Have you participated in the Greenville Neighborhood Meetings?
Drop by on the 1st Wednesday of every month at 7pm. The meeting is held in the cafeteria in the school on Old Bergen and Greenville, the entrance is on the north side of the building near the corner.

Ward A Councilman Michael Sottolano is there along with local Police Officers to answer questions and address individual complaints. I must admit, it is a grueling process in that each time I attend the same complaints get mentioned and notes get taken -- but it seems like not much is getting done. It would be nice to see more neighborhood faces there and see if we can start to make a difference by working together. It is my view that complaining to our Councilman is not really getting us anywhere. If we want a better neighborhood to live in we must create it ourselves.

By ANTOINETTE MARTIN for The New York Times
Published July 20, 2008

In Jersey City, as in other area cities on the way to revitalizing their downtowns, an explosion of high-priced developments is well under way even as the need for midpriced housing generally expands. And city officials, discerning that their municipal employees are being priced out of living in the community, are increasingly feeling the need to do something about it.

“Our real estate has escalated to such a high value,” said Bob Antonicello, the city redevelopment director, “that cops starting out at about $43,000, and firemen starting at $41,000, teachers at $38,000 or around that, could not afford to live here — and we really need and want them to be part of the community 24-7.”

Jersey City has jumped on the issue of “work-force housing,” as reasonably priced housing is currently being termed in urban-planning circles. Working with new state programs that support low-cost mortgages for those earning somewhat more than the average income for a community, with allowances for two-income couples, the city is aggressively recruiting developers to build new housing that municipal workers can afford.

A prototype development of eight condo units — three of them set aside as subsidized — was recently completed in the Greenville section. Built by Eagle Rock Development, the project recently won an award for energy-efficient design from the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Work on the full project, with a total of 45 units, is set to begin soon, said Paul DeBellis, Eagle Rock’s principal.

Similarly, in Newark — another revitalization site that has relatively little midpriced housing — there is a shortage that at least one developer is setting out to remedy.

“We think there is a crying need for work-force type of housing in Newark,” said the developer, Adam Mermelstein, whose company, TreeTop Development, recently moved its base to Newark and bought about 800 dilapidated rental units, some of them vacant.

TreeTop has begun rehabilitating and upgrading the first group of those apartments, some 293 of them in the Parkwood Place complex in the Forest Hills section, and others in eight buildings along one block of Martin Luther King Boulevard.

“We are looking to provide really nice, quality housing where police and firefighters, teachers, medical workers, municipal employees, and so on, will want to live — and be able to afford to live,” Mr. Mermelstein said. “We think this is a part of the Newark renaissance, but it’s not for the upper echelons, but for working people.”

Indeed, the tenants at Parkwood Place — where exterior fix-up work is in progress and 50 units have already been renovated — now include 10 police officers, 2 detectives, 2 firefighters, 3 doctors and a housing inspector, said Carmen Lugo, the property manager.

She added that many of those coming in to lease apartments now are students at the nearby Rutgers-Newark and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

The rent for redone apartments is $725 per month for a studio, $950 for a one-bedroom and $1,250 for a two-bedroom unit, Mr. Mermelstein said.

Mr. Mermelstein, whose company previously built two new condominium buildings across the street from Hoboken’s housing projects, said his company was looking to make “trouble spots into middle-class enclaves.” He noted that while upper-end projects might be put on hold during recessionary times, “there is always work doing what we do.”

TreeTop will do about $10,000 worth of renovation work on every apartment in its block of Martin Luther King Boulevard buildings.

Elsewhere in that neighborhood, which stretches between University Heights and the Lincoln Park Arts District, about 3,000 units are being built or restored, either as new market-rate town homes or as subsidized housing.

The company is still in the process of buying nine more buildings in north Newark, bordering on Branch Brook Park.

As Mr. Antonicello of Jersey City pointed out, the need for reasonably price housing is likely to escalate in urban areas all over the state, as higher fuel prices and urban revitalization projects spur more people at all income levels to “repopulate” the cities.

I have walked (or even ran) right through the entrance to the Danforth stop on the Light Rail many times. But after almost 2 years, I just noticed the petrified luggage that decorates the platform to the street. Upon further inspection I found a plaque that sheds a little light on what the luggage is doing there; it reads:

Immigrant Remnants Found
Remains Appear Petrified, Luggage Among Items Unearthed

During excavations for the construction of stations along the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail Transit System, workers this morning came across what appear to be the petrified remains of luggage and other items buried under many feet of earth. Digging was immediately suspended at two sites after it was noticed that some of the exposed rock looked like old pieces of luggage. As a gathering crows looked on bewildered workers carefully pulled familiar shapes from the ground. By noon a trunk, a violin case, a hat box, a suitcase and some parcels had been counted among the unearthed items.

Construction managers at the two affected stations, the Richard Street station and the Danforth Avenue station, declined to officially comment on the bizarre findings. however, witnesses to the events of this morning seem convinced that the delicately articulated rocks were not really rocks at all, but petrified luggage.

Dr. Chip Travertine, Associate Professor

ALL ARE WELCOME!!!
The Greenville Branch Library is hosting its first Open Mic of the year... Please bring your talent to share with us! * Sing * Read a Poem * Dance * Tell Jokes *

When: Thursday, June 19, 2008 3:30-5:00pm
Where: Greenville Branch Library, 1841 Kennedy Blvd.
Contact: Ken Uko at 201 547 4553 or email kuko@jclibrary.org