Four years ago, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and his staff drew up a plan to transform Newark into a modern city — one that didn’t turn the lights off at 5 p.m. when 60,000 people left for the suburbs at night.

The vision was both simple and complex: Bring “a mix of daytime and nighttime users to the center of our city,” the plan said. It recommended more diversity in shopping outlets and adding housing in places where none had ever existed. It changed outdated regulations to streamline the process

A plan to convert empty office and warehouse space around Broad and Market streets into a more residential neighborhood, which won preliminary approval Thursday by the Newark Planning and Community Development board, is a major step in that direction. The plan, the Four Corners Millennium Project, could potentially move Newark from an old city that was reliant on commercial buildings and out-of-town shoppers to one that can stand on three legs — commercial, retail and now, residential.

But is this just another in a long series of wishful dreams?

Newark has had visions of revitalization in the past. Some have come to fruition with varying degrees of success — the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in 1997 and the Prudential Center 10 years later — while others faded away unfulfilled.

"Sometimes the projects that portended good things never developed because the timing wasn't right," said Roland V. Anglin, director of the Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies, a division of Rutgers' School of Public Affairs and Administration.

"Is this the right time (for the Four Corners project)? I can't tell. But you never know what the spark is," he said.

The plan calls for converting at least nine buildings in the historic heart of Newark in the Four Corners district and converting them into hundreds of apartment units, along with retail shops at ground level, and a 130-room hotel. The first stage will start with the northwest corner of Washington and Market streets, which will include the hotel, and the Paramount Theater building on Market Street.

Anglin said he remains optimistic.

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“Because of past challenges that failed,” he said, “we tend to believe nothing will work in Newark. But other cities experience the same fits and starts and they’re able to get out of the vicious cycle of decline. Newark is not only starting to come out of that spiral, but in the next uptick of the market, you might see some surprises. People will come. They started to come even before the economy began its recovery.”

U.S. Census Bureau figures show Newark’s population, which for years had been declining, has grown nearly 3 percent in the past decade. It is a trend that is reflected in other urban areas as well. Cities are growing faster than the suburbs for the first time since post-World War II, according to census data. And a majority of the people moving to urban centers do not have young children — they are empty-nesters, retirees, or young singles or couples.

“Many cities have been experimenting with downtown residential life,” said Alison Isenberg, co-director of Princeton University’s urban studies program and former president of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History.

She said that by the late 20th Century, many cities had given up on relying on retail “as the core of downtown values.” The new paradigm is to bring residents, shopping neighborhoods and cultural activities into one place.

“All city planners agree that earlier concepts of separating leisure, commercial and residential activities in different parts of a city created dead single-use zones,” she said. “The current effort to put those elements together in one place has tremendous promise.”

Unlike Jersey City and Hoboken, which built along an abandoned waterfront, Newark has a concentration of commercial buildings that are vacant from the second story upward. The Four Corners plan, along with other residential projects along Market Street by the Hanini Group and Fidelco, capitalize on the city’s past.

“They’re not trying to bring back some good old days,” Isenberg said, “but they’re being used to reinvent Newark.”

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She said the city is making a statement: This central district still matters.

But, she said, “the question will always be what kind of retail will be in the mix. It’s a very specific magnet. It will be the determining factor.”

Newark’s downtown shopping district lacks diversity, a point highlighted in Booker’s 2008 plan. There are no restaurants on Broad Street with the exception of Joe’s Crab Shack, which will open soon at the Courtyard Marriott hotel. There are no large-chain department stores, hardware shops or food stores.

“I think you need the people first,” said Ed McMahon, senior resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C. “The retail follows the rooftops. If you don’t have people, you won’t get retail.”

Newark is home to five colleges and a student population of at least 56,000. Some students have moved into loft spaces at the Bowers and Colombian buildings on Market Street. Bridgeview Development is working to transform the former IDT headquarters at 500 Broad Street into apartments for students looking for off-campus housing.

McMahon said studies by the institute show stores, and jobs, follow the people.

"Years ago," he said, "young people would choose a company and move to where the job was. Now people pick a city they want to live in and find a job there. The more you do to bring in and keep young, educated people, the more that employers want to be there."

Tom De Poto: tdepoto@starledger.com

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