Housing and Neighborhood Development Services, Inc.

Hat Factory Is a Focus of Redevelopment in Orange

By ANTOINETTE MARTIN

ORANGE -- In the heyday of hats at the beginning of the 20th century, the Valley neighborhood of Orange claimed to be the nation's biggest producer. There were 34 hat-making factories clustered in one small part of this town, including the F. Berg Hat Manufacturing Company complex of three huge buildings.

Berg went bankrupt in the early 1900's, and a pajama-making factory took over the plant. Eventually, the Berg buildings joined dozens of other former hat plants, a Colgate factory, tool-and-dye shops and other industrial properties on the vacancy rolls.

Now, decades later, Orange is determined to renew such properties, with two designated redevelopment areas — the central part of the Valley being one of them — and work is under way by a nonprofit developer to turn the Berg plant into 44 condominiums. In a working-class city that lost population decade after decade for half of the 20th century and that has an unusually high percentage of residents who are renters, this is no small goal.

Housing and Neighborhood Development Services Inc., known as Hands, has cleared the squatters and debris away and is preparing to transform the three buildings at the Berg site into a residential complex with 5,444 square feet of ground-level retail and covered parking.

"These will be for-sale homes rather than rental," said Patrick Morrissy, the executive director of Hands. "That's sort of the point — to turn this back into a real neighborhood."

The $7.5 million project, to be financed with a combination of federal and state funds, tax credit programs and private money, will create 16 two- and three-bedroom duplexes, 9 one- and two-bedroom loft apartments, and 19 studios, all to be sold at market rate.

Another potential developer wanted to create a self-storage facility, Mr. Morrissy said. "That would have gotten rid of the rats and squatters and put the property back on the general tax rolls," he conceded, "but with our plan, you actually bring life back to the area."

Hands has worked for six years to stabilize existing neighborhoods of single-family homes in Orange and neighboring East Orange , one building at a time, Mr. Morrissy said. Using a strategy of picking the house in worst shape on a block, relocating squatters and troublesome tenants, untangling thickets of liens and forfeitures to purchase a building and then completely renovating it for resale, Hands has helped to prepare Orange for successful redevelopment, Mr. Morrissy said.

Hands pushed for the state Abandoned Property Rehabilitation Act, enacted last year, that aims to streamline the process of getting abandoned property into the hands of nonprofit groups and is field-testing the new law with its continuing work in Orange.

Mayor Mims Hackett Jr. said that Hands had a record of what he called "exemplary success" in turning around problem and abandoned properties.

"This is what redevelopment is all about," Mayor Hackett said. "As you get older cities — and we are almost 150 years old — you have to be innovative, understanding, and take what avenue is granted for revitalization."

Orange has three target areas for redevelopment. The largest is an L-shaped area near the town's main train station, where financing has been received through the state's Transit Village program and is being sought through the federal Hope VI program. Another redevelopment area is being proposed for the lower end of the town's Main Street . The third is the ongoing Valley project.

"We're right in the mix," said the mayor. "Give us a short period of time, and we'll probably be one of the redevelopment models in the nation."

The community was sorely wounded 40 years ago when Interstate 280 was diverted around upscale Llewellyn Park , a section of West Orange , to cut straight through Orange 's center, the mayor noted. Some neighborhoods were also hit hard by radon contamination, another legacy of the town's factory past, when luminescent clock and watch dials were fashioned from radium ore and the residue was used as landfill.

IN the Valley, the towering Father Rossi subsidized housing project built in 1953 has been a problem for the last 30 years, the mayor said, as crime and neglect became concentrated there. The housing project, a few blocks from the Berg factory, is being demolished and the land cleared, the mayor said, presenting "fresh development opportunity," as he put it.

Floyd Lapp, a city planner with 40 years experience, recently hired on a part-time basis to coordinate Orange 's revitalization efforts, said the Father Rossi property is expected to be redeveloped "in a more user-friendly way — less vertical, more low-rise, with green space, and programs to promote home ownership."

Hands has established training programs for those who want to buy and maintain homes in Orange, a place where nearly 80 percent of the 30,000 residents are currently renters, and plans to continue during the revitalization process.

On the plus side for Orange , its commercial Main Street has remained stable and almost completely occupied, except for the few blocks at its lower end at the border with East Orange , Mr. Morrissy said. In addition, he said, the two train stations provide continued vitality.

The Berg factory, which has been renamed the Valley Renaissance Center , is just two blocks from the Valley's Highland Avenue station, which is handsome and well-kept enough to have been a featured setting in the film "Catch Me If You Can."

In 1997, a developer converted a vacant furniture factory across the street from that station into condominiums. In 1988, a former West Orange councilman converted a Catholic school on Valley Road to condos.   Mr. Morrissy said, "The Valley Renaissance Center will, inevitably spur yet more interesting projects in the neighborhood."

Hands is already competing with other developers on plans for other buildings, and in one case, working in concert with the city administration on a plan to create an artists' building out of another hat factory — turning it into live-work-display space for painters, sculptors and other artists. Hands currently sponsors a spring arts festival for children in the area.

Many of the former hat buildings are quite dignified and possess historic appeal, Mr. Morrissy said. "The Stetson brothers started here," he said, "beginning with their No Name brand, which was called that because they couldn't agree on a name — or so the story goes. This was before the cowboy hat, in the era of the fedora."

MR. Morrissy predicted that such buildings now standing empty and abandoned would become the envy of other communities starved for space to develop multifamily housing.

Mr. Lapp, the planner, said such upbeat thinking is entirely warranted. "Between 1990 and 2000, for the first time in 50 years, Orange gained population, reversing the trend of people moving out of the inner suburbs and cities," Mr. Lapp said. "Projections for the next 20 to 25 years show a continuation of that gain."

The mayor also noted that throughout the township's troubled times, a number of ethnic restaurants continued to do business in the Valley neighborhood. Hands, which is currently rehabilitating a dilapidated newspaper building just off Main Street for its offices, will install a soul food restaurant on the first floor, and Mayor Hackett said he expected that to become a regular hangout for business people and public officials.  

Copyright © 2007 Housing and Neighborhood Development Services, Inc.