off the leash

Boondoggle in the Meadowlands: Pt. 3 – They Forgot to Put Fan Experience on the Agenda

Posted on November 16, 2016 by Ken Dowell

Since its opening in 1976 I have been a pretty consistent customer of the Meadowlands Sports Complex. I was at one time a season ticket holder of both the New York Cosmos and the New Jersey Nets. I attended hockey, basketball, soccer and football games there as well as concerts in both the stadium and arena.

Some of my most memorable moments of watching sports were at the Meadowlands:

In the 70’s, it did not appear as though there was much interest in soccer in the U.S., outside of some ethnic neighborhoods. But when the New York Cosmos brought over some of the biggest names in world soccer they amazed everyone by filling up the football stadium. I saw some of the greatest legends of the game at Giants Stadium, players like Pele, Franz Beckanbauer and Carlos Alberto, but at the time what was even more astonishing was seeing 70,000+ plus fans in the Meadowlands to watch soccer.
In the NCAA basketball tournament East Regionals in 1990, I watched the miracle shot by Connecticut’s Tate George that beat Clemson at the buzzer and sent the Huskies to the regional final. Alas, two days later, another buzzer beater as Duke’s Christian Laitner knocked out UConn. Two brilliant days of college basketball.
In 1994, soccer’s biggest event, the World Cup, came to Giants Stadium. I saw three or four cup games that year, but the one that stands out was a match between Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Neither team seemed likely to advance to the later rounds but they put on a excellent display of high scoring (3-2), skillful, attacking soccer. And again there were 70,000+ in attendance. Where else in the world would that have happened?
Three times I watched the New Jersey Devils make a run through the NHL playoffs to win the Stanley Cup. In 2003, I was lucky to see the 7^th and deciding game of the final series against the Anaheim Ducks. The Devils won and I left the arena ready to celebrate. But there was nothing outside but a parking lot.
After years of watching the Nets live up to their billing at the minnows of professional basketball, I attended every home game as they twice made their way to the NBA finals, in 2002 and 2003. They lost both times, but along the way were some outstanding games, like the double-overtime victory over Indiana in the deciding game 5 of their series.
Just this past summer, I attended the Copa America Centenario soccer tournament at MetLife Stadium. I got to watch the best soccer that has been played in America since the 1994 World Cup. But I also learned to appreciate that the Latin American fans, unlike many of their European counterparts, don’t have to be separated from each other and are happy to enjoy themselves without any venom directed at the fans of their opponents.
More than 80,000 fans filled MetLife Stadium for the Copa America Centenario final.

These are all great memories of my experiences at the Meadowlands Sports Complex. But what I also remember is all the things that weren’t quite right at these venues. It is as if the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority forgot to put fan experience on the agenda. Here are some of those experiences, ranging from the comic and stupid to the outright tragic.

Beer and football tend to be inseparable when you are out at the stadium. While college football hasn’t been much of a success at the Meadowlands, they did for a number of years host an early season game called the Kickoff Classic. I attended one of those with three friends in 2001. We entered the stadium, bought a round of beer and to this day we all remember that as the worst beer we had ever had. It seems inconceivable but from the taste of the beer they had apparently left the keg tapped since the previous season.
Beer is no less important to hockey fans. But when you are dealing with big events at big facilities who use big distributors, it can be tough to get beyond the usual BudCoorsMiller swill. So at intermission of a Devils playoff game, my son and I were happy to get in line at a stand with a sign for Guinness and Harp. The line was moving slowly and there seemed to be some discussion over every transaction. When we got to the front of the line we realized why. Like the people in front of us and the people in front of them, we ordered two Harps and were presented with two cups of black beer. When I suggested that we had ordered Harp, not Guinness, I was gruffly advised by the server, “That is Harp. It says so right on the keg.”
One of the advantages of having multiple facilities at the same location is you can share parking lots. I was happy to discover when going to the arena that I could pull into the stadium and ideally park in a less congested area. One of the first times I did this I drove past the stadium and toward the section of the lot that was closest to the arena. They were all set up for this, but they overlooked one thing. The pay booth had been erected on the passenger side of the incoming cars, rather than the driver’s side.
The New Jersey Devils had arrived here from Colorado and in the early years, they were not a strong team. Over time however they became regular participants in the NHL playoffs and these games played at the Continental Arena were invariably sold out. On one of those early playoff years I pulled into the parking lot at the arena and was dismayed to see the line to get in stretching all the way past the entrance, down the stairs, across the street and back into the parking lot. I thought this was a reflection of the size of the crowd but when I got closer, I discovered the real problem. On this, the biggest hockey night of the season, the arena only had one turnstile staffed at the entrance nearest the main parking lot.
The Meadowlands is built at the intersection of three highways. There are few options other than to drive there. Finally, some 35 years after the complex opened, a train station was opened on the site with service from Hoboken and Secaucus and by connection from New York City. I was excited to use this new service when attending a soccer game in the summer of 2010 at the equally new MetLife Stadium. (At the time it was called New Meadowlands Stadium since the original naming rights deal fell through after it was made public that the insurance company involved had insured Hitler’s engineers at Auschwitz. Not a good brand name for an area with a large Jewish population.) I took the train from Hoboken and enjoyed a fast, comfortable ride to the stadium. But I also had to get home. When I left the stadium it took me an hour and half to get on a train and more than two hours to get back to Hoboken, a 7.6 mile trip that Google advises would have taken 90 minutes by bike.
That soccer game involved Argentina and the Meadowlands, knowing they would have a big crowd, was advising fans to get there early. It was an 8 p.m. game with doors opening at 6. My friend and I decided to take their advice, get there shortly after 6 and have a stadium dinner. But when we got there, no food was ready. The woman at the sausage sandwich stand advised us of the problem. They wouldn’t let the employees in before 6, so no one had the time to get ready for the early arriving fans.
Bad traffic flow is legendary at the Meadowlands despite the fact that it was built amidst a bunch of highways with little else around it. It hasn’t gotten better after all these years. See the bridge on Route 3 at the left of the Google street view above. It is only a few hundred yards away from the entrance to the parking lot. In June, I arrived at that bridge 90 minutes ahead of kickoff for a Copa America game and it took me another hour to get from there to the parking lot entrance. And after the game… I waited two hours before even getting in my car to leave because the parking lot roads were solid gridlock.

None of these customer service failures compare with what happened in 1998 when the Grateful Dead played a series of five shows at the arena. Nine Meadowlands security guards, rent-a-cops from a company called Burns International Security Services, were accused of assaulting fans. The manager of the arena suggested that some of these guards “were taking short cuts at crowd control.”

That is a gross understatement if you consider what happened to 19-year-old college student Adam Katz. No one was ever charged and there was never any official explanation as to what caused the death of Adam Katz, a fan who was attending one of the Grateful Dead concerts. But the Katz family did their own investigation and concluded that their son was ejected from the concert, beaten by security guards and his body was then thrown off a bridge onto the highway. They sued Burns Security and ended up settling for $1.5 million.

Posted in Sports, Uncategorized | Tagged basketball, fan expiernce, Giants Stadium, hockey, Meadowlands Sports Complex, MetLife Stadium, soccer, sports | 1 Comment

The Boondoggle in the Meadowlands Pt. 2 – A Swamp Half Full or a Swamp Half Empty?

Posted on November 9, 2016 by Ken Dowell

Back in 1972 when ground was broken for what would become Giants Stadium, the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society were there to protest the paving over of the wetlands. Not surprisingly to no avail. In fact the term wetlands might currently be more applicable for the Meadowlands as an expression of how much beer is sold on the premises.

The original Meadowlands Sports Complex consisted of a racetrack, a stadium (both opened in 1976) and an arena which opened in 1981. The racetrack is alive if not altogether well, the stadium has been replaced with a new one, and the arena lies dormant amidst of pile of unfinished construction.

Is this a sports complex that’s half full or one that’s half empty?

Half full

MetLife Stadium

The stadium is the cornerstone of the complex. It was the commitment of the New York Giants to move to New Jersey that really paved the way for the Meadowlands Sports Complex. The Giants played their first game there in 1976. In 1984, the New York Jets moved in. The stadium also briefly hosted a third team, a Donald Trump venture called the New York Generals. A typical Trump venture, they lasted three years after which the league folded and Trump sued the NFL.

The stadium was home for the New York Cosmos in the 70’s and 80’s, hosted several games of the 1994 World Cup and welcomed the New York/New Jersey Metrostars (now the New York Red Bulls) in 1996. Sellout crowds of 70,000+ watched the Cosmos and the World Cup, but for the Metrostars, who were never very good, it was a cavernous and largely empty home.

In 2010, Giants Stadium was replaced by MetLife Stadium at a cost of $1.6 billion. If you’re a fan you have to scratch your head because the new stadium hardly seems any better than the old one. Both are, from a utilitarian standpoint, good stadiums. But they are equally characterless. The new stadium is owned by the two NFL teams so while it is more of the same for fans, it is all about more money for the Giants and Jets.

MetLife Stadium still hosts two football teams and as such has more NFL games than any other stadium. In 2014 it hosted the Super Bowl. It is the pro football that makes the complex come alive, or should I say keeps the complex alive.

Meadowlands Racetrack

The racetrack, the first facility to open, drew an astonishing crowd of 40,000 plus for its first night of racing in 1976. It hosts both thoroughbred and harness racing and is home to one of the most prestigious events in harness racing, the Hambletonian.

But its status is somewhat in limbo. Since it was built, casinos have sprung up in surrounding areas and online betting is now legal in New Jersey. Attendance, which in the early days averaged 20,000 a night, now is more like 2,000. Since 2011, it has been leased to an operator who pays $1 a year. The grandstand was replaced, at a cost of $88 million, in 2013. There has been a constant stream of rumors, including conversion to a NASCAR race track and a casino. But at this point it is still on the half-full side of the ledger.

Half empty

Izod Arena

While the stadium, at least on autumn Sundays, appears to be thriving and the racetrack still has its lights on, the other side of the complex has gone dark. In 1991, Bruce Springstein opened what was then called the Brendan Byrne Arena (named after a former governor) with six sold out shows. In all Bruce played some 56 shows at the arena and another Jersey boy, Frank Sinatra, played a 75^th birthday gig there.

In 1996 it was renamed Continental Arena, after the airline which all New Jerseyians look back at fondly after seeing what United is like. In addition to Bruce, the arena had an NBA team, an NHL franchise and a Division I college basketball team. It hosted two NBA finals, three Stanley Cup finals and some NCAA East Regionals.

But by 2000, the Daily News was reporting: ”the traffic appears headed one way, south to Newark. The Devils, Jets, Nets and MetroStars are restless. They want to leave, despite offers of fresh concrete and girders. They want their own urban homes, a sense of identity, a hipper inner city fan base.”

The Devils left in 2007, moving to the vastly superior Prudential Center in Newark. Seton Hall, whose campus is much closer to Newark, left with them. So did Continental Airlines. Izod, a Nets sponsor, picked up the naming rights. But the Nets were also on their way out by 2010 as they were now under the ownership of a real estate developer who was looking to make a killing on a big development in Brooklyn. The name Izod stayed with the arena even after the company stopped making payments. It closed, seemingly for good in 2015.

The American Dream

With the stadium now under the ownership of the football teams, the racetrack in decline and the arena standing vacant and unused, the NJSEA turned its attention to the idea of a shopping and entertainment complex. A mega-mall. Brilliant strategy? Consider that the Meadowlands is 8 or 9 miles south of Paramus, where there are three major shopping malls; 13 miles east of Willowbrook Mall; and about 6 or 7 miles west of the biggest shopping and entertainment complex of all, midtown Manhattan. Not only that but the Meadowlands site is in Bergen County where they still have blue laws that close retailers on Sundays.

So how has that worked out? The Xanadu/American Dream plan has had three owners, bankruptcies, foreclosures and lawsuits, and has cost billions of dollars, not only in construction but in tax breaks and government bonds. So far, what we’ve got to show for it is a pile of incomplete buildings that a friend of mine once described as looking like “something that was salvaged from Shea Stadium.”

Posted in Sports, Uncategorized | Tagged American Dream, Giants Stadium, Izod Arena, Meadowlands Racetrack, Meadowlands Sports Complex, MetLife Stadium, New Jersey, Xanadu | 3 Comments

Time to Vote!

Posted on November 8, 2016 by Ken Dowell

Old school ballot box. From the Butler (N.J.) Museum

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ballot box, election, election day, vote | 1 Comment

How One Korean Dog, Plucked From a Cage in a Butcher Shop, Found a New Home and a New Name

Posted on November 3, 2016 by Ken Dowell

A few months ago I posted a story about Adami, a one-year old Korean Golden Retriever who was rescued from a meat market by an animal rights activist and sent to Los Angeles through an arrangement with the Southern California Golden Retriever Rescue. Adami arrived with some serious medical issues and has been undergoing treatment since his arrival in April

I am now pleased to report that this story has a happy ending. Adami, who has since been renamed River, has been adopted by the Ladera Ranch, Calif., family who fostered him since the Spring. Here he is with his new family.

River came to this country with a severe case of heartworm. He was originally treated with two injections of Immitricide. In May he was released to his foster family but his treatment required two additional hospital stays. In addition to his medical care, River had to be kept quiet, not an easy task considering he is a playful one year old and there are four children in his foster home.

In September, blood tests showed he was free of heartworm and he was put on heartworm prevention medication. One month later he was neutered and had a non-cancerous cyst removed from his head. He is also receiving training to socialize him with other dogs, something that became necessary because of his months of isolation. At this point he was ready for adoption and it was the foster family “won over with his beauty and sweet personality” that offered him a permanent home. Here’s what they have to say:

“After five months it’s a real treat to throw a ball in the backyard and be playful with our very own ‘River Boy.’ We didn’t know what we were taking on back in May but couldn’t be more thankful to have had this journey with him. We are so excited to officially make him a part of our family and finalize River’s adoption.”

The Tess McIntyre Foundation, of which I am a trustee, used funds contributed by donors to help pay the cost of River’s treatment. The foundation, a 501(c)3 charity founded last year, is dedicated to helping rescued dogs who need medical attention receive the care they need in order to be adopted. Contributions to the foundation can be made at the organization’s web site.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged dogs, pets, rescue dogs, Southern California Golden Retriever Rescue, Tess McIntyre Foundation | 6 Comments

If We Don’t Own Our Stuff, Do We Own Our Future?

Posted on October 27, 2016 by Ken Dowell

Ever since the wave of prosperity that followed World War II, the American lifestyle has been defined by the house in the suburbs with a two-car garage. The vision assumes ownership of the garage, the cars that go in them, the house and its contents. But technology has been whittling away at that foundation of ownership. Software is replacing hard goods, the digital is replacing the mechanical and the cloud replacing the bookshelf. It seems somewhat inevitable that at some point we sacrifice ownership of our home environment. How much control over our lives is lost with that?

That is one of questions discussed this week in Washington at the Future Tense event “Will Technology Make Ownership Obsolete?” You can watch an archived video of that event here.

One of the first areas where this decline in ownership seems obvious is music. The recorded music industry has taken us through a progression of vinyl and tape in all its iterations, 45’s, albums, cassette tapes and CDs. But they lost control over the delivery of their product when technology companies like Apple began to offer the same product but in easier to consume chunks. Even with digital music, the first step involved purchasing files that were stored on your computer. Not exactly a stack of records or tapes, but a library for which you had some claim to ownership. Streaming services that offer on-demand music offer an alternative that completely eliminates the need to own you own library.

(Grendelkhan)

One of the most potentially consequential changes in ownership involves cars. The combination of the proliferation of ride sharing services and the development of autonomous cars suggests a future in which the personally-owned vehicle is no longer a necessity. And, as Lauren Belive of Lyft, pointed out at the Future Tense event, there are some compelling societal reasons to find alternatives to car ownership. She noted that 80% of the seats of cars driving down the highway are empty and that 96% of the time an average car is idle. There’s the amount of space that has to be dedicated to parking, the cost of car ownership (about $9,000 a year according to Belive) and the number of people who are killed or injured in motor vehicle accidents.

In many of our larger cities it is already the case that using ride sharing services is both more efficient and more economical that owning, maintaining, garaging and insuring a private vehicle. That may eventually become the case in suburbs as well, although we seem a long way from that scenario in more rural areas.

The potential elimination of the private owned auto would have substantial repercussions on the employment picture in the U.S. Susan Lund of the McKinsey Global Institute said there would be 90% fewer car sales if we stopped owning cars. The auto industry is estimated to be responsible for 7 million jobs. We probably won’t ever need 7 million Uber drivers, and even if we did, they’d likely fall victim to driverless cars. In fact, one of the things we might not own in the future is a job, at least not your classic 40-hour a week onsite job with its vacations and 401k’s and other benefits. More and more Americans are instead stringing together “gigs” like driving a rideshare vehicle, renting a home out short term or providing some other type of on-demand service. Lund claimed that 27% of the working age population in the U.S. doesn’t have a traditional job.

The question of whether or not to own is not entirely new. For example, on those few occasions when I need to wear a tuxedo I’ve always rented one rather than buying. A fair percentage of car owners are more precisely car leasers. Do we in fact own our homes if we purchased it with a bank mortgage that we are still paying off?

The influence of technology has muddied the idea of ownership of even some of the most straightforward household devices, your thermostat, your security system, maybe even your home lighting. If one of these devices contains a computer chip which stores information about your home in the cloud and is operated remotely by a device you may or may not own, it seems somehow less of an owned commodity. Do you in fact own your smart phone that you use to control these systems if that phone is part of a two-year contract with your carrier?

For those of us who are part of older generations (I’m a boomer), ownership has been equated with freedom. The private vehicle has historically had an enormous impact on American life, fundamentally changing our options of where we would live and how we would spend our time. Many people my age relished the freedom that cars gave us as teenagers, not just as a way of getting from place to place but as a private space as well.

The ability to own your own music freed you from having to listen to broadcast radio with its commercials and its sponsor or corporate generated playlists. Buy the records, tapes or whatever and you could listen to whatever you wanted. The same is true for movies. Buy and you can watch what you want, when you want to and where you choose.

But I wonder if for younger generations there is a perception of freedom from ownership, as in being free to hear what you want to hear without digging out the CD. Or, free from the need to make car payments, buy new tires and shop for the cheapest insurance. It has become clear that millennials are showing more of a preference for urban environments than their parents. Part and parcel of that is a decline in car ownership among that age group.

Lund suggested that people will cling to ownership of what they love. Evidence is the revival of vinyl despite the lower cost and convenience of streaming. Aficianados of exotic and vintage cars are not likely to trade them in for an Uber app. In my case, I can never envision myself letting go of books printed on paper, despite the fact that digital versions may be significantly cheaper and that I’ve got tons of books I’ve already read taking up an enormous amount of space in my house.

(Ryan McGuire)

There is no doubt that in many ways we have lost some control over our environment and lost some of our ability to interact with that environment. Nobody changes their own oil anymore. In fact most people don’t even wash their own cars. You used to be able to take apart and potentially fix pretty much any device in your home as long as you had a screwdriver and access to replacement parts. Try taking a screwdriver to your iPad. Each new model of appliances, electronics or devices takes them further from the owner’s control.

So if we no longer own our stuff, do we still own our future? My answer is a qualified yes. Qualified because I’m as wary as the next guy about the so-called Internet of Things. When there are sensors that can capture and communicate information about me out in public, like on utility poles, as well as in my car and in my home and when these mini-computers can wirelessly send information, can’t everything around me be hacked? What if some unknown enemy hacks my fridge and makes it continuously churn out ice cubes while I’m away for the weekend? But more realistically I’ve already had it up to here with “targeted marketing” based on tracking everything I do online. I can’t buy enough “leave me the hell alone” software whether its ad blockers or robo call catchers or online tracking eradicators.

The “gig” economy is okay with me, but only to the extent that people are doing it for the freedom it provides and not because traditional jobs are harder to come by, don’t pay enough to live on and are degrading. But I also think that many of the changes that are coming will make our lives easier and give us in fact more control to focus on what we choose to pursue, freeing us from mundane and time consuming tasks. I’m not nostalgic about pulling a map out of the glove compartment to try to figure out where I am rather than simply clicking my phone a couple times. I look forward to the day when I don’t need a car to get where I’m going quickly and conveniently. And maybe this is all going to make us a less consumption oriented society. I’m down with that.

(Future Tense, the organization that sponsored the event which inspired this post, is a partnership of Slate magazine, Washington D.C. think tank New America, and Arizona State University. Their focus is on how emerging technologies will impact our lives.)

Posted in Technology, Uncategorized | Tagged cars, gig economy, Internet of things, jobs, Lyft, millennials, ownership, ride sharing, streaming, technology | 7 Comments

Boondoggle in the Meadowlands: Pt. 1 – A Graveyard for Grandiose Plans

Posted on October 24, 2016 by Ken Dowell

What is this?

Is it the baseball stadium that was dangled in front of the Yankees as far back as the 1970’s in an effort to get the team to pack up and move across the Hudson along with their Yankee Stadium cohabitants, the New York Football Giants? Nope.

Is it the result of the 1991 plan to build a Legoland Amusement Park, or maybe Sony’s proposed theme park to rival Disneyland? No, neither of those proposals ever got off the ground.

Is this the $50 million dollar amusement park that Donald Trump proposed to the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority in 1993? No, not that either.

Is this Xanadu, a project that was awarded to Mills Corporation in 2003 with the initial completion date of 2006? A plan that included an indoor ski slope, a Legoland, a movie theater and a concert hall. A plan that prompted Star-Ledger columnist Phil Munshine to comment, “What were the guys from the Meadowlands who thought up our vision of Xanadu smoking? Crack?” We’re getting closer. This is the ruins of the never-completed Xanadu.

Is this the Hard Rock Café casino, plans for which were unveiled in June of last year? Definitely not, because casinos are not allowed in New Jersey outside of Atlantic City. And while the question of allowing two casinos in North Jersey is on the November ballot, polls show it is likely on its way to a resounding defeat.

Is this the American Dream? Well, this building, which has been called “the ugliest dam building in New Jersey and possibly in America” by Gov. Chris Christie, is in fact the planned site for the American Dream, an entertainment and shopping complex under the direction of Triple Five, the developers of Minnesota’s Mall of America.

The American Dream is perhaps the most grandiose plan of all. And could well be the biggest boondoggle of all. Here are just a few of the things that the developers say will be included:

The country’s largest indoor amusement park.
The country’s largest indoor water park.
An indoor ski slope.
A 300-foot tall ferris wheel with views of Manhattan.
A SeaLife aquarium
An 800-room hotel
A dine-in movie theater with the added feature of being able to smell scents from the movie.
A Legoland Discovery Center
A kosher food court
500 stores including Saks Fifth Avenue, Lord & Taylor, the Gap and Toys “R” Us.

You might imagine that would have a pretty hefty price tag, even with the state providing the land and waivers on tax collections. The first two developers spent $1.9 billion on the unfinished buildings in the image above. The second of those, Colony Capital, which took over after Mills went bankrupt, was cut off by its lenders and the property foreclosed. New Jersey taxpayers had kicked in with $80 million in road and infrastructure improvements to support the project. It was later turned over to Triple Five. The Christie administration then pumped in with another $1 billion in tax breaks and subsidies.

Is this a parking lot for giant cranes?

So you might think the American Dream is back on the road. And while there seems to have been some work going on in 2015 it all came to a halt last fall. Turns out Triple Five could use another billion or so and the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority is lining up a sale of that amount of bonds, backed largely by future sales tax receipts and payment in lieu of taxes. Triple Five, which now estimates the total cost of this now 13-year old project at $5 billion, is projecting a 2017 opening date. Whoops, that’s now been pushed back to 2018.

Here’s Uncle Floyd’s take:

Posted in Sports | Tagged American Dream, Meadowlands Sports Complex, New Jersey, New Jersey Sportsand Exposition Authority, Xanadu | 4 Comments

The State of the City

Posted on October 16, 2016 by Ken Dowell

Former Governor Tom Kean

Tom Kean was governor of New Jersey from 1982 to 1990. At Friday’s NJ Spotlight on Cities conference he talked about his experience talking to urban mayors and residents. They wanted three things: safe streets, jobs, and decent schools.

Just last month a Rutgers-Eagleton poll asked the question what is the “most important thing to make NJ cities better places to live.” The top three answers were jobs, public safety and quality schools.

Has nothing changed in the last three decades? Most think our cities are in somewhat better shape than they were when Kean took office. And there is some optimism fueled by the fact that Americans in their 20’s and 30’s are showing a distinct preference for living in more urban environments. That is what prompted Tom Byrne, the son of another former governor Brendan Byrne, to exclaim: “Thank God for the millennials!”

Another of the conference’s speakers, Kim Fortunato of the Campbell Soup Foundation, said of Camden, “we’re not as heartbreaking these days, there are a lot of bright spots.”

I lived in downtown Jersey City in the 90’s and the early 2000’s. I watched as the waterfront office buildings filled up with the back office operations of Wall Street firms. I then watched as they were circled with luxury apartments and condos. The restaurants, bars and coffee shops soon followed. By now downtown Jersey City has become an almost trendy place to live. The price tag has gone up accordingly.

The plan to build a world-class performing arts center in Newark (NJPAC) came to fruition while Kean was governor. Newark has since added a first class sports arena and gained an NHL franchise. Prudential, which has been in Newark for 140 years, built a new 20-story headquarters in 2014. Audible moved to the city in 2007 and Panasonic moved their headquarters there in 2013. Downtown Newark now has a Nike store and a Starbucks, and a brand new Whole Foods is on its way.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka

But as Newark Mayor Ras Baraka pointed out, “there is a mixed view of the city depending on where you live.” Many of the city’s residents have no access to the finance and the commerce of the central business district. For both Newark and Jersey City, the downtown Renaissance has not been felt in other parts of those cities and has priced out residents of other neighborhoods.

So while there are many statistics that can be cited that show people migrating to instead of away from cities, Kresge Foundation Senior Fellow Carol Coletta, noted: “Outside the spotlight the number of people living in concentrated poverty is increasing.”

There was nary a person at the conference who didn’t think education was a key ingredient to any imrpovement in our cities. Yet current New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has advocated a change in school funding that would be based on providing the exact same amount of money for every student no matter where that student went to school. The result of that plan would be to pull millions of dollars in educational funding out of the city schools and into the suburban schools, many of which are already vastly superior to their urban counterparts. Christie’s goal is to reduce property taxes in the suburbs.

In a state that is already substantially segregated, the likely result would be a further separation. Baraka, who at one time was a school principal in Newark, believes that “funding schools through property taxes is inherently unequal.” When it comes to the cities he added, “You’re going to spend the money anyway. You can spend it on hospitals, on social services, on incarceration. Or you can spend it on education.” Fortunately, Christie’s approval ratings have fallen through the floor and there is likely no chance he could ever win an election in New Jersey again.

Perth Amboy Mayor Wilda Diaz

New Jersey is as diverse as it gets in the U.S. And most of that diversity is in the state’s cities. There are 2 million immigrants in New Jersey, out of a total population of 9 million. About 400,000 to 500,000 of those are undocumented. Jersey City alone has some 50 different ethnic groups. But if you look at the photo at the bottom of this post of the state’s gubernatorial hopefuls, they are all white men.

One of the conference speakers, Wilda Diaz, is the mayor of Perth Amboy, a city of 51,000 that is 70% Latino. She is the only Latina mayor in New Jersey, a state with 565 municipalities. Khader Ken Abuassab of the American Arab Civic Organization commented that while Arabs make up 25% of the population of the city of Paterson, they have no representation at the city or county level.

The conference ended with a panel of four gubernatorial hopefuls for the 2017 election. Refreshingly, there were no personal attacks. They talked about issues: jobs, schools and safety. The same issues the gubernatorial hopefuls of 1982 likely talked about.

Lee Keough of NJ Spotlight sits in the middle of four New Jersey gubernatorial hopefuls. They are, from left, John Wisniewski, Phil Murphy, Jack Ciattarelli and Tom Byrne.

A video of the NJ Spotlight On Cities event is available here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged cities, governor, immigration, Jersey City, New Jersey, Newark, NJ Spotlight, Perth Amboy, Ras Baraka, Tom Kean | 16 Comments

Oil, Water and Intrigue: A Book Review

Posted on October 13, 2016 by Ken Dowell

Oil and Water by P.J. Lazos

What’s an environmental thriller? Climate change armageddon? Or maybe something along the lines of a serious version of Little Shop of Horrors?

P.J. Lazos’ Oil and Water, an environmental thriller, is about big oil. If you’re not a fan of big oil, this book will only give more fuel for the fire. Think arrogant guys smoking cigars with their feet on their desks pooh-poohing the latest ecological disaster their corporation is responsible for. There are oil spills and oil leaks, but that’s only the beginning of the environmental issues Oil and Water raises. Even Saddam Hussein makes a cameo in this story as an enemy of Mother Nature.

The novel begins with seemingly random death and destruction. Four hundred and some odd pages later it is all tied together. That’s the thriller element.

I was super impressed with the author’s knowledge of oil rigs, underwater operations, spills, cleanups and rescues. It enables her to describe scenes like the near-fatal underwater leak repair in the Gulf in detail that you would think could only be provided by the divers themselves. She even seems to nail the male banter between the divers and their above ground support.

I was even more impressed with her ability to build suspense in the way she relates this and other tales. Little thrillers within the larger story. It is one of the things that makes this long novel a quick and engaging read.

Much of the story takes place in a household run by and for teenagers, give or take a couple years on either end. (Their parents died in the aforementioned death and destruction.) That in itself makes for an interesting tale.

After reading Oil and Water, you can’t help but long for the day when we might be able to leave what’s left of our fossil fuels in the ground. If only there was a real family of teens and pre-teens who could build a machine to convert trash to fuel at scale.

There is a sea of self-published authors these days. Many are skilled writers and storytellers. I wish I read more of them, but it’s hard to find the good ones amidst the amateurish and the flamingly self-absorbed. This is one of the good ones.

Posted in Book reviews | Tagged authors, Book reviews, books, environment, novels, oil | 5 Comments

What is Civic Tech and Why Do We Need It?

Posted on October 10, 2016 by Ken Dowell

It’s 6 p.m. on Tuesday night on the 8^th floor of the Chicago Merchandise Mart, an 85-year-old building on the city’s north side. Technologists, academics, data scientists, developers, researchers and just plain interested citizens begin filing in.

Merchandise Mart, Chicago

After a little socializing there’s a short presentation. Some recent presenters have included a couple guys from Microsoft talking about how to make sidewalks safe, representatives from the U.S. General Accounting Office and the Cook County Bureau of Technology introducing their new Web site. After the presentation, they split up into breakout groups. One group is focusing on police accountability. Another is mapping the demand for better transit, while another is approaching the problem of finding nursing homes in the city.

This is Chi Hacknight and it is one of the most active examples of civic technology. Civic tech is a grassroots, citizen-generated approach to building what I’ve been calling in these posts, the smart city. Hack nights like the one in Chicago now meet in several cities in the U.S. as well as in London and in Monterrey, Mexico.

Writing in Tech Crunch (Civic Tech Brings Power and Positivity to the People), Stacy Donohue comments: “in an era marked by political pessimism and ever-increasing frustration with government, civic tech can play an important role in empowering people to take action — as entrepreneurs, as public officials and as engaged citizens.”

Another pioneering civic tech group is Code for America in San Francisco. They describe themselves as “a network of people making government work for the people, by the people, in the 21st century. How do we get there? Government services that are simple, effective, and easy to use, working at scale to build healthy, prosperous, and safe communities.” One of Code for America’s projects is GetCalFresh. Intended to address the 2 million Californians who were eligible but not receiving this food assistance, GetCalFresh enables these folks to apply in about 10 minutes on their smartphone or tablet, get help via online chat and upload photos of documents that otherwise would have to be faxed or scanned. Another Code for America initiative, Clear My Record, is targeted at people who have committed low level crimes and who have served their time.

Some platform-based services that promote civic tech have also emerged. Neighborly describes itself as “modern public finance.” It allows users to invest in municipal bonds to support projects in their neighborhood. The bonds can be purchased in small denominations using the Neighborly platform. It recently sponsored a Neighborly Bonds Challenge. One of the winners was the city of Burlington, Vt., which hopes to use the financing for its Sustainable Action Plan.

SeeClickFix purports to “help hundreds of communities resolve millions of issues.” Through this app you can report a pothole, a broken streetlight or a vandalized playground. The app also gives government entities the ability to organize and track citizen-reported, non-emergency issues, potentially making them more efficient. Among the cities that use the app are Houston, Minneapolis and New Haven, Conn.

In discussing the future of cities and how they can use technology to become “smart,” civic tech has some significant advantages that suggests it should play a large role.

It is democracy. The goal is to give the residents of the community the ability to bring forth ideas, participate in planning and in developing solutions. It provides the opportunity to be part of and help direct local government.
It’s cheaper than many commercial technology solutions. For one thing, it cuts out the consultant layer of tech development, which is often enormously expensive. The consultant is replaced by people who have a stake in the community.
It avoids the potential pitfall of turning over aspects of management of a city to large technology corporations what may well be more focused on their profits than they are on citizen welfare.
It offers the potential for meaningful careers in technology. The citizens of a community have the opportunity to be entrepreneurs, to develop start-ups, and to create jobs that enable people to use their skills in a way that improves their environment.
(Dawn Hudson)

Posted in Technology, Uncategorized | Tagged Chi Hacknight, civic tech, Code for America, hackathon, smart cities, technology | 12 Comments

Seward Johnson: Sculptor, Painter, Public Artist

Posted on October 6, 2016 by Ken Dowell

Were You Invited?

Seward Johnson chatting with guests at the Grounds for Sculpture

The 86-year old New Jersey native is best known for his painted bronze statues of iconic people and iconic works. These include Unconditional Surrender, based on the news photo of a returning midshipman kissing his sweetheart after the end of World War 2. Twenty-five foot high versions of this statue are on display in Sarasota, Key West, San Diego and Snug Harbor. And there’s the 17-ton “Forever Marilyn” which adorns downtown Palm Springs. Johnson is sometimes treated with disdain by the snobbier folks in the world of sculpture, either because his works are painted or because of his copies of famous pieces from other mediums. Personally, I’m a big fan of his work. And for all of us who went to college not having a clue what we wanted to do with our lives, take note that Seward Johnson’s time at the University of Maine was spent majoring in poultry husbandry. Johnson founded the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, N.J., where many of his works are on display. Here are just of few of them.