When it comes to fulfilling his father’s legacy of building the Kawaida Towers, Mayor Ras Baraka has been unrelenting. The idea for an all-affordable apartment building originally emerged from the tinderbox of the Newark riots, but it came up against a demonstration that spelled doom to the project. In 2021, the plan was revived but stagnated. Now, the plan appears to be moving forward once again at 17 Halsey Street.
The latest plans were revealed this month at a Landmarks Commission meeting, which had to approve them due to their location in a historic district. This comes after the City Council issued an $8 million grant last month to a joint venture of developers called Kawaida Towers JV Partners, LLC.
The last time the public saw renderings was in 2021, when Baraka held a press conference on Halsey Street in front of the site, which included a preexisting building that was demolished last year. The proposed tower at the time reached 16 stories, a powerful symbol as that was how high the original tower was supposed to reach. However, this time around, the new project has 10 stories, reflecting a new economic reality.
The original 210-unit Kawaida Tower was planned for 129 Lincoln Avenue in the North Ward. The building’s name, Kawaida, is Swahili and derives from the Temple of Kawaida, the pan-African organization led by the mayor’s father, Amiri Baraka. A foundation for the project was even poured at a cost of $1 million, but the building was never built due to intense opposition from neighbors.
In the 1970s, racial tensions were continuing to rise. Alongside that, there was growing disillusionment with high-rise housing projects sprouting up in residential neighborhoods and the crime they engendered. All of Newark’s high-rise housing projects built in the midcentury have since been demolished.
The revised Kawaida Tower plan reemerges at a time when affordable housing is once again at the forefront of real estate issues in New Jersey. The conditions of the city’s current stock of privately owned affordable housing have also come under fire from tenants who complain of rat infestations at Georgia King Village. Meanwhile, recent polls reflect that racial relations are devolving. One can only wonder how much has changed since the 1970s.
In 1973, the Superior Court sided with the organization behind the Kawaida Tower. Judge Irwin Kimmelman didn’t believe it was the court’s place to act as a “sociologist.” “It is not for the courts to speculate upon or anticipate the social effects that will result from municipal and legislative action,” Kimmelman said.
In the wake of Kimmelman’s opinion, Mayor Kenneth Gibson called on Newarkers to support the project and set aside animosities. “I urge all citizens who have opposed its construction to adhere to the letter of the law,” Mayor Kenneth Gibson was quoted in the Star-Ledger as saying. “But more important than that, to attempt to live in harmony with each other and recognize the dire need for housing in Newark.”
Despite winning the legal battles, supporters of the tower could not overcome the demonstrations against the building, which included community leaders such as Stephen Adubato and politicians such as State Assemblymen Anthony Imperiale and Frank Megaro, as well as the Newark Police Department. In 1976, the project was given a “quiet burial,” the New York Times called it, when the foundation, which cost $1 million, was filled in with dirt.
Linda Caldwell-Epps, a member of the Landmarks Commission, said she wanted to see the story of Kawaida Tower memorialized with artwork when the building is complete.
“It’s something we’ve been discussing internally,” said Shanell Dunns, one of the developers investing in the property. “Just by some of the conversations from the community at large, there are some mixed feelings about the history of Kawaida Towers. So we definitely want to be respectful and tread lightly about what we say and how we say it.”
“Understood about your wanting to be careful,” Caldwell-Epps said. “But it’s also a lesson in there that needs to be communicated.”
