NJPAC begins $336 million project to bring new homes, restaurants, and new art facilities to Newark
Anyone who wandered down Center Street this summer already knows: Something big is happening at NJPAC.
Construction fencing now surrounds much of the gleaming brick and glass New Jersey Performing Arts Center, while yellow earth-moving equipment rises and falls behind it. When an official groundbreaking took place on September 18, the work was already well underway.
And when it’s done in 2027—just in time for the 30th anniversary of NJPAC’s opening—the theater’s downtown Newark campus will be transformed. A thousand new residents will live on the Arts Center’s campus, while visitors will have more reasons to linger after an event.
“Once we’re up and going, in a couple of years, Newarkers will have a plethora of opportunities to be entertained, to learn, and to be energized” on the Arts Center’s campus, says John Schreiber, President and CEO of NJPAC, who’s overseen the project alongside Tim Lizura, the Arts Center’s Executive Vice President, Real Estate & Capital Projects.
What the NJPAC is building is not a new take on its existing theaters — where Lauryn Hill, Bob Dylan, Yo-Yo Ma, Gilberto Santa Rosa, Adam Sandler, John Leguizamo and Jennifer Hudson have all performed — but rather a whole new downtown neighborhood that will surround them.
The mixed-use, mixed-income residential development, called ArtSide, will include 350 rental units ranging from studio apartments to townhomes (20% of them affordable housing). It will also feature shops, restaurants, and cultural venues, among them a brand new home for Newark’s beloved public jazz radio station, WBGO.
PHOTO CREDIT: S. BOLA OKOYA
JOHN SCHREIBER, PRESIDENT AND CEO OF NJPAC OVERLOOKING CONSTRUCTION SITE OF NEW ARTS CENTER CAMPUS
The theaters’ eastern side will be redesigned to create a new entry, and Chambers Plaza, with the addition of a multipurpose space called Essex County Green, will be “rearchitected,” Schreiber says, to make it better able to host outdoor performances, festivals and markets year-round.
The development will also include a 58,000-square-foot Cooperman Family Arts Education and Community Center. This building— made possible thanks to a foundational gift from investor Leon Cooperman and his family—will be a purpose-built home for the performing arts training classes NJPAC offers. The Cooperman will also serve as the headquarters for the Arts Center’s community engagement programming, house rehearsal studios, and a theater “lab” where young people can learn technical theater skills, including lighting and sound design.
NJPAC’s leadership has spent more than five years planning this reimagining of the Arts Center’s campus, with help from Prudential Financial,
urban planning studio RePlace, architects Skidmore Owings & Merrill, the architectural firm of Weiss/Manfredi, and developer LMXD. “This master-planned development that we’re advancing in collaboration and cooperation with so many partners will have a positive impact on our community for generations,” says Schreiber. “And as the city’s anchor cultural institution, an essential part of our work is not only presenting the greatest artists in the world but also providing educational and cultural assets and opportunities that are accessible to everyone. This new neighborhood we’re building will do just that.” The theaters’ eastern side will be redesigned to create a new entry, and Chambers Plaza, with the addition of a multipurpose space called Essex County Green, will be “rearchitected,” Schreiber says, to make it better able to host outdoor performances, festivals and markets year-round.
The development will also include a 58,000-square-foot Cooperman Family Arts Education and Community Center. This building— made possible thanks to a foundational gift from investor Leon Cooperman and his family—will be a purpose-built home for the performing arts training classes NJPAC offers. The Cooperman will also serve as the headquarters for the Arts Center’s community engagement programming, house rehearsal studios, and a theater “lab” where young people can learn technical theater skills, including lighting and sound design. NJPAC’s leadership has spent more than five years planning this reimagining of the Arts Center’s campus, with help from Prudential Financial, urban planning studio RePlace, architects Skidmore Owings & Merrill, the architectural firm of Weiss/Manfredi, and developer LMXD.
“This master-planned development that we’re advancing in collaboration and cooperation with so many partners will have a positive impact on our community for generations,” says Schreiber. “And as the city’s anchor cultural institution, an essential part of our work is not only presenting the greatest artists in the world but also providing educational and cultural assets and opportunities that are accessible to everyone. This new neighborhood we’re building will do just that.”
“And as the city’s anchor cultural institution, an essential part of our work is not only presenting the greatest artists in the world but also providing educational and cultural assets and opportunities that are accessible to everyone. This new neighborhood we’re building will do just that.”
Timeline of real estate development at njpac
1987
Act One: Governor Tom Kean formally proposes building the Arts Center in Newark in 1987. When NJPAC opened in 1997, contributing to the resilience of Newark’s downtown was explicitly part of its mission. Kean remembered the redevelopment that sprang up around New York City’s Lincoln Center when it was established in the 1960s, and he saw potential for a performing arts center in downtown Newark to contribute to the city’s economic growth in much the same way.
2016
Act Two: In 2016, the Arts Center’s first venture in real estate development—the construction of One Theater Square, a 22-story residential tower across Center Street from its theaters—began construction. As that project was being built, Ommeed Sathe—then vice president of Impact Investments at Prudential Financial—and his team approached the Arts Center with a proposal for NJPAC to create a master plan for the development of its entire campus, mapping out a thoughtfully designed neighborhood across its grounds.
“When this is built, it will feel walkable. It will actually be as dense as the Upper East Side, but it will feel like the West Village,” says Sathe, referencing two iconic New York City neighborhoods. (Sathe is now Head of Impact and Sustainable Investments at Liberty Mutual Investments—one of several financial partners underwriting NJPAC’s campus redevelopment.)
2019
Act Three: By 2019, One Theater Square, which opened in the summer of 2018, was effectively fully occupied. “That was our proof point,” says Schreiber. The Arts Center put out a request for proposals to developers interested in bringing the new masterplan to life. Of the 20 that responded, NJPAC chose to partner with LMXD to make the vision of a new neighborhood around the Arts Center a reality.
2014
Curtain call: On September 18, 2024, ground officially broke on the residential development, ArtSide, the Cooperman Center, and the reimagining of Chambers Plaza into an event-friendly urban park.
