To do so they've gone out of state, to Pennsylvania, to bring in a development consortium called Parkside Associates, based in Philadelphia. Yesterday, the New Newark Foundation, a public/private group charged with making Downtown Newark a residential destination, announced it had picked Parkside to turn the former Hahnes Department Store building and the Griffith Piano factory, both vacant since the mid 1970s, and two vacant plots, into a $160-million mixed-use residential/retail development.

The residential target audience is upscale, focusing on high-ceilinged lofts; the retail will be heavily oriented toward entertainment and restaurants. By the numbers, the proposal includes about 550 rental apartments and a parking facility for more than 1,000 cars. The size of the retail component hasn't been specified, but will encompass much of the ground-level area of the eight-square-block project.

"This is an innovative initiative that will complement earlier development," says Newark Mayor Sharpe James of the project, whose residential units are expected to be available in about two years. "We are creating Downtown neighborhoods where residents can walk to various attractions. We already have people asking when they can move in."