Demolition set for 2 waterfront buildings
Philadelphia Business Journal - by Bob Brooke Special To The Business Journal
CAMDEN -- After four years of bickering, two of the four of the remaining dilapidated RCA buildings along the waterfront here are scheduled to be demolished this month.
A big chunk of the blight that has plagued Camden's waterfront will come down, and with it another piece of the city's history.
Two attached eight-story riverfront buildings will be leveled by a contractor hired by the New Jersey Department of Commerce, which is supervising the project.
"We believe the demolition is a positive thing for the waterfront -- an opportunity for a cleared site," said John Grady, vice president of the Cooper's Ferry Development Association, a nonprofit corporation of landowners along the waterfront. "This gives a significant signal of the public sector's support with financing for continued development of the waterfront."
The site stretches from the New Jersey State Aquarium north to the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Half of it, about 25 acres, is owned by the Camden Redevelopment Agency; the other half by Campbell Soup Co.
The RCA complex began shrinking in the 1960s as the company demolished sites to be turned into parking lots, or sold them to Rutgers University and the state government, which did their own razing. Today, the site -- where sound technology was developed, where televisions were first mass-produced, and where state-of-the-art communications equipment was created for space and the U.S. military -- is an eyesore on the Camden cityscape.
But the demolition project has a source of friction between Camden economic development officials.
The New Jersey Economic Development Authority broke a political logjam over the demolition in January when it hired a West Paterson general contracting company, Niram Inc., to do the work. The company has been preparing the site for demolition, gutting interiors and breaking out remaining windows. It has also started knocking down the four-story power plant.
"This demolition will open up a 10-acre property that will connect to future development sites on the waterfront to create a single, 50-acre contiguous site from the Ben Franklin Bridge to the aquarium," Grady said. "I don't know of anywhere in the Northeast where that much land is available along a waterfront."
The 1-mile stretch of waterfront currently includes the New Jersey State Aquarium, the Blockbuster-Sony Music Entertainment Centre and the 11-story Delaware River Port Authority headquarters at One Port Center. Plans for the area include construction of a children's garden and a retail-nightclub complex between the aquarium and the arena.
The demolition of the buildings, west of Delaware Avenue between Market and Cooper streets, will leave standing only four of the more than 20 buildings of the old RCA complex, which began in 1894 as a tiny machine shop to make gramophones. The landmark Nipper Tower and former RCA corporate headquarters will remain. Also included are one other vacant property and a building being used by the Camden Board of Education. All are off the waterfront. A pedestrian walkway will also be removed as part of the demolition, leaving the Nipper Tower free-standing.
"The $4 million to pay for the destruction of the buildings by implosion, as well as for the knocking down, using more conventional methods, of an adjacent power plant and other preparations of the site for development, is coming from $9 million that the DRPA has been holding in an escrow account since 1957 when the Walt Whitman Bridge was opened," said Joseph Diemer, spokesman for the DRPA.
"That account was created to pay for possible construction of ramps to the RCA complex on the New Jersey side of the bridge, but as it turned out, the ramps were never built. When the land is finally sold, we want our money back."
The EDA became a major stakeholder in the area in 1991 when it helped finance construction of a new campus in Camden for General Electric Co., which acquired RCA in 1986, in an effort to get the company to stay in the city.
Since then, the city, led by Mayor Arnold W. Webster, and the Cooper's Ferry Development Association, led by Thomas P. Corcoran have been fighting for control of Camden's waterfront. This has been a test of wills between the city's chief executive and the man who runs the nonprofit agency charged with renewing that waterfront. Up to now, neither side has been the winner.
The impasse between the now lameduck Webster administration and Cooper's Ferry has stymied waterfront development. Some developers have walked away, apparently disenchanted and confused over who's in charge.
The battle heated up in 1995 when Webster handpicked a second minority developer for a contract, estimated at $9 million, to knock down the old RCA buildings on the waterfront. Webster recommended the out-of-state contracting firm, Gaston-Thacker Partnership, to demolish the buildings by hand, a process that Webster said would create 250 jobs for city residents for up to six months as part of a program to create jobs and revitalize the city.
Critics of the plan questioned the choice of contractors and said the building walls and other structures were so thick that they could be taken down only by explosives. The proposal died after discovery that the developer had had a variety of problems in other states. The state government stepped in and will now take care of the demolition.
The Cooper's Ferry master plan calls for remodeling of the 500,000-square-foot Nipper building, built in 1916 by the Victor Talking Machine Co., with its trademark dog, Nipper, listening to music from a gramophone. RCA acquired Victor in 1929. It could also be the future site for restaurants, entertainment or a theater complex. For the moment, there's only lots of speculation.
"There are plenty of opportunities for office and business space, and we also plan to try to develop a portion into residential single-family and multiple housing units," Grady said.
Of the total $250 million investment along the Camden waterfront, about $150 million is public and about $100 million is private. The land is owned by the Camden Redevelopment Agency, which was set up by City Council to identify parcels of city-owned waterfront property for development. Cooper's Ferry has an agreement with the agency to find developers for those parcels.
Corcoran doesn't regard the waterfront development as a panacea for the city's economic problems. "Over time," he said, "the waterfront could represent about 20 percent of the solution by generating up to 1,000 jobs, as well as many millions in tax revenues."
Latest News |
Most Viewed Stories |
Most Emailed Stories |
