Located adjacent to the Brick Church train station, the Crossings at Brick Church will provide a new focal point for the City of East Orange and catalyze additional investment and economic growth while ensuring that social equity goals are interwoven in the development plan.
The multi-phase project represents a public-private partnership with the City of East Orange and local stakeholders, aiming to create a “center of place” that provides ease of access and social equity in a walkable urban format.
The site is currently underutilized, housing a 1980’s era ShopRite-anchored retail center. The project will redevelop the plaza as a multi-phase, mixed‐use site that will ultimately contain 1,070 mixed-income housing units and 232,000 square feet of retail/commercial space featuring modern apartments with state-of-the-art amenities, ample parking for residents and shoppers, a grocery store, retailers, and restaurants in a town center format.
The total project cost is approximately $225M including $52M in New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC). Reinvestment Fund is making a $17M leverage source loan and issuing a $4.5M New Markets Tax Credit.
The project will be completed in two phases. The first phase will develop a 5-story building containing a grocery store as its anchor with first-floor retail, and 400 mixed-income residential units, including 80 low-income housing units; site and clean water infrastructure improvements, and a multi-story garage structure. The second phase will create additional retail and residential units on a separate parcel across the street. Reinvestment Fund’s NMTC will fund the grocer-anchored retail portion of the project. Retail tenants will include ShopRite, the Newark Community Health Center, and Ashley Stewart clothier, among others. This project aligns with Reinvestment Fund’s NMTC strategy which includes a focus on food retail and the creation of quality, accessible jobs, in addition to the co-location of food access and health care services.
The borrower, Triangle Equities, will use a portion of the net NMTC proceeds to fund the creation of a workforce development program and partnership with the City and local workforce development centers to help unemployed and underemployed local members of the community prepare for interviews and provide job skills. Additionally, the funds will be used to provide ongoing support and skills training to help the candidates stay in their jobs and advance to higher-paying jobs.
It is anticipated that the NMTC project will create approximately 360 construction jobs, 170 new full-time jobs, and retain 200 full-time positions. At least 50% of the new jobs created and 75% of the retained positions will be provided to low-income persons and will have low barriers to entry in the retail, restaurant, health care and property management services.