The Daily Newarker

“As I said before”:http://dailynewarker.com/2007/05/04/wbgo-on-crime-and-nj-monthly-survey/, the new Newark is an idea whose time has come. Here’s the ??New York Times??: “Not Hot Just Yet, but Newark Is Starting to Percolate”:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/nyregion/06newark.html.

“When they realize this is 20 minutes from Midtown and they see all the energy and all the hip people living here, they want to make the move, too,” he said last Sunday as he mixed cocktails in his kitchen for a crowd of friends, most of them recent transplants like himself. “It’s not quite there yet, but Newark is about to get hot.”

After four decades of economic stagnation and bad publicity, New Jersey’s largest city — stuck in the public imagination as a place of stolen cars, ailing public schools and a busy international airport — is sprouting stylish new restaurants, art galleries and bars that dispense $10 cocktails.

A new indie music festival is expected to draw thousands to the heart of downtown next month, and city officials say that applications for 22 condominium projects have poured in since January, twice the number for all of 2006, with Shaquille O’Neal, Queen Latifah and Tiki Barber among those kicking around development proposals.

Though its struggle against blight and crime is hardly past, some residents say Newark is enjoying the kind of psychic rebirth that has helped transform scores of other downtrodden cities into nesting grounds for the young, the creative, and, with time, the well-heeled. Adjectives like bohemian and funky are increasingly tossed around, and even some skeptics are starting to believe in the moniker Newark adopted two decades ago: Renaissance City.

Given the spat over the “Newark Teacher’s Union FUD campaign”:http://dailynewarker.com/2007/03/26/infuriating-2/ and the long, relentless headlines about “violent crime”:http://dailynewarker.com/category/crime/ in recent weeks, this is the kind of good press that Newark needs. The Times article notes that a lot of the folks interested in Newark are largely affluent whites, ready to capitalize on Newark’s quick commute to Manhattan and low prices.

While I’m keenly aware that development of jobs programs for ex-cons, hammering down violent crime, and an overhaul of our schools are really the keys to sustainable growth, I am hopeful that this new attention to Newark by well-heeled “outsiders” can mean some serious trickle-down economic potential for the city’s current residents. Quick: someone come up with the phrase that means the opposite of “white flight.”