New Owner, New Future For Bears Stadium Site In Newark

NEWARK, NJ — There’s a new future on the way for the old Bears Stadium site in Newark, officials announced Wednesday.

After securing municipal council approval of an amended redevelopment agreement for the Bears Stadium site last month, May Newark LLC, an affiliate of Accurate Builders and Developers, has completed purchase of the property. Madison Realty Capital provided the financing for the project.

The site was the home of the Newark Bears until the franchise folded in 2013.

The property recently served as the location of Moonlight Cinema, a pop-up drive in movie theater that spotlights the work of Black actors and creators. According to social media posts from its owners, the cinema is moving to a “bigger” location in the city and will be opening again for 2021.

May Newark LLC has proposed a nine-phase mixed-use development plan for the currently vacant site. Features include:

• About 4,200 residential units (including 200 affordable units)
• Up to 3,000 parking spaces
• At least 100,000 square feet of hospitality/destination retail
• Co-working space for small business, entrepreneurs and freelancers
• Publicly-accessible green space

According to a statement from the office of Mayor Ras Baraka:

“Unlike the previously approved plan, the new development will be built under the city’s Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance, which helps accelerate the development of equitable economic and housing development as Newark recovers from COVID-19. The project will now incorporate 5 percent of the units in on-site affordable housing and a $15 million payment to the City Affordable Housing Trust Fund to produce new housing in neighborhoods outside of downtown.”

Baraka’s office continued:

“A new feature of the plan is the developer’s commitment to payment of prevailing wages on 10 percent of the construction costs to ensure Newark labor and prevailing wages are incorporated into the project. In the original plan, a Project Labor Agreement was not required. A second new feature is the developer’s creation of a training, retention, and apprenticeship program for Newark residents to provide on-the-job training leading to apprenticeships with the goal of increasing enrollment of Newark residents in union jobs.”

The developer will also invest no less than $2.7 million dollars for building trades work force training and retention, which may be invested over each of the nine phases of the project, with a minimum of $300,000 in each phase, officials said.

Baraka said that ultimately, the new construction training and apprenticeship component will “open up well-paying union jobs” for Newark residents.

“The redevelopment of the eight-acre Bears Stadium site is the kind of transformative project that comes along only a few times in a generation,” Baraka said. “The additional housing, space for entrepreneurs and small businesses plus retail gets us closer to our goal of a vital, exciting, walkable 24-hour downtown.”

“We greatly appreciate the trust the city has put in us and we look forward to continue working closely with the mayor and his team, as their efforts thus far have been the driving force, assisting in bringing this transformative project to fruition,” said Jack Klugmann, CEO of Accurate Builders and Developers.

Plans to build a mixed-use development at the Bears Stadium site have been kicked around before in the recent past.

In 2016, the Lotus Equity Group purchased the site from the Essex County Improvement Authority, which owned and managed the stadium for the city of Newark and Essex County, for a price tag of $23.5 million.

• See related article: Newark Bears Stadium Sold For $23.5M To Developer

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