As Newark Rises, Could Black Residents Be Pushed Out?

Attendance at Bears games started out strong but competition from the region’s many professional sports teams made it difficult to fill the stands. After switching owners at least three times and narrowly escaping bankruptcy in 2008, the team finally folded in 2013.

The city and county continued to pay off millions of dollars in debt on the stadium until 2016, when Lotus Equity Group, a New York-based developer, bought the property for $23.5 million. Lotus, which also purchased an adjacent property where a seedy motelonce stood, plans to turn the 12 acres of vacant space into a development called Riverfront Square.

The project, which is estimated to cost around $1.7 billion, will include 2,000 residential units and developers said they believed the building would appeal to professionals from New York.

Perry Halkitis moved from Manhattan to New Brunswick after he became dean of the Rutgers School of Public Health, which has campuses in both New Brunswick and Newark.

But after just a few months, he said, he realized, “the place I really wanted to live was Newark.”

Now he is getting ready to move into a building that was once a chocolate factory. Though he said he got a great deal — $265,000 for a 700-square-foot loft — the price was not what drew him to the city.

“It reminded me of what New York was like as it was developing in the 70s and 80s and 90s,’’ Mr. Halkitis said. “It was interesting and it had edge and it had culture. I hope and pray that Newark will hold on to some of that edge because that’s what makes it great.”

Source: The New York Times

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