NEWARK -- New Jersey Citizen Action, a non-profit group that provides free financial services and lobbies for reforms, had outgrown its 2,500-square foot headquarters high up in the National Newark Building on Broad Street and was looking to relocate.

The group didn't have to look far.

Across Broad and two blocks north, the redeveloped Hahne & Company Department Store had commercial space available in its two-story atrium. The $174 million mixed-use redevelopment project by L+M Development Partners also includes 160 rental apartments.

The redeveloped Hahne complex opened to much fanfare in January, when it was hailed as a deeply symbolic yet very real sign of Newark's current revival. Hahne's best known tenant, Newark's first Whole Foods supermarket, opened in March.

The Hahne & Company Department Store had once been a center of retail and social life in one of Newark's most prominent locations, opposite historic Military Park, only to close down in 1987 and remain a nagging reminder of the city's inability to remake itself.

The Hahne apartments, which include 96 market-rate and 64 affordable units, are now 100-percent leased, according to L+M, which is based in Larchmont, N.Y.

Following behind them, like Citizen Action, a variety of retail businesses and other commercial tenants have been snatching up chunks of Hahne's 165,000 square feet of rebuilt, raw commercial space and tailoring it to their needs.

"We needed more space, and we wanted to be part of something big, something new and exciting, that we hoped would be good for Newark," said Citizen Action's executive director, Phyllis Sallow-Kaye.

L+M said this week that 75-percent of Hahne's 40,000 square feet of office space had been leased to tenants including Citizen Action and one of the banks it works with to facilitate loans, City National Bank.

About 80 percent of Hahne's 75,000 square feet of a retail space has been leased, L+M said. Whole Foods, a Barnes & Noble book store, PetCo, and a Kite & Key tech store are already doing business, and L+M said a City MD medical office, Cool Vines wine and liquor store and a restaurant by celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson are expected to open in the coming months.

In addition to housing Hahne's commercial space, the atrium serves as an enclosed pedestrian mall linking Broad Street to Halsey Street, a budding boutique and restaurant row that runs along the southern edge of the city's university section, which includes the Rutgers-Newark and New Jersey Institute of Technology campuses.

Unlike its old space in the National Newark Building, Citizen Action's new headquarters will have a storefront on the atrium balcony visible and far more accessible to regular clients as well as walk-in traffic, including Rutgers and NJIT students the group hopes to help educate financially.

"The fact that we see so many thousands of people each year for direct services and they're going to be able to come to a place in the center of Newark, makes this commitment to Newark for the next 15 years, for the future, both personal and organizational," said Sallow-Kaye, who thanked donors for helping raise the $500,000 cost of tailoring the new space.

Citizen Action's new space is next to the Newark Print Shop and Newark Express, an art collaborative run by Rutgers Newark. Whole Foods has lined its exterior wall inside the atrium with tables that are often crowded with diners at lunchtime.

Jon Cortell, Vice President for Development at L+M, said the mixed-use project was working out as expected.

"We are pleased to find that residents of Newark and New Jersey had longed for a renewed Hahne's," Cortell said in a statement. "And we hope that the dynamic mix of office, residential, and retail will at least partially match the memories people have of the great department store."

Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.