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Can new apartment building revive Paterson business district, a ‘ghost town’ at night?

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Can new apartment building revive Paterson business district, a ‘ghost town’ at night?

3-minute read

Darren Tobia
 |  NorthJersey.com

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PATERSON — For as long as architect Matthew Evans can remember, Paterson’s downtown has been a ghost town in the evenings.

Now, city officials are hoping the six-story, glass-and-brick apartment building that Evans designed for prominent developer Charles Florio at 120-134 Main Street can help enliven Paterson’s business district.

“When you have people living downtown, they shop in the downtown, and you get the possibility of nightlife like you had in years past,” said Gianfranco Archimede, director of the Historic Preservation Office.

The 72-unit apartment building reportedly is set to open early next year at one of the city’s most important intersections. 

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“Main and Broadway was the place to be,” Evans said.

The Rivoli Theater, an 1,800-seat cinema built in the 1920s, once stood at the corner where Florio’s development is being built. At that time, Paterson’s nightlife was vibrant, with opera houses, theaters, and vaudeville stages.

But in the 1950s, the Rivoli closed, just as mid-century blight was beginning to creep into city centers across the nation. The Rivoli remained empty until it burned down in 1972 and was replaced by a one-story retail building, owned incidentally by Evans’ father.

Evans believes that the current project signals a major shift in the city’s future as local government embraces a new philosophy toward urban planning.

Until 2009, City Hall didn’t permit mixed-zone developments downtown. In fact, the tax code incentivized property owners to not use the upper floors, contributing to the neighborhood feeling of lifelessness. A walk down Main Street reveals several buildings still have their upper-story windows bricked up and plastered over.

“All the upper floors were being abandoned or closed up, because there was a rule in Paterson that you didn’t have to pay taxes on them,” Evans said. “Now, attitudes are different — as time went by people understood that you can activate the downtown by having people live and work and shop there.”

Zoning laws changed to encourage reuse of old buildings

Archimede said zoning laws changed in 2009 to encourage adaptive reuse of historic buildings, some of which date back to the mid-19th century.

Alma Realty was perhaps the first major developer to respond to the zoning changes in the downtown historic district. The Queens-based real estate firm several years ago renovated two empty 1920s-era buildings on Church Street — the former Fabian Theater and former Alexander Hamilton Hotel — and created 178 apartments.

Those apartments are fully occupied, according to Alma’s director in Paterson, Ruben Gomez.

Gomez, Paterson’s former economic development director, said Americans With Disabilities Act requirements are one reason why the upper floors of other buildings in the downtown area have remained empty. He said property owners don’t want to pay the price of installing elevators.

“It’s about $100,000 and you get nothing out of it other than that people can take the elevator upstairs,” Gomez said.

While urban renewal and blight have destroyed the downtowns of many U.S. cities, a large part of Paterson’s downtown was preserved due to the city designating it as a National Register-listed historic district in 1999, protecting buildings as old as 1850 from demolition.

Buildings razed for highway that was never built

Paterson’s shopping corridor used to extend even further north to the Passaic River. But more than 15 years ago, large swaths of land were razed for what was to become a highway, a road that never got built.

The scars from the aborted highway plan linger in the form of overgrown abandoned lots along the waterfront.

That’s why Evans thinks the new project by Florio is so important. He said it has the potential to “energize” other development.

Florio, since moving his firm to Paterson in 2010, has been gobbling up real estate in the city’s 4th, 1st and 5th wards and building market-rate apartments in places where naysayers vowed new housing could never work.

“When people say you can’t build market-rate apartments, I say why not?” Florio said. “I’m either going to be that guy who is crazy smart and saw 50 years ahead or the guy who’s an absolute moron — there’s no in between.”

In addition to the project at 120-134 Main Street, Florio is finishing up a 138-unit building at the site of the old Paterson Armory, a 206-unit building on Fair Street, a 10-story ultramodern luxury building on Hamilton Avenue, and a renovation of the old Greenbaum Interiors furniture shop.

Florio admits he is prone to hyperbole when he speaks about Paterson’s potential. But how can you blame him? He watched his family’s firm, Anthony Real Estate, which opened in Jersey City in the 1970s, ride the Gold Coast’s tsunami of gentrification.

‘Paterson is changing’

When it comes to Paterson, Florio said the best indicator of the city’s potential is its population growth over the last 10 years. That’s the reason he believes flooding the local market with new housing units is a safe bet.

“Paterson is changing — because five, 10 years ago no one wanted to buy a home on Godwin Avenue,” Floyd said. “It’s happening now.”

Florio’s efforts to build market-rate and luxury homes in one of the state’s poorest cities has invited accusations that he’s a gentrifier, as Paterson Press previously reported. But he shrugs off his detractors. 

“I buy vacant lots, vacant houses, and vacant buildings — I’ve never displaced one resident,” Florio said, pointing to the former Greenbaum building that he is converting into apartments. “Did I displace one affordable housing unit? It was a furniture store and a warehouse.”

When it comes to Paterson’s future, Florio said he believes with increased tourism at the Great Falls, visitors will soon find out that the city is more than the “bad press” they read about.

“If we had 2021 interest rates and jobs, I’d say that in 10 years this will be an entirely different city,” Florio said.

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