Dear Editor:
Congratulations on your reporter John A. Martin’s whimsical fantasy cover piece on the recent and not so recent history of The Downtown. I have lived her for close to 20 years, and I must say that I would not have recognized the ‘hood’ from your article’s thumbnail portrait. We are indeed on the west bank of the Hudson, but Mr. Martin’s dreamy sketch puts us more on the left bank of the Seine. Not Quite. There are miles and miles to go before we can call our little strip of riverbank an artist colony or a safe haven for Chelsea boys and girls who want to dress down and save on the rent bill.
Mr. Martin’s history is so fancifully free of mention of the 30 or so years of investment and involvement by a new citizenry – a back-breaking and time-guzzling effort put forth by young homeowners to bring back dormant (if not certifiably dead) neighborhood to life, a locked-horns engagement with an ever recalcitrant and often disinterested local government, a willingness to take the actions that would bring city services and attention back to the downtown area. By the late 1970s, downtown Jersey City had essentially shut down and gone out to lunch, not that there was any place to dine. And, clearly, it would have stayed that way had not people come here from “the outside” and brought with them a new lease on life. We need to give those people their due. Without their effort, there’d be no downtown today — simple as that.
Let’s be clear. The cafes and galleries (though few and far between) are mere sugar rosettes on the icing of a cake that had its layers baked for a long, long time in a hot oven of hard work, optimism, community acitvism and with a spirit of revival.
To so many of us who arrived here early on, the blighted downtown was too wonderful to be left to the apathetic politicians and the corporate bulldozers. Solely through the work of our citizens, now we are historic districts, recognized by state and federal governments, and we can hope for some perpetuity.
Mr. Martin’s picture of downtown is quaint, a paint-by-numbers version of a long involved story. But bringing a neighborhood back to life is a complicated, fretful and effortful undertaking. Would that it were so simple as: 1-2-3: Voila: A wine bar suddenly appears out of thin air! Au contraire: It is not at all easy.
Christopher Holt