Surprising changes — in the air and on the drawing board — are transforming Northern New Jersey

One building just may capture the mind-boggling, sometimes paradigm-shattering change that’s rewriting all we thought we knew about Northern New Jersey. One Riverview is the name, and you probably haven’t heard of it, but you know the developer: Shaquille O’Neal, one of the all-time greats of the National

Basketball Association (currently with the Phoenix Suns after a long tenure with the Los Angeles Lakers). With One Riverview, O’Neal has returned to his boyhood hometown of Newark. And when the building is complete, it will offer 152 high-end condominiums overlooking the Passaic River, close by the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, itself a glittering jewel, with two sparkling theater spaces that attract Broadway shows and big-name musical acts.

In downtown Newark? The very idea seems absurd. For decades after the city’s riots of 1967, Newark was a poster child for urban despair. But today, all that is history, as developers rush to build in a city that’s just a few minutes away from Manhattan by train. And Newark is hardly the only crucible of change in the region.

Brawls have been known to erupt over exactly which counties make up Northern New Jersey. (For the record, we’re including Passaic, Hudson, Bergen, Union, Morris, and Essex.) New Jerseyans have a reputation for pugnacity, but in that combativeness is a white-hot frisson of creative discovery, and visionaries are busy reshaping all six counties.

Fly into Newark Liberty International Airport and you’ve probably already touched two counties. (Although named after Newark, in Essex County, much of the airport is in adjacent Elizabeth, in Union County.) So now open your eyes anew and prepare to be surprised by what there is to discover in Northern New Jersey.

In many ways, New Jersey is a paradox. It lacks a big city — Newark, the most populated, has about 280,000 residents. But New Jersey is the nation’s most urban state. It’s also the most densely populated, says Louis Wagman, co-executive director of Einstein’s Alley, a Jersey-based organization devoted to brewing technological innovation in the state. (Albert Einstein, of course, spent his last years in Princeton, working at the Institute for Advanced Studies.)

And yet, in New Jersey’s Meadowlands, just minutes from the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel, which runs into midtown Manhattan, you can find yourself in the midst of nature. “You can see blue herons as you explore acres of land where there may not be a person anywhere in your sight,” says Jim Kirkos, president of the Liberty Meadowlands Convention and Visitors Bureau, a group that represents some 30 towns in the area between the Statue of Liberty and the George Washington Bridge.

In the thick of the Meadowlands, there literally are acres of marsh. “It looks like the Everglades,” says Kirkos. “This is one of the country’s best places for birders. You can see so many species here.”

Didn’t know that, did you? Even natives of the state are often surprised by the sheer diversity of Northern New Jersey. Says Bill Pascrell Jr., a government affairs consultant and a partner in the Princeton Public Affairs Group whose father, Bill Sr., is a six-term congressman representing a district that includes Essex and Passaic counties: “Northern New Jersey has changed dramatically over the past several years. It’s becoming increasingly more diversified as it grows its rich and vibrant ethnic culture. In North Jersey you can basically find anything from around the world in terms of food, drink, music, and goods.”

From Cuban sandwiches in Union City to Italian-style hot dogs (served with fried potatoes on the roll) in West Orange and authentic south Indian cuisine in Jersey City’s Little India, North Jersey rocks with multiculturalism. But another vector, too, is transforming this landscape. Patrick O’Keefe, a director at the Roseland, N.J., accounting firm J.H. Cohn LLP, calls this trend “avant-urbanism.” He elaborates: “Baby boomers are looking for a more urban lifestyle, and they’re finding it in North Jersey.” As boomers become empty-nesters — perhaps in suburban New Jersey, perhaps out of state — many are realizing a desire to live in a city by moving to North Jersey (and, of course, living within minutes of Manhattan but at a greatly reduced cost).

That trend spells prosperity not just for Newark, but also for other once-forgotten old cities such as Hoboken, Jersey City, Bayonne, and West New York, now collectively referred to as “the Gold Coast” because there are so many high-priced condo towers going up and old townhouses being gut rehabbed. There is also the conversion of abandoned buildings, such as the ambitious transformation of the Jersey City Medical Center into a mid-luxury housing complex called The Beacon. “There still is plenty of construction going on here,” says Mark Berson, chairman of the Fidelco Group, a developer that is particularly active in Newark.

Another reason for all this activity: “The Northern New Jersey economy is holding up well,” says O’Keefe, and that is holding true despite the stumbles in the national economy.

Want to know more about what makes North Jersey special? Come along on a fast tour that covers everything from a university with big dreams to an insider’s way to get from Newark Liberty International Airport to Manhattan, fast and on the cheap.

Coach USA: The Easy Ride from EWR to NYC

Here’s an inside tip: $25 buys a roundtrip bus ticket from Newark Liberty Airport (with convenient pick-up spots at all three terminals) to midtown Manhattan (with stops at the Port Authority terminal and Bryant Park and one near Grand Central Station) via the Lincoln Tunnel. Typical travel time is around 40 minutes. Buses run every 15 minutes from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. and every 30 minutes at other times, except from 1 a.m. to 4 a.m., when there’s no service. The sweetest part of this deal: it’s every bit as fast as a taxi, but a taxi would charge around $75 for a one-way ride into Manhattan. Better still: connections to John F. Kennedy International Airport are easy to make because the Coach bus drops passengers off at Port Authority right by a bus that goes to JFK. And there’s no need to book Coach in advance — tickets are sold on the bus. coachusa.com

Multicultural Medicine

Talk with Seton Hall University’s Brian Shulman and it becomes instantly plain that he has a big new vision of how the university’s health sciences programs should interact with the community. “Our community has become so multicultural. And our mission needs to be reaching out to a culturally diverse population,” says Shulman, dean of the School of Health and Medical Sciences (formerly the School of Graduate Medical Education). Shulman also cares passionately about bringing quality medical care to economically deprived populations that often don’t get all the services they need. He talks, for instance, about his plans to bring in residents of poor neighborhoods around Seton Hall — which is located in South Orange — for assessments that will look not only at patients’ medical needs but also physical therapy, speech pathology, and a long list of possible areas of concern. This perspective, says Shulman, runs deep at Seton Hall. “We’re about what we call service learning, and we emphasize compassion, sensitivity, and diversity in all our programs,” he explains. A particular point of pride for Shulman’s program is that it has forged partnerships with some 500 clinical settings, including schools, hospitals, nursing homes, and early intervention programs. This network enriches the educational experience of students and also provides a steady stream of job opportunities for graduates. “We place 100 percent of our grads,” says Shulman. shu.edu

The Newark Museum: A Surprising Treasure Chest

Where in New Jersey can you find a planetarium, a Buddhist altar consecrated by the Dalai Lama, and world-class fine art collections, including African art, American landscapes, and more? The answer is the Newark Museum, the biggest museum in New Jersey and one of the most unusual anywhere, with its natural history and art collections exhibited under one roof.

“We are Newark’s living room,” says Meme Omogbai, the museum’s chief operating officer, who points out that the museum will celebrate its centennial in 2009. A lack of snobbery distinguishes the collections. “We don’t say, ‘this is fine art,’ or ‘that is folk art.’ To us, it’s all art, and what we want to accomplish is to engage our visitors.”

The Newark Museum also supplements its own collections by regularly hosting traveling exhibits, such as Paths to Impressionism: French and American Landscape Paintings from the Worcester Art Museum. This overview of 19th-century landscape art , on display through January 4, 2009, features works by Claude Monet, George Inness, and Childe Hassam, among others. newarkmuseum.org

Meadowlands Liberty CVB

“We are closer to midtown Manhattan than Wall Street is,” says Jim Kirkos of the Meadowlands Liberty CVB. He isn’t lying about the proximity, either. A New Jersey Transit train from Secaucus reaches New York’s Penn Station in roughly five minutes. PATH — a subway system operated by the Port Authority — takes just a few minutes to carry passengers from the Jersey City waterfront to Greenwich Village. But good transportation is just the beginning. Dozens of hotels, with some 8,500 rooms — including brands such as Hyatt, Marriott, Doubletree, and more — offer rates that sometimes are just half those for a comparable Manhattan hotel room. Fine dining and an increasing number of office towers are transforming the Meadowlands into a destination for locals and out-of-town visitors alike.

Shopping is another attraction. New Jersey does not apply sales tax to clothing, which attracts New Yorkers to their neighboring state. Add in professional football (the Giants and Jets may be named for New York, but both teams play their home games in New Jersey), horse racing, and a growing number of eco-tourist attractions, and the Meadowlands, says Kirkos, has a compelling appeal. meadowlandslibertycvb.com

Where the Living Is Easy

Is it a hotel? An apartment complex? Ask Lea Anne Welsh, a vice president at Korman Communities, which niche her company fits into and she answers, “We are a hybrid. We stand between a hotel and an apartment complex in what we offer business travelers.” Specifically, that means well-furnished housing, in North Jersey. Korman operates a brand-new housing community in Union (“it’s three and a half miles from Newark Airport,” says Welsh) and another complex in Clifton, five miles from the Meadowlands.

“We take care of the details for our residents. We say we are about life meeting style for business travelers seeking long-term-stay accommodations,” adds Welsh, who elaborates that Korman provides fully furnished apartments plus a range of resident services that can rival what a hotel concierge delivers. Welsh offers this for-instance: in the lobby there’s always fresh-brewed Starbucks coffee and Tazo tea. A typical Korman resident stays 60 to 90 days, she says, and costs start around $120 per day. kormancommunities.com

Airport Shopping

Think about what’s inside Terminal C, the main Continental Airlines terminal at Liberty Newark Airport. Remember when airport eating and drinking took place in cookie-cutter chain outlets with no character? That’s not what you’ll find here. Terminal C offers dozens of distinctive eating and drinking choices in a retail environment managed by Westfield Shops, a global operator with particular emphasis on airports. For starters, there’s the Brooklyn Brewery Jazz Bar, Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs (for that Coney Island taste), and the Garden State Diner. New Jersey’s signature contribution to culinary history is the diner, so no eatery is more indigenous.

Equally distinctive is Terminal C’s retail selection, which includes a Metropolitan Museum of Art store, Smithsonian Treasures of the World, and shops for clothing, sunglasses, and even hats. Key today in operating airport stores, says Dominic Lowe, a Westfield vice president, is providing customers with shopping and dining experiences that are relevant to their needs. Another driver — particularly in Newark Terminal C — is the increasing number of long-distance flights. A passenger flying to Mumbai, India, probably has different needs than one flying to Boston. Know who the passengers are and offer them some dazzle, says Lowe, and the shopping and dining inside the airport become a pleasurable part of every trip. westfield.com

Flying High

Where can you find a true model of an Angolan Air Force plane? Head to the Airplane Shop in Fairfield, N.J., where hundreds of model airplanes — military, private, commercial, space vehicles, and others — are on sale. If it has an engine and it flies, you can probably buy a scale replica at this destination model shop, which draws buffs from across the country. airplaneshop.com