An expansion of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s campus in Newark will include new rental homes, shops, restaurants, outdoor gathering spaces and a distinctive education and community center with professional rehearsal spaces. — All images courtesy: NJPAC
By Joshua Burd
Construction is set to begin on a long-awaited expansion of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s campus in Newark, part of a $336 million project that will bring 350 new apartments, office and retail space and a 58,000-square-foot arts education and community center.
The venue’s leaders on Wednesday joined public officials, donors and a host of other supporters to break ground on the development, which it will build over the next three years on surface parking lots that surround the facility. It’s doing so in tandem with developers LMXD and MCI Collective, having spent several years planning the complex project while securing a long list of public and private financing sources.
NJPAC also expects to revitalize the existing 100,000-square-foot performing arts center building on Center Street , which opened in 1997 just west of McCarter Highway.
“This arts center is honored to be the stewards of this land and to be positive contributors to our community,” NJPAC CEO John Schreiber said, later adding: “Today, we make good on our promise to be an effective, useful, engaged and intentional anchor cultural institution grounded right here and committed to Newark in its ongoing equitable and inclusive development.”
Slated for completion in fall 2027, the new campus will feature the 350-unit ArtSide building designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill, which will include 70 units reserved as affordable housing. Among the new commercial and cultural spaces will be a home for Newark’s acclaimed jazz public radio station, WBGO, as well as an extension of Mulberry Street on what is now NJPAC’s Parking Lot A.
The 58,000-square-foot Cooperman Family Arts Education and Community Center, designed by architectural firm Weiss/Manfredi, will be built on Parking Lot C, according to a news release. Plans also call for an update of Chambers Plaza at the front of the venue, with landscape architecture studio Future Green spearheading the redesign, and the addition of a new Essex County Green to create a four-season urban park.
The new uses will join One Theater Square, the 22-story, 245-unit residential tower that opened across Center Street in 2018. That marked the first piece of NJPAC’s long-stated goal of creating a campus beyond its performance stages.
“We have a two-sided coin of passion that’s represented here today,” said Gov. Phil Murphy, who headlined the slate of public officials on hand for Wednesday’s groundbreaking. “As Newark goes, so goes the state of New Jersey. And under the mayor and city council president’s leadership, Newark is on fire. And today is a great example of that.
He added: “Without the arts, we’re nobody. The arts are integral to our state, to our society, and that is another passion that you’re seeing play out here today. I think we always knew that, but I will tell you, since March of 2020, we really know that. In the darkest days of COVID, in the recovery since then, as we stumbled to get back on our feet as a state, as a nation, the arts have been center stage. They have sustained us, and no organization speaks to that more eloquently than NJPAC.”
Schreiber, Murphy and other speakers on Wednesday highlighted the extensive assortment of public and private funding sources and philanthropy that are making the project possible. Not the least of which is the $200 million tax credit that the state Economic Development Authority awarded NJPAC earlier this year under its Aspire program.
NJPAC also highlighted the role of:
- Prudential Financial, which facilitated the master planning of the campus redesign and financed NJPAC’s predevelopment needs
- Liberty Mutual, which committed to investing across the capital stack as both an Aspire tax credit investor and a limited partner
- Citi Community Capital, which spearheaded construction lending and low-income housing tax credit investing for the project
- TD Bank, which provided NJPAC with New Markets Tax Credit allocation for the Cooperman Center construction and a tax-exempt bond for other campus improvements
- Essex County Executive Joseph N. DiVincenzo Jr. and the County of Essex, which supported the redesign of campus outdoor spaces
- Codevelopment partner Siree Morris, managing director of MCI Collective
- The New Jersey Housing Mortgage Finance Agency and Freddie Mac, which provided permanent loan commitments
- New Jersey Community Capital, which provided support in New Market Tax Credits
“There’s only one way a project like this gets done — and it’s with a slew of willing partners,” said Tim Lizura, NJPAC’s executive vice president of real estate and capital projects. “And this just might be the greatest partnership anyone has ever assembled.”
LMXD partnered with NJPAC to manage design, approvals and financing for the project. Professionals involved in the development also include Langan, CSG Law, Windels Marx LLP and Biggins Lacy Shapiro & Co., as well as Turner Construction Co. and Structure Tone, which are building the ArtSide and Cooperman Center phases, respectively.
Newark’s OCA Architects will design renovations of 31 Mulberry St., an existing building NJPAC recently acquired adjacent to the site of the Cooperman Center, the news release said. The building will house additional spaces for community gatherings, plus educational and office spaces for the center, while NJPAC’s eastern façade, certain interiors and loading docks will also be redesigned.
“The streets of Newark have always been steeped in the arts,” Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said. “This is a city where jazz and hip hop are in the breeze, and every wall without a mural is just a canvas no one’s yet claimed. The new neighborhood around NJPAC will fully embrace that dynamic spirit, bringing more housing, stores and gathering places to our already lively downtown. And one of the highest notes of all will be the new headquarters for our city’s iconic jazz station, WBGO.”
Philanthropic support from major donors who contributed to the arts center’s $244 million capital campaign, completed in December 2024, also helped finance the project. Notably, Leon and Toby Cooperman and the Cooperman family made a foundational gift to the construction of the Cooperman Center, which will headquarter NJPAC’s arts education, arts and wellbeing and community engagement initiatives.
“Ensuring young people have the best chances at their brightest futures is at the heart of our family’s giving,” said Leon Cooperman, chairman and CEO of Omega Family Office. “The Cooperman Center, a new home for so much of NJPAC’s Arts Education and Community Engagement work, will be in service to everyone, from infants to older adults. Newark is a city of creativity, and I believe the Center has a unique opportunity to contribute to its future.”
State officials, NJPAC tout ‘exciting next phase’ after mixed-use project lands Aspire award
