Charter School Teacher Villages being constructed in New Jersey (Newark)

Hannah Bell

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Thu Sep-23-10 04:14 AM
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Charter School Teacher Villages being constructed in New Jersey (Newark)

Edited on Thu Sep-23-10 05:03 AM by Hannah Bell

Beit has been seeking approval to build the project, called “Teachers Village at Four Corners,” for sometime and he seems to be on his way. The project calls for constructing seven buildings, the rehabilitation of a nine-story shell and the demolition of eight largely vacant buildings dating from the 1870s in the Four Corners Historic District in New Jersey....

The city planning board had no problem or hesitation in voting to approve construction of a four-block-long mixed-use development back in April of 2010. The decision was barely noticed outside a small circle of civic boosters and of course, deep pocketed investors. But it was a turning point in the career of the project’s architect, Richard Meier (The By the Architects, for the People: A Trend for the 2010s, NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF. New York Times, May 3, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/arts/design/04meier.html?_r=1).

In all, “Teachers Village” would include three charter schools with some 1,000 students and 221 units of so-called workforce housing (ibid). Company stores for the busloads of Teach for America kids that will be expected to come in, non-unionized of course, and work and breathe within the company’s enterprise. Private management of the ‘villages’ will be the cornerstone of rentals and thus privatized housing will undergo a marriage with privatized charter schools...Stefan Pryor, Newark’s deputy mayor of economic development under Mayor Corey Booker was giddy about the project...

The issue of gentrification and urban removal cannot be separated from the new turnaround artists and their plans for increasing charter schools. They work with developers on plans to not only centralize the exploitation of both labor and students, but they are also conscious of the need Wall Street has for plans to make a mountain of money off the construction of capital projects in the form of what can only be seen as a post-modern insidious company store.

http://dailycensored.com/2010/07/31/charter-school-teacher-villages-being-constructed-in-new-jersey/

tax credit money:

Beit and Gutstadt were among a venerable who’s who of developers, and a business-card-toting army of construction managers and other enablers, gathered this morning to chart Newark’s hoped-for economic awakening.

“It’s so important that we have developers from all over the country interested in Newark. That didn’t use to be,” Goldman said.

But Ted Zangari, a redevelopment attorney with Sills, Cummis & Gross of Newark, talked up two New Jersey laws that he described as game-changers: the new Economic Redevelopment Growth Grant, which can provide 20 percent of a project’s financing; and the new Urban Transit Hub Tax Credit, which can provide a 65 percent savings on rent for companies that move to a built-to-suit location in one of nine New Jersey cities.

As recently as January, Dranoff’s $190 million Newark tower was granted a $38 million tax credit under the transit-hub program. “There is not an incentive out there as generous,” he said.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sQeCaL6srDoJ:www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/03/nj_developers_chart_newarks_ho.html+beit+%22teachers+village%22+tax+credits&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us