by mantunes

“It’s human storage!” My coworker’s face betrayed a mixture of anger, desperation, and anguish. He was just over one month into a twelve month lease at one of the apartment complexes across the river in Harrison. Originally from Rockland County, just above the border in New York, he was contemplating the impossible for a young professional just starting to make his way into the adulting world: breaking his lease. He had moved down in the hopes of substantially curtailing his commute to Newark. That area of Harrison offered a lot of promise. Brand new apartments. Burgeoning retail. Riverfront views of a city. Easy access to a major transit station. What could possibly cause him to want to leave so suddenly and spend more than two hours on NJTransit to live at his parents’ place?

New Harrison, what I endearingly call that area bounded by Interstate 280 to the north and the bend in the Passaic River to the south, would be considered a success story by most measures. Not much more than a decade ago, that part of Harrison consisted of abandoned factories, a PSE&G substation, a crumbling PATH stop, and a taxi dispatch stand straight out of a ‘70s detective flick. In fact, before the construction of the Red Bulls stadium, the only reason my family would even go through there was because it was the fastest way to the Ironbound from the North Ward. 

The place is barely recognizable now. No fewer than eight apartment complexes have sprung up, each putting 200 to 600 units onto the market, with enticing names like Hudson Yards, Urby Harrison, the Water’s Edge, the Harrison Collection, and the Eddy.* Several restaurants have opened. A higher-end liquor store caters to the drinking needs of the new residents. Even a brand new hotel has popped up. Likewise, Harrison’s tax base expanded, likely bringing much needed revenue into its coffers and bolstering its police force and schools—especially with the increased demands on those services generated by the new apartments. Since 2010, the population has increased a whopping 42.8%, the largest such increase since the 19th century when immigration and industrialization drove these numbers. If anything, Harrison seems to be the model for what to do in a small post-industrial landscape. 

And yet, when you walk through this part of Harrison, you cannot help but feel that something is just a bit off. It’s hard to put your finger on it. What my coworker could intuit in less than a month took me several years to articulate what exactly is wrong with the place—funny, it all came together after a recent dinner I had there with two Newark residents. Beneath the matte façade of the apartment buildings lies what I call “the postmodern hellscape,” a culmination of all the bad urban policy decisions and misguided development efforts that rob a place of all character in the name of unplanned and unthought-through economic expansion. 

New Harrison offers everything a developer loves but not what you (or a community) actually needs. While the neighborhood has access to one transit station—for a train that has direct trips to New York City but is horribly underfunded and badly delayed—there is basically one road in and out of that area. Residents are lured into thinking they can have their commuter cake and eat it too, that they can take the train to work, have their cars for the weekend, and be within walking distance for all of life’s necessities. They never see what it is actually like on the weekends, when traffic jams can be pretty horrendous, especially when there is a soccer game going on. While all the restaurants are within walking distance, the closest supermarket is at least 15 minutes away by foot—doable for a walker like me but something most people would balk at. Movie theaters, bookstores, bodegas, big-box retail, full-service gyms, vegetable markets, artisanal/craft shops, and pretty much anything else requires you to hop into a car. 

Even the restaurants—the prime draw for the area—look nice but they are pretty much empty shells. Take Charlie, for example. When it first opened, they touted the place as a “Viennese”-style eatery with traditional Austrian fare updated for a new generation. I tried it and was mildly impressed to see some unique dishes like Wienerschnitzel and Sachertorte. Returning there very recently, I was a bit crestfallen to see the menu zapped of anything remotely Austrian—the Wienerschnitzel is now a schnitz sandwich with aioli and the rest of the menu is just burgers and salads. It feels like Charlie is going through what Anthony Bourdain notoriously called “failing restaurant syndrome.” Vanguard, part of a family of very successful restaurants and bars called Skopos Group, is barely keeping it together as well. The bartender seemed confused by our order of the specialty drink from their menu, having to look up the recipe. Their menu is similarly just a collection of apps, burgers, and salads, indistinguishable from what Charlie is serving, a mere 100 yards away.

The lack of community is also pretty palpable at this point. No doubt, you will see people milling about on the weekdays and weekends, especially when you walk by the waterfront, but all the outdoor amenities—at least the few that exist—are closed off from passersby. There are no substantial parks, no fields to play in, no common spaces accessible to the public. Each development is its own walled-off fortress, likely to shoo you away if you don’t look like a resident who belongs there. It’s unclear what you can do for fun aside from the pool at the Urby—which is out of commission for most of the year—or eat at one of these less-than-exciting restaurants.

New Harrison offers a cautionary tale for Newark, similarly going through its own development splurge. We are far off from the kind of neighborhood building going across the river, largely because our city lacks that level of open space in an area that is highly desirable for new residents. But you can see that style of five-over-one construction slowly appearing over here: think Arbol and Vermella. You can also see it in the highly genericized ads for new places like Iconiq777 which sell a “vibe” but are not selling an actual place. It is even in the direct importation of the Urby model near Rutgers’ campus, offering small apartments for jacked-up prices under the theory that they are providing some level of community.

Newark needs to take care about what actually creates community and development that endures, that isn’t just providing a faddish option meant to meet the fleeting needs of the moment. To that end, Old Harrison, how I refer to the rest of the city, may be a better model. There, development is embedded into pre-existing residences and retail. You can easily find not one, but several authentic Indian and Chinese options, providing pretty great cuisine at reasonable prices and each offering a unique take on their cuisine. Grocery stores and bodegas are within walking distances, served by three bus lanes. Publicly accessible amenities including soccer fields and small parks abound. Even downtown Newark is within ten minutes of walking. 

The postmodern hellscape teaches us that development is not just about the construction of flashy buildings with in-built amenities, the model that most developers sell and want us to psychologically and morally buy into. (A good sign of how divorced their thinking is from reality is the few number of developers behind these projects who live in the buildings they are developing.) Rather, it is about tapping into existing communities, meeting their housing needs, and buttressing the institutions that make you want to live there for the long haul. It should not be a mere stopping point until you are able to afford an upgrade to the suburbs or a nicer place in Jersey City, Hoboken, or Brooklyn—what I suspect 90% of the residents are doing in New Harrison. It is, at best, a Potemkin village and not a natural and thriving living environment.

mantunes is a resident of Newark who writes about the city (and other things).

*One of my favorite games to play when walking by a development in New Jersey geared towards young professionals is to ask the question: “Is this a new residence or a place name from Game of Thrones?”

_{Featured photo via Jersey Digs}