Mario,
The article is interesting and could be valid except we are missing a
very necessary component unless the childless households are also
retired. We do not have enough local industry in Asbury Park to
support all of its residents. There are very few large scale walk-to
jobs. Back in the day, Asbury Park had the phone company and the gas
company. We do not have those types of jobs anymore.
I would love to live and work in the same city. I would love to stop
driving except when absolutely necessary. In order to create that
type of city, we need to lure larger employers here. We have the
buildings. We have the trains and we could have better buses or an
in-city transit system.
For a city to be healthy, it needs to have a balance of incomes.
There needs to be affordable housing and reliable affordable
transportation for the lower income workers. It really does need a
good school system for the middle and lower income workers because
otherwise it won't have balance in the distribution of the
population.
AP has a lot going for it especially location and the small town
disguised as a city aspect. It is on a major transit route. It has
one industry in tourism and entertainment. I also has small
businesses and local professionals like Realtors, lawyers, doctors,
etc. It does have the state office building too. That is definitely
a half-full glass. If we want to fill the glass to the top then we
need to attract larger businesses. That isn't impossible. There are
great tax benefits for a business to open AP facilities. I looked
into doing that when I was at Bank of NY. We were going to relocate
our Manasquan operations office and our Bradley Beach branch to Grand
Ave. We did that in Newburgh, NY and it made sense to do the same
here. I don't know too much about schools so I'll leave that up to
those who do. I do know communities. They work best when there is a
mix. That is especially true for smaller cities. I think the glass
could fill up.
Jennifer
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