Hoboken / Manhattan Real Estate Blog

By GEOFF MULVIHILL
Associated Press

CAMDEN

Last Sunday, real estate agent Dee Sica listed a home in downtown Camden for $149,900.

By Wednesday morning, it had an “under contract” sign slapped on it.

While such a quick sale and such a high price are still unusual in this city, which is among the poorest and most crime-ridden in the nation, real estate values here have increased dramatically in the past few years.

The median sales price for homes in Camden increased by 81 percent between 2003 and last year, according to a new Prudential Fox & Roach Realtors analysis of five central and southern New Jersey counties.

Only one community of any size in the study — Gloucester County’s fast-suburbanizing Elk Township — saw a bigger increase.

In Camden, the median price last year was still just $63,350 — about one-third of the $183,000 median for all of Camden County.

Steve Storti, a senior vice president at Prudential Fox & Roach, said the rising sales prices in Camden partly reflect a hot home market in Center City Philadelphia and the New Jersey suburbs. When people cannot afford the rising home prices elsewhere, he said, that makes them more likely to consider Camden.

“It’s a Hoboken,” Storti said, comparing Camden to the once run-down New Jersey city across from Manhattan. Hoboken, which Gov. Jon S. Corzine calls home, has over the last quarter-century become a cool and expensive place to live.

The rising housing prices in Camden also suggest that intense public and private efforts to revitalize the city are starting to take root.

In 2002, the state launched a plan to put $175 million into various projects in the city, with much of the cash infusion going to expand its hospitals and universities.

Homes in neighborhoods near those institutions are typically priciest.

The home Sica, an associate at Peze & Carroll Inc., sold last week is in one of them, within blocks of both the expanding Cooper University Hospital and also a block from the rough-and-tumble commercial strip of South Broadway.

Because the sale is not completed, Sica said she could not disclose the amount of the winning bid.

But the broker said she understands the attraction of property in Camden.

“The people want to be not too far from home and work right there,” she said.

Frank Fulbrook, a community activist who lives in the Cooper Grant neighborhood between Rutgers University’s campus in the city and the 5-year-old minor-league baseball park on the redeveloped banks of the Delaware River, said his small neighborhood has only two of its 90 homes vacant.

The last half-dozen three-story rowhouses to sell in the area went for more than $200,000, he said.

Away from the hospitals and universities, the prices also are rising, though several rowhouses in outlying neighborhoods are currently being offered for less than $35,000.

Brendan McBride, the project manager at RPM Development, which has fixed up and sold 52 homes in the Fairview neighborhood since fall 2003, said prices are rising there.

Two years ago, he said, his company was selling three-bedroom end-unit rowhouses for around $70,000.

Today, the same house would fetch $90,000, he said.

Last summer, Kristine Seitz bought one of those end units for $77,000.

Seitz, who works in an architecture firm, had been renting an apartment in Camden and decided she wanted to invest in the city and buy in a neighborhood that is attracting some young professionals.

“It’s a real home,” she said. “I’m starting a garden. For that kind of money, it’s really a no-brainer.”

By George S. Hawkins

Five years ago, New Jersey’s capital city did not boast a single hotel.

On Feb. 22, the Trenton Marriott served as both an example of New Jersey’s redevelopment progress and the site of a statewide forum on it.

Hosted by New Jersey Future, the forum brought together 350 municipal leaders, citizen activists, and professionals in law and planning to share lessons from the wave of redevelopment that is bringing new life to old New Jersey.

Redevelopment is the future of development in New Jersey, in part because the state is running out of developable land. Experts estimate that at the current pace of development and preservation, the state will be the first to reach full build-out in 20 to 40 years.

But redevelopment is also reshaping New Jersey because the market demands it.

The latest census figures show a sharp rise in the popularity of urban living: Newark’s population climbed above 280,000 for the first time since 1989 after remaining essentially stagnant in the 1990s. In 2004, New Brunswick topped 50,000 for the first time.

Fourteen of the state’s 19 largest cities gained population between 2000 and 2004. Hoboken topped this list with 4.1 percent growth, followed by Vineland, Elizabeth, Perth Amboy, New Brunswick, Newark, Hackensack, Linden, Passaic, Clifton, Paterson, Plainfield, Atlantic City and Camden.

Redevelopment maximizes investments, both public and private, already made in communities. It restores choices in housing and for moving around that aren’t available in new, automobile-dependent developments.

Redevelopment offers the best way to link employers to employees and to transit options that can unclog roads.

It saves the open land we have left for the health and enjoyment of all New Jerseyans.

The focus on redevelopment also has identified challenges.

Most revolve around the role of local residents in planning. One great concern is the displacement - whether by eminent domain or higher housing costs - of urban residents, who are disproportionately minority.

Participants in New Jersey Future’s Redevelopment Forum exchanged a host of ideas for responding to these challenges, based on their hands-on work.

The key to redevelopment success is encouraging public involvement in planning it. Good local leaders first present the goal behind the redevelopment effort rather than a finished plan, then take the time to gather citizen input on the best ways to achieve it.

Involving the public early on and throughout the process is a win for developers and municipalities in gaining support and a win for residents, who best know their community.

Two of the sophisticated ideas for achieving this are Technical Assistance Grants, paid by the developer, which allow citizen groups to hire the technical resources they need for meaningful input, and Community Benefit Agreements, which are legal contracts between a developer and community group that spell out specific benefits that the redevelopment is to provide in exchange for community support.

Public participation in redevelopment ensures the result is a promised land for all.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006
By BONNIE FRIEDMAN
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

HOBOKEN - D. Kwitman & Son is one of the last vestiges of the Mile Square City’s industrial past.

But the factory - which has produced drapes and other home furnishings for the past 23 years - may soon be on its way out as the City Council is expected to vote tonight on whether to use the power of eminent domain to take the property, as well as a neighboring self-storage facility, and turn it over to condominium developer Ursa/Tarragon.

The Kwitman factory sits on a quiet cobblestone stretch of Grand Street near 10th Street in what was once an area of vacant and abandoned factories and warehouses.

In 1998, a 20-block area that included the old factory was condemned and slated for redevelopment by Ursa/Tarragon, which aims to build a six-story, 150-unit building with one level of parking. In return, the developer offered givebacks including open space, a supermarket, 200 units of affordable housing and a community center and swimming pool.

City officials say they have no choice but to honor the deal or face mounting legal challenges.

“This was not the dream of the developers; this was the dream of a community advisory panel,” said Councilman Michael Cricco. “The agreement was done in 1998 and the town already appreciated the reward from the plan.”

But some area residents say what seemed like a no-brainer a decade ago now has to be rethought given Hoboken’s red-hot real estate market.

“This area is hardly in need of economic development,” said Thomas Pini, a Grand Street resident who blasted the city’s plan at a public meeting held last week. “I have a great problem with two viable businesses being seized by the government and turned over to developers.”

Harold Kwitman, whose family has owned the business for 70 years, said if he’s forced to sell, he will likely reopen in another location. However, he doesn’t know where or when, and he worries some of his several dozen employees won’t be able to follow him.

“The government and real estate developers are in a close relationship, and unfortunately this is the way it is,” Kwitman said.