NJIT has long had a contentious relationship with the surrounding Newark community. As a commuter school, the polytechnic university did little, critics would say, to cultivate an environment where students wanted to be.
However, this impression seems to be changing as the university invests in attractive living arrangements that have resulted in more students living within the city. Last year, Maple Hall opened on Warren Street with apartment-style rooms. Last month, a new 17-floor glass residence called Oak Hall was unveiled to the city’s Planning Board. It was only a courtesy review, as state-funded institutions aren’t required to have site plan approval.
According to Matthew Golden, vice president at NJIT, the university aims to admit 15,000 students by 2030, with 3,140 residing on campus. This necessitates 700 new beds. Oak Hall will give the school 270 more beds towards that goal.
This new dorm will soon stand on the site of a dilapidated building at 155 Summit Street, which will be demolished. “The facade of the building is falling off,” said Andrew Christ, a senior vice president at the school. “We decided in the best interest of the dollars that students provide for residential opportunities to live on our campus, that we would demolish that.”
Oak Hall will have 152 units with 454 beds, a conference room, and a penthouse apartment for the university president. Christ said demolition would happen in June with opening expected in 2027.
“I remember the dorm that is being demolished – when I was there, there was talk about it being demolished,” said Nii Abladey Adjoga-otu, a former architecture student at NJIT and current member of the city’s Landmarks Commission. “I think more residential projects like this on campus will help make NJIT more integrated into Newark’s environment.”
Criticisms that the design of NJIT’s campus doesn’t foster interactions with the city around it have plagued the university for years. However, Myles Zhang, a member of the city’s Landmarks Commission, said that the dorm will help change the perception of its students as commuters who flee the city as soon as the school bell rings.
“It’s important that NJIT becomes a full member of Newark’s community,” Zhang said.
Zhang, a James Street Commons Neighborhood Association member, has previously criticized the university’s demolition of historic buildings, such as Warren Street School, where Maple Hall was built.
Their plans to transform the northern border of James Street grew from a local battle to a statewide war when the historic district was named one of the state’s most endangered places in 2021.
However, after unveiling renderings for the new project at 420 M.L.K. Boulevard, the site of the historic Maltbie Chemical Company industrial building, at a community meeting on May 26, 2021, the university seems to have won back a considerable amount of goodwill from its neighbors.
Even before the pandemic, NJIT had been undergoing a campus-wide transformation, creating a new park on the site of the abandoned Mueller’s Brothers factory and revealing plans for a new building at 420 MLK Boulevard. More improvements are on the way, including a $15.1 million renovation to the campus center and a $16.4 million conversion of Fenster Hall, currently used for administrative offices, into classrooms and laboratories. Administrative offices have been relocated to 494 Broad Street, Golden said.
Tammy Hollaway, president of the James Street Commons Neighborhood Association, noted the difference in NJIT’s approach to campus growth with projects that are “contextually appropriate,” she said.
“I’m proud of the progress our organizations have made, working together as one neighborhood,” said Halloway, who is running to fill the Central Ward’s City Council seat vacated by Congresswoman LaMonica McIver.
