With 60,000 students and faculty at six colleges and universities, Newark has the fifth highest concentration of higher education on the East Coast, after Boston, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
Yet most people in America, let alone New Jersey and maybe even in Newark, don’t think of the city as a “college town.” In fact, Newark was recently named in the top 10 of least desirable college towns in America by the Princeton Review.
With Gov. Chris Christie proposing major changes for UMDNJ and new leadership at Rutgers University-Newark, Essex County College and New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark has a historic opportunity to rethink how these institutions of higher education can enhance the quality of life for Newark residents and how the city can make life better for college students.
Most importantly, city planners must encourage the development of an identifiable “College Center,” with enough student, faculty and retail density to support economic activity at all times of the day and night.
It’s no secret to what makes a great college town. Anyone who has spent time in Chapel Hill, N.C., Austin, Texas, or Boston knows. It’s a concentrated mix of bookstores, coffee shops, bars, theaters, restaurants with outdoor seating, galleries, quirky retail shops alongside national retailers and plenty of affordable housing for students, professors and recent graduates.
With the recent burst in construction, Newark’s universities off MLK Boulevard and elsewhere in the Central Ward are increasingly becoming residential campuses as more students want the experience of living and studying in a big city.
Rutgers University has plans to convert its former law school at 15 Washington St. into apartments with room for 350 students and visiting faculty. The university also has plans to build undergraduate student housing for 400 students behind 15 Washington St.
The New Jersey Institute of Technology also has plans to build $66 million worth of student housing that will house 600 students. The plan includes a complex of dorms known as Greek Village and a six-story residential honors college.
Even the Newark Housing Authority is getting into the game. In what was once Baxter Terrace, one of the city’s most notorious housing projects, the authority is building a complex with 400 units steps from NJIT that will be open to graduate students.
Combined with the existing dorms, the additional housing will create a critical mass capable of sustaining businesses, restaurants, offices and institutions geared toward the student population.
Newark’s master plan recognizes the universities as an opportunity for the city to reinvent itself. It notes that the colleges and universities “serve as magnets for young people that have the potential of animating the city’s street life.” But the plan fails to outline any strategy between the city and the colleges to create that identifiable “College Center” with a soul.
Now is the time to bring all stakeholders to the table and create a collaborative plan to build the kind of neighborhood that could one day earn Newark recognition as one of American’s top college towns.
The city’s master plan lays out several streets in the University Heights neighborhood that could connect the institutions to the greater community, including Halsey Street, Washington Street, University Avenue and King Boulevard.
Halsey Street already has several bars and restaurants, a coffee shop and a few funky retailers that serve as a magnet for both students and workers from surrounding businesses. But the street suffers from blighted buildings, vast surface parking lots and boarded-up, decaying buildings that once housed thriving retailers Hahne & Co. and S. Kleins.
Washington Street and University Avenue have the advantage of leading straight to the Broad Street Station, a tremendous link to Manhattan, while MLK Boulevard bisects NJIT, Rutgers and Essex County College.
Whatever streets are chosen to concentrate “college-oriented” development is less important than achieving general consensus among college and city stakeholders that the time to act is now.
Otherwise, Brick City will have squandered a golden opportunity to be a great college town.
Samuel (Sam) A. Delgado, a Newark resident, is vice president of external affairs at Verizon New Jersey, a director of the Brick City Development Corp. and is on the Rutgers Business School Board of Advisors.
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