Camden Special Services District Home Page

The Changing Face of Camden

The informational materials, reports, plans and other documents listed below provide detail regarding Camden's changing face:

Kroc Center

For more than four years, GCP has lead a stakeholder group in the effort to develop a 12,000 s.f. community center on the former Harrison Avenue Landfill site in Cramer Hill. Although the Salvation Army now has a full-time staff team that is managing the development, GCP continues to support the effort in the areas of fundraising, government approvals and community outreach. The Camden Kroc Center is slated to open in the 4th quarter of 2012.

Haddon Avenue Transit Villiage

Working alongside its partners at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center, the Delaware River Port Authority and Grapevine Development, GCP is working to develop a 15- acre mixed-use transit village on a former industrial strip situated between the Lourdes campus and the Ferry Avenue PATCO Station. The project will be anchored by Camden's first new grocery store in more than a generation and will also include 400 units of market rate housing, a new parking garage and both office and retail space.

Vacant Lot Stabilization Program

Camden City's extraordinary number of vacant lots was cited as one of the community's leading priorities. As such, GCP executed a vacant lot greening and maintenance program that cleaned and greened 81 vacant lots in the neighborhood and now employs two Camden residents to maintain these lots. Over the next six months, GCP will green another 100 lots under a partnership with the Camden Redevelopment Agency and the Federal Government.

Broadway Main Street

The Broadway Main Street Program has had official Main Street New Jersey designation since 2004. The statewide program is a comprehensive revitalization tool that promotes the historic and economic redevelopment of traditional business districts in New Jersey with the mission to preserve and enhance the commercial nature of Broadway as a retail marketplace and a virbrant multi-cultural destination.

By working in partnership with other agencies to shape the development on the Broadway corridor and producing a comprehensive plan to revitalize the surrounding neighborhood, Broadway will be a great place to live, work, shop and play.

The main goals of the program include helping to stabilize existing businesses along the corridor, working with the city administration and the Greater Camden Partnership's Special Services District (CSSD) to implement the clean and safe program on the Broadway corridor, working in partnership with various stakeholders in the Cooper Plaza and Lanning Square to implement economic development and shaping development that will complement construction of Cooper Medical School due to open in Fall 2012.

Urban Land Institute- Technical Assistance Program (ULI-TAP)

Thanks to GCP's successful petition, Camden was recently selected for an Urban Land Institute (ULI) of Philadelphia study, through their Technical Assistance Program (TAP). The TAP study will bring a panel of 15 leading development professionals from the region to Camden to make specific planning recommendations for the development of a retail center in the University District. Plans have been finalized with ULI for the study to take place in January 2011.

Human Capital Initiative

     Employer Assisted Housing (EAH): GCP is working on a new collaborative EAH project that seeks to leverage programs and resources to incentivize anchor institution employees to live in the City of Camden. With a recent endowment from the William Penn Foundation, this funding will allow GCP to coordinate the City's employers, government programs outside funding sources and local financial institutions in order to create a program  that will attract new residents to the neighborhoods surrounding Camden's anchor institutions. Another component of the project will include marketing the City of Camden, which GCP will do through the development of Live Camden web portal.

     Local Sourcing: In January 2010, Rutgers-Camden pledged to double its purchasing from Camden businesses over the next five years. Working under a grant from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, GCP is organizing the city's anchor institutes to join in this pledge. GCP's role in this project is to provide anchors with a directory of local businesses and facilitate the sharing of lessons among the institutions.

     Education: One of GCP's goals is to work with the anchor institutions to create K-12 educational opportunities that serve two purposes. The first is to allow existing Camden residents to access the opportunities that are likely to be created in a resurgent Camden. The second is to ensure that young families can remain in Camden when their children reach school-age. GCP is working on several fronts to achieve this goal. We have partnered with two of the city's charter schools to help develop new school sites. We are working with Rowan University and the Center for Family Services on a Promise Neighborhood Initiative for the new Lanning Square Elementary School, and we are working toward the implementation of a policy recommendation for a joint Rutgers/Rowan effort to centralize, coordinate and measure anchor participation in schools across the City.

Vibrant Arts Initiatives

     Art Gallery Series: GCP's Holiday Art Gallery and Camden Spring Art Gallery Series blend are events with development projects by utilizing the city's vacant commerical and retail spaces to showcase local and regional talent. This program also seeks to improve the environment for local retail and to attract new residents.

     Arts Roundtable: The Arts Roundtable brings together many of Camden's most prominent artists, art administrators and community leaders, while drawing on the experience and resources of the public and private sectors to assist in the planning and implementation of arts initiatives in Camden City.

     Summer Concert Series: Organized by GCP and sponsored by Campbell Soup, Cooper Hospital, Symphony in C and the City of Camden, the Summer Concert Series presented a series of five outdoor concerts in Cooper Commons Park. The event featured a variety of musical styles and drew its audience from Camden's residents, workforce and students.

     Jessie Redmon Fauset Writing Contest: The Jessie Redmon Fauset Writing Contest was developed to bring recognition and appreciation to a great local writer who was a trailblazer of her time. Jessie Redmon Fauset, author of four novels, was born in Camden, NJ and was a pivotal figure in the literary and cultural movement of the Harlem Renaissance. As literary editor of The Crisis magazine, she discovered and encouraged writers of the Harlem Renaissance, including Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay and Jean Toomer. In her own works, including her best known novel, Comedy: American Style (1933), she portrayed mostly middle-class black characters forced to deal with self hate as well as racial prejudice.

     The contest, sponsored by the Greater Camden Partnership, seeks to encourage young writers who reside in the City of Camden to express their hopes and dreams as they relate to living in one of the most challenging cities in America.

     Camden Spring Arts Fair: The Camden Spring Arts Fair will feature all forms of contemporary art from Camden residents, including painting, sculpture, photography, design, art glass and video installations from modern art to new cutting edge artists. Also, the fair will feature a mini children's fair where children can display and sell their work. In addition, we will also have guest artists for panel discussions. Please return to check dates and location.

Please donate digital cameras for our Spring 2011 Arts Fair! Donate by visiting www.recyclingforcharities.com.