An old, long-abandoned hat factory in Orange is due for restyling. If all goes as planned, the F. Berg & Co. complex, near NJ Transit's Highland Avenue train station, will come back as a mixed-use complex.
Called the Valley Renaissance Center, the $7.5 million project is being promoted by Housing and Neighborhood Development Services (HANDS). The Orange nonprofit’s partners include the New Jersey Economic Development Authority and the New Jersey School of Architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark.
Orange has identified the Valley neighborhood as a critical development area whose renewal could expand the city’s tax base by attracting both new businesses and homeowners. About 70% of the 65,000-sq.-ft. Renaissance complex would be taken up by 25 to 28 residential units. The remainder would include a 15,000-sq.-ft. arts community and space for retail and light-commercial uses. Once fully built out and occupied, the complex is expected to generate annual tax revenue of up to $200,000 for the city; it now generates only about $25,000.
The Valley Renaissance Center is seen as the showpiece of a larger redevelopment plan encompassing nearly 20 blocks in the Valley section. In order to keep the project moving, HANDS has applied for a state planning grant of $75,000. Among other items, the money would pay for a thorough inventory of existing properties and a redevelopment plan, though the organization hasn’t waited for the cash to get started.
“HANDS will try to plan for the rest of the neighborhood using the Valley Renaissance Center as the linchpin,” says Wayne Meyer, the group’s housing director.
HANDS is currently in the process of buying the three buildings of the F. Berg complex for an unnamed amount from a Jewish educational trust based in Brooklyn. The current owners never occupied the facility, which has been lying vacant for 10 years. HANDS expects to close on the purchase in three months and then seek zoning and other approvals. Hopes are to break ground next spring.
The project will be financed by bank loans. Subsidies from the state Department of Community Affairs would help market the residential units to first-time home buyers. Patrick Morrissy, founder and executive director of HANDS, expects the homes to sell for about $180,000 each.
The Valley Renaissance Center is the biggest, most ambitious project ever undertaken by HANDS. Founded in 1986, the group has redeveloped 78 Orange housing properties. Underway now are 14 home-redevelopment projects valued at $2.1 million and four mixed-use projects valued at $9.2 million, including the Renaissance Center.
HANDS’ usual strategy is to acquire vacant properties and sell them to first-time home buyers after training them at its “Home Buyers Club.” The club gives credit and mortgage advice; provides references to insurance, legal and home inspection services; and offers buyers a support network. HANDS tries to stay involved with new homeowners long after their purchases and seeks their participation in neighborhood improvement efforts.
In developing the plan for the Valley Renaissance Center, HANDS has had help from the New Jersey School of Architecture. Its students have done a design-feasibility study of the project, including a look at neighborhood history, demographics, design precedents, zoning and building codes.
At the heart of the effort is Morrissy, 58, a driven man when it comes to urban revitalization. He trained to be an accountant in his native Detroit, but caught redevelopment fever early on. Morrissy started his first job in 1968 with the nonprofit Neighborhood Youth Corps in Hackensack. There he helped high school dropouts continue their education and get jobs. He then spent five years with the Englewood Redevelopment Agency, where he focused on housing rehabilitation projects.
After working on a variety of redevelopment projects, Morrissy says he realized that “you cannot rely upon the government to create solutions for healthy neighborhoods.” In 1985, feeling that things were “getting worse, not better,” he gathered a group of Orange clergy and community leaders to find a solution to the city’s decay and crime.
Morrissy observed that abandoned housing and crime went together; housing was therefore a key to addressing crime. “Abandoned homes are places where criminals hang out, drug dealers stash their drugs and make sales or get high,” he says.
The HANDS approach has been effective, says Preston Pinkett, senior vice president with the New Jersey Economic Development Authority in Trenton. “Over the years, HANDS has taken communities that have been very difficult and made them much less difficult,” he says. “There’s a lot more going on now in those communities they worked with.”
Pinkett helped put together loans and grants for HANDS while he was senior vice president at PNC Bank’s East Brunswick offices. He says HANDS buttresses its altruism with a “good sense of project management and a good sense of the market for its properties.”
This is a market with nearly 33,000 residents over 2.2 square miles. Its population is 73% black, 12% white and 12% Hispanic. With a median income of $12,812, just 26% of Orange residents own their own homes.
The city has an excellent transportation network, with NJ Transit stations linking it to New York City. The Morris-Essex line has stops at Highland Station and Orange Station in the city’s main commercial district. In addition, the New Jersey Turnpike, the Garden State Parkway and Interstate 280 are all nearby.
Orange wasn’t always poor. In the 1800s it was a thriving industrial center. It was a major beer producer until the 1930s. The city’s abundant hemlock trees supplied tannic acid for a healthy tanning industry.
Orange was also known as the nation’s hat capital till the early 1900s, with 34 factories at the turn of the century. It was, in fact, the original home of Stetson hats, though John Stetson relocated to Philadelphia in the late 1800s. Seven of the town’s former hat factories are still around, either vacant or underutilized.
The F. Berg site is one such site and Morrissy flinches as he points beyond the locked gates to clothing hung on a string, a sure sign of squatters. He stares at it for awhile, perhaps conjuring up visions of a piece of history made new again.