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• $3.8 million Downtown Enhancement Project is completed, encompassing North and South Main Sts., Third St., Broad St. and Union Square. Improvements include road restoration, construction of sidewalks and crosswalks, installation of curbing and period lighting, and landscaping, in addition to sewer-system upgrades.
• New state law allows operators of businesses in the Urban Enterprise Zone with up to $10 million in gross annual sales to claim the sales tax exemption at the point of sale instead of paying the sales tax and applying for a rebate.
• Infini-Tee Golf Center, with golf simulators, driving bays, putting green, short-game practice area, etc., opens, offering lessons, clinics, golf-fitness programs and other services.
• A half-mile section of the trail along the Delaware River from Union Square to the historic Morris Canal archway is cleared, part of the Morris Canal Greenway.
• Town will fund a $50,000 study to research how Atlantic States Cast Iron Pipe Co. could produce energy for the plant and the community, with the idea that excess energy could be sold to the public or put back on the power grid. Officials hope less expensive energy will attract businesses.

PHILLIPSBURG: A RIVERFRONT DESTINATION

Gateway Town on the Rise

by Kelly Prentice | photography by Chuck Zovko

Across the Delaware River in Phillipsburg, the gateway to New Jersey, changes have people talking. In the late 1990s, façades were transformed from boarded-up apartments to colorful commercial spaces ready for rent. Then Union Square took on new life along the river with raft rentals and the re-opening of the iconic hot dog stand, Jimmy’s on the Delaware.

Now, dramatic streetscape improvements along South Main St. have been completed—including historic period lighting, brick-paved crossings, and new sidewalks and benches—thanks to a $3.6 million grant from the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission. And improved traffic-signal patterns are making the streets more pedestrian-friendly.

“It makes a tremendous aesthetic impact,” says Mark Portnoy ’72 (above), who has played a key role in the resurgence. An attorney from Union, N.J., Portnoy was selected to head Phillipsburg’s Urban Enterprize Zone (UEZ) in 1995, after the town had been battered by the same forces that brought population loss and economic hardship to other areas of the state.

Today, Phillipsburg is keenly focused on its heritage as an industrial transportation hub. Once home to five major railroads, it boasts a steam-train excursion unlike any other on the East Coast, touring passengers through wine country in the summer and drawing children for a Polar Express ride (one of two sanctioned by Warner Brothers) in the winter.

“The train excursion has drawn 16,000 people to take another look at our downtown,” Portnoy said. “Our main goal now is to link attractive riverfront properties to the downtown area.”

The UEZ board plans to connect the riverfront and the downtown with an outdoor transportation exhibition, Portnoy says, a $900,000 project that will include heritage exhibits, green space, and signage linked by a paved “riverwalk” from Union Square to the historic Morris Canal Arch.

The arch marks the entrance of the Morris Canal, which once was a key industrial artery connecting Phillipsburg to Jersey City. Phillipsburg’s role as a railroad hub was even more prominent, and the outdoor exhibit is railroad-heavy, with the passenger steam train running from April through December, a display of transportation artifacts at Union Station, a miniature railway and exhibition built by the Phillipsburg Railroad Historians, and a restoration of the Union Signal Tower pending completion in the coming months.

Portnoy says another goal is to expand Phillipsburg as a center of distinctive shopping and dining experiences.

“We are quite active in providing funds to support new businesses,” Portnoy adds. “The sales-tax revenue incentive under the UEZ gives New Jersey communities the chance to tailor their projects to local needs.”

He’s referring to the incentive in which qualified retailers charge half of the state’s sales tax (3.5 percent vs. 7 percent) and Phillipsburg receives those dollars for reinvestment in the town’s economy. Another perk: established businesses are invited to relocate to Phillipsburg rent-free for their first year.

Informed by his inner-city redevelopment experience with the City of Newark, Portnoy was thrilled to return to the region of his college days and help reinvigorate the downtown area. “It gives me an opportunity to be creative by restructuring the economy of a community.”