. Young men can be seen huddling at various street corners at all hours of the day ? a mix of drug hustlers, addicts and the jobless, residents say.

While the unemployment rate in Jersey City hovers around 10 percent, the unemployment rates in the census tracts around the Drive range from 18 to 23 percent. The unemployment rate for individuals between the ages of 20 and 24 in one census tract was 54 percent,
according to 2012 Census data.

Donal Malone, an assistant professor of sociology at Saint Peter's University in Jersey City, argues that this part of the city was left out of the development boon.

?Over 36,000 jobs came to Jersey City over a 20-year period beginning in the mid-'80s. That was Downtown redevelopment jobs,? Malone said. ?A rising tide did not lift all boats. Too many were left behind.?

But there are signs of hope for this community. Even though the Hub remains a financially precarious proposition for its owner, the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency, it does have a core of tenants who are thriving, according to officials.

Several affordable housing developments have been completed in the past few years, including the 39-unit Fred W. Martin Houses off Wegman Parkway, the Harriet Tubman Homes, eight row homes near Myrtle Avenue, and the Webb Apartments, a 40-unit ?green? affordable housing development at Oak Street and the Drive.

And Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop is doubling-down on bringing city offices to the area. This summer, the city?s employment and training program headed by former Gov. Jim McGreevey and the office of Public Safety Director James Shea are moving into the Hub.

And the mayor himself is looking for a residence in Bergen-Lafayette.

?Jersey City is a city of exceptional neighborhoods and while I greatly enjoy living in Paulus Hook, my goal is to move into Bergen-Lafayette where there is a growing arts and culture scene as well as rich history,? Fulop told The Jersey Journal. ?However, the last year has been difficult to look for properties and to actually move, but as soon as I get some free time, I will continue my property search in Bergen-Lafayette.?

Frank Fischer, who runs Fischer Confections, a candy store located on the Drive near Bidwell Avenue for more than 50 years, has never lost faith that the Drive and the surrounding area will return to its prior glory given its proximity to and relatively easy access to New York.

?I just never thought it would take 40 years,? he said.

Jersey Journal