Friday, December 6, 2013

WALL STREET JOURNAL GIVES MAPLEWOOD A BIG, WET KISS

From today's Wall Street Journal

It gives us a great image, but glosses over the controversy around the TC purchase of the Women's Club


In September Amy Hughes, 38 years old, needed help opening her new home-furniture store, Salvage Style, in Maplewood, N.J. She contacted old friends living in New York City and new friends she had met in Maplewood.


No city friends showed up.


"We were on our hands and knees scraping carpet glue," said Ms. Hughes, who moved from Washington Heights to Maplewood a year ago with her husband and young daughter. "Here's this friend who I've known for a month helping me every day for a week—it's amazing." 


Young families and professionals from the city continue to follow a well-worn migration trail to Maplewood, a leafy suburb with a population of 24,000 and half-hour commute to Manhattan's Penn Station on express trains.


While not without shortcomings—it lacks a downtown pharmacy or a hardware store anywhere in town—it is working to add to its appeal. In January, it paid $1 million for the Woman's Club of Maplewood—a white Colonial-style building that dates to 1930 with front doors the color of a robin's egg—which it is planning to turn into a cultural center. 


Officials are reviewing proposals from local nonprofits to manage the downtown building and its programs, said Mayor Victor DeLuca. 


In the town's industrial section, efforts are under way to open a co-working office called Lunkeyworks Labs that would cater to Maplewood's estimated 800-plus freelancers, the bulk of whom work in creative fields.


"This is the kind of space we feel would be really great for the community," said Laura McCann-Ramsey, who plans to live in the building, a former car-seat factory, with her husband. "It would give them the kind of space they'd get in the city at New Jersey prices."


Read the rest HERE.

No comments: