Stephen Crane Village and Newark Mayor Cory Booker

Newark Mayor Cory Booker will announce a $50 million contract between the Newark Housing Authority and Constellation Energy on Monday, to retrofit thousands of apartments with energy efficient heat, electrical and water systems.
The program, one of the largest energy deals involving public housing in the U.S., is expected to create more than $78 million in savings over a 15-year period, officials said. The program, one of the largest energy deals involving public housing in the U.S., is expected to create more than $78 million in savings over a 15-year period, officials said.
“We’ve been looking at what other housing authorities have done in the past,” said Newark Housing Authority spokesperson Lauren Hudock. “[Residents] will see reduced energy costs and a better quality of life in general.” [more]

Newark’s first new hotel in close to four decades — a Courtyard by Marriott adjacent to the Prudential Center — broke ground yesterday and is slated for completion by the summer of 2012. Mayor Cory Booker was on hand to celebrate, alongside the National Hockey League’s New Jersey Devils, who call the Prudential Center home, and Tucker Development, which is heading up the project. The Prudential Center, affectionately known as “the Rock,” opened in 2007 and hosts some 200 events per year. It’s also temporarily home to the Nets basketball team as they await the completion of their Barclays Center arena in Atlantic Yards. TRD Comments

Newark Mayor Cory Booker

Newark Mayor Cory Booker proposed a draconian series of emergency cuts,
including a four-day work week, cutting off all non-essential contracts
and the closing of [more]

The Nets and the team’s new home at Prudential Center in Newark

The New Jersey Nets have reached a long-anticipated deal to move to Newark’s Prudential Center for the next two years, as the team plans for the Barclays Arena to open two years from now at the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker confirmed the deal following a special session of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority this morning and furious negotiations to finalize talks with the Prudential Center officials.

“It’s extraordinarily exciting,” Booker told The Real Deal in a telephone interview. “Not only will it bring economic opportunity, energy excitement to our downtown, for the Nets they are going to receive one of the most exciting fan bases they’ve had in years and years.”

The deal ends months of speculation about the Nets, who have struggled to draw fans to the East Rutherford arena after the New Jersey Devils ditched the former Continental Airlines arena for Newark. [more]

Mayor Cory Booker and Tucker Development announced plans to develop a mixed-use hotel and retail project under the Courtyard by Marriott brand, next to the Prudential Center arena in Newark, marking that city’s first downtown hotel project in 38 years.
Marriott International will manage the 150-room hotel, while Tucker, based in Highland Park, Ill., will manage the project’s 15,000-square-foot retail space. The project is being done in partnership with the New Jersey Devils hockey team and Robert Finvarb, a Bay Harbor Islands, Fla.-based real estate development firm that has built several Courtyard, Residence Inn and Springhill Suites properties in Florida, Arizona and other states.
Newark officials have been in talks for a downtown hotel for several years, and see the Courtyard property as a sign of renewed investor interest in the city.
[more]

From left: Newark Mayor Cory Booker at Harmony Square’s groundbreaking, a rendering of phase I of the development at the corner of Third and Broad streets, and M & M Development founders Maria Yglesias and Maria Del Mar Lopez at the groundbreaking

M & M Development and Newark Mayor Cory Booker led a groundbreaking ceremony today for Harmony Square, a $10.2 million development in the city’s North Ward that combines market-rate condominiums with affordable housing. The first condo phase and the rental phase are starting at the same time with a 2010 completion date. The condo, called Condominiums@Harmony Square, will include two main developments, including 24 new condominium homes. The rental building, Apartments@Harmony Square, includes the rehabilitation of a 16-unit rental building with 10 units set aside for supportive housing, for domestic violence survivors and homeless residents looking for a stable residence. Construction of the rest of the condos — three new buildings with 21 condominium units and one duplex — will kick off next year and finish a year later. [more]

Atlantic Yards developer and New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner is looking for Nets investors who are willing to move the basketball team to Atlantic Yards, the Star-Ledger reported. Possible investors include Terry Semel, former CEO of Yahoo, and Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov. Two current investors with small shares in the team, commodities traders Vinny Viola and Marc Lasry, are also potential candidates to become larger investors. Newark Mayor Cory Booker wants the Nets to move to Newark, where they could play in the Prudential Center, and he said in May that he expected the team to be sold and the Atlantic Yards project to collapse. But Ratner is reportedly only interested in investors who will agree to move the team to Brooklyn. [more]