New Jersey Community Builds on Arts, Environment

PART ONE OF A TWO-PART SERIES

When most people looked at Newark, New Jersey’s Lincoln Park neighborhood in 1999, they saw a low-income community with transient residents, vacant lots, abandoned buildings, a four-acre, drug- and prostitution- infested park, and a dilapidated Symphony Hall as the only redeeming asset, but Baye Adofo Wilson saw green.

Before the word “green” became über-chic, Wilson envisioned a sustainable urban eco-community that would tie together residents’ concern for the environment with economic and social development.

Now, as the executive director for the past five years of the Lincoln Park Coast Cultural District (LPCCD), a community development corporation, Wilson has made inroads to create an urban eco-village with a thriving economy sustained by green jobs and a budding arts and culture community.

“If we are going to build a long term sustainable community it has to be accessible in terms of affordability,” Wilson says.

At one point in time Lincoln Park was an exclusive neighborhood home to two New Jersey governors and the founders of Prudential Life Insurance. However in the 1950s and 60s, middle-class inhabitants left the city and the Newark riots of 1967 diminished the neighborhood’s appeal even further. The community almost rebounded in the 1980s when several activists, investors, and city officials tried to build an arts community, but the funding was inadequate and interests waned.

Wilson realized his goal was to restore the neighborhood to its former prominence during the 1920s when Symphony Hall, the 2,800 seat performance venue with a ballroom that seats 1,000, was a major attraction that drew crowds from out of town to see vaudeville acts. Plans to renovate Symphony Hall are still in the development stages.

Symphony Hall anchors his vision, but surrounding it the LPCCD has already started building multi-use housing, arts and culture businesses, and clearing out vacant lots to develop open space for an organic farm

called the Brick City Urban Farm. Complimenting the green housing and the Symphony Hall are plans to create the Museum of African American Music, a Smithsonian-affiliated museum, honoring music legends with concerts and exhibits.

Renewing energy and opportunity

Wilson hopes these projects will create 200 jobs in Lincoln Park by 2010. He estimates that 35% of those will be created by arts and culture businesses, while 50% will come from construction projects. The corporation received $2.5 million and $1 million in subsidies from the city of Newark and the State of New Jersey respectively to put the different projects in motion.

The LPCCD also created the Green Collar Apprenticeship Program (GreenCAP), Newark’s first green collar job training program. Graduates of GreenCAP will receive a green certificate to verify their classroom instruction and on-the-job training on green construction projects.

“The community was devastated by urban flight. Now everyone realizes that these locations are very accessible and were built for a reason,” says Wilson, adding that the jobs created by new businesses and development projects are sorely needed in the community.

The LPCCD projects are scattered within a 10 block radius near Lincoln Park. The neighborhood’s proximity to mass transit makes it an optimal location to build an environmentally sustainable community because it reduces the need to drive, a commuting option which increases harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

LEED certification

So far, LPCCD has built 18 housing units, an equivalent of 24,000 square feet, and plans to build seven more. The Washington Street mixed use buildings in Lincoln Park are the first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified homes built in Newark, and the LPCCD has the greatest number of Gold Level LEED housing units near certification in New Jersey. The buildings will use low-VOC paints and recyclable materials.

The current economic downturn has unfortunately changed some of the plans. Originally, 70% of the housing was set to be owner-occupied and 30% as rentals, but now 90% of the housing developments will be rentals.

“People are risk averse right now. They don’t want to take the chance that it won’t be profitable. No one knows if low income people will be able to get mortgages in the future,” says Wilson.

Nevertheless, Wilson is determined to build through the drought and wait for the government to implement policies that value affordable and sustainable housing, such as President-elect Barack Obama’s plan to institute a national public works program to create jobs and revive the economy.

“We still need sustainable housing and jobs, but what does that look like in this market?” asks Wilson, who plans to simplify his construction materials, accelerate his timeline and build through the real estate drought. “We are approaching it as a public works project and a model for urban revitalization and development. We don’t have all of the answers but we know that sustainable development is the key.”

Come back tomorrow to read Part II: Using Arts and Culture as an Economic Engine