I don't think you understand. The mayor closed off a stretch of Newark Avenue, which leads right into the Grove St Path Station in late 2014. Prior to this, Newark Avenue was a strip of fairly grimy stores, a few restaurants, and some new promising places like Word Bookstore had been moving in since 2010 or so.

Still, this was a pretty dead place at night. In 2008, I would go to one of the two bars there and it would be a literal ghost town, with stores boarded up with metal gates and such- it looked almost post-apocalyptic. It was a little better from 2011-2014, but still it was a quiet area at night.

After the pedestrian plaza was put in, the amount of foot traffic increased ten fold, particularly during the day when it was a heavily traffic-ed street. This brought in a new wave of bars and restaurants to the area, and its now a destination on its own, filled with people nearly 24/7. In fact it has gotten so popular and become such a destination, the city is now trying to introduce ordinances to reduce noise at night.

The change was instantaneous after the pedestrian plaza was put in place.

People seem to forget these days how much Jersey City was shit on up until 2011 or so. It was "jersey" and it was absolutely not a definite that it would gentrify.

> People seem to forget these days how much Jersey City was shit on up until 2011 or so. It was "jersey" and it was absolutely not a definite that it would gentrify.

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