Paterson kicks off renewal project

Thursday, May 19, 2005

By TOM MEAGHER
HERALD NEWS

PATERSON - City leaders on Wednesday ceremonially broke ground for the downtown Center City project as residents drifted by and found optimistic politicians and free food.

Hundreds of business and civic leaders, city employees, downtown workers and passers-by sat under a white tent on the parking lot at Main and Ward streets to watch officials stick shovels into a carted-in pile of dirt.

Mayor Joey Torres and the Center City Partners, the developers, said the complex will include a 320,000-square-foot retail and entertainment building with underground parking, a smaller Paterson Parking Authority garage and additional office and apartment buildings.

Torres said that although construction will not begin immediately, the project will usher in a new era for the city.

"This new 21st century Paterson will come back bigger, better, stronger than before," Torres said. "We are standing in the very heart of my revitalization plan."

Excited about jobs

On the sidewalk outside the parking lot, 38-year-old Wayne Fleming stood with his bicycle, listening to the speeches. He lives across Main Street from the project and is excited about the approaching construction.

"I heard this is going to be a whole lot of opportunities for new jobs," Fleming said. "They're breaking the ground. I hope there'll be some construction work here."

The City Council, the mayor, representatives of the Parking Authority and the Center City Partners donned white hard hats for the soil-moving ceremony. Each was presented with a commemorative shovel.

They stood behind a 4-foot-wide, foot-tall row of soil that had been piled on top of the parking lot for the event. At the count of three, they scooped up dirt and tossed it onto the bare asphalt.

Each of the council members also received a gold, shovel-shaped trophy to mark the occasion.

After the dirt-turning, many of the attendees lined up for the free lunch of potato salad, sandwiches on focaccia bread, sandwich wraps, bow-tie pasta, cheese and fruit, all catered by the Brownstone House and paid for by the Center City Partners.

City resident Jeff Gunn said he knew nothing about the Center City project before he walked by and saw the ceremony.

"Free food? They ate everything," Gunn quipped as he fixed himself a plate of food. He said he supports the Center City project: "It's great - excellent for the community and good for business."

Torres said that the city still must work out how to alleviate the project's impact on downtown's already overloaded parking facilities. The Center City lot will be built atop 5.2 acres of city parking lots that currently accommodate the cars of hundreds of downtown employees every day.

"We didn't actually dig the hole yet. We think within 35 to 40 days, we'll be there," Torres said. "The key is staging, doing the work without disrupting the 450 spaces we have now."

Tony Perez, the executive director of the Paterson Parking Authority, said that an alternate parking plan is still being crafted. It must be presented to the council, the mayor and the county before the authority can even try to close the lots for pre-construction clearance.

Across Main Street at Kid's Palace, the clothing store's chief financial officer, Michael Steiner, said he's excited about the Center City project finally coming to fruition. The traffic disruptions during construction will be difficult, but he believes the project will rejuvenate downtown and be good for businesses.

But, in his years on Main Street, he's seen several similar projects never make it off the drawing board.

"When I see it, I'll be very happy," Steiner said. "I don't want to get my hopes up before I see it."

E-mail: meagher@northjersey.com

Reproduced with permission of North Jersey Media Group