MONTCLAIR

Montclair's massive new arts district opens, with luxury apartments and performance spaces

Julia Martin
NorthJersey.com

A decade after Montclair officials designated parts of downtown as areas in need of redevelopment and created a master plan for changing the face of Bloomfield Avenue, the 3.25-acre, $135 million Wellmont Arts complex, the final phase of that plan, is complete. 

The historic Wellmont Theater, now a concert venue, is the centerpiece of the development. The brick facade of the theater and the Pharmacie Bar building on the corner of Bloomfield Avenue is matched in the new construction next door, at 1 Seymour St. The seven-story building, with its top two floors dedicated to Summit Health, has a 200-spot parking garage underneath for public and medical center use that will also serve patients, accessible from the municipal lot on South Fullerton. 

Across the plaza from the Wellmont, on the former site of the Social Security building and an STS tire shop, is another new brick building. It contains a 200-apartment luxury rental building, Two South Willow; the climbing and fitness gym Gravity Vault; and One River School, an Englewood-based art school with studio space. The rest of the building is reserved for artists and arts organizations.

According to the developer, Ironstate of Hoboken, the apartments at Two South Willow, completed in March, are 90% rented.

The Wellmont Arts Plaza on Bloomfield Avenue has been named a Great Public Space.

The commercial component of the development comprises 30,000 square feet; the set-aside for arts organizations is 10,000 square feet.

Seymour Street, a tiny former through street in front of the Wellmont, is now a 14,000-square-foot pedestrian plaza with open-air stage, art installations, seating and greenery.

At the opening festivities for the arts plaza Saturday, officials said they were happy with the end result. Martin Schwartz, a member of the Planning Board when the new complex was approved, said the buildings are aesthetically more pleasing than the developments farther up Bloomfield Avenue, such as Valley & Bloom and the MC Hotel.    

The project's completion also comes at a good time for Montclair's downtown, which has been devastated by COVID. An empty storefront across the street from Two Willow Street advertises a soon-to-open crab restaurant. 

Not without controversy

The project hasn't been without controversy, however. One early concern was that the arts focus was a ploy to make the developer's large apartment complex more palatable.

Some of the space set aside for artists and arts organizations remains empty. And the space town planners hoped would be an indoor theater is occupied by the Englewood-based Gravity Vault, a rock-climbing gym that offers bouldering, yoga and other fitness activities. 

That's a by-product of the pandemic, said Councilor Peter Yacobellis. 

"When the owners were looking for tenants in the middle of the pandemic, no one was looking for a theater," he said. "The pandemic made it challenging for the developers to find arts-focused tenants, and for those tenants to get financing.” 

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But Yacobellis said the requirement that 10,000 square feet be dedicated to the arts is not going away.

One River School takes up 3,300 square feet, with Mud Clay Studio signed up to occupy another 3,300 square feet.

That leaves 3,400 square feet available for arts use, but "we're not letting [the developer] off the hook," Yacobellis said.

Eight uses are specified for the arts space, including live performance, arts and entertainment education, recording and rehearsal, artists studios that are open to the public, artisan industrial studios, art galleries, art collectives and museum facilities.

Parking issue

Parking, a perennial problem in town, is another concern. According to Schwartz, the number of spaces in the 1 Seymour St. lot, under Summit Health, is not adequate for such a large medical provider and public parking, too. 

"This project was supposed to be an arts and entertainment area, and parking spots were based on office and retail," he said. "Not medical, which is much more intensive and takes spots away from retail users."

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Although medical was an approved use, board members were thinking in terms of a few small doctors' offices, not a provider on the scale of Summit's 30,000 square feet, he said.

"No one on the Planning Board ever expected that kind of huge pivot," he said.

Spending downtown

Still, at the Nov. 20 ribbon-cutting for Summit Health, on a deck overlooking the New York City skyline, council members said staff and patients will bring their dollars downtown. The facility will be the base for 40 physicians practicing primary care, dermatology, pediatrics, orthopedics, obstetrics and gynecology, ENT and allergy. There is a small surgi-center and on-site services like mammography and phlebotomy. 

Summit Health CEO Jeff Alter said the group picked Montclair because of its revitalized downtown.

"In our suburban locations, everyone goes home after work," he said. "A downtown location, where employees can spend time after work and at lunch, is great for team-building."

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He said Summit will continue its long-standing support of Montclair Film and the Montclair Orchestra, and will collaborate with leaders of the economically and racially diverse 4th Ward, a couple of blocks away. 

It will also offer mobile health care and work with local food pantries and other organizations to pinpoint social determinants of health, such as food insecurity and transportation, he said. 

The name of the complex is still being worked out; with Seymour Street essentially gone, it's increasingly referred to as the Wellmont Arts Plaza rather than the Seymour Street development. 

Yacobellis said he expects that an upcoming resolution will officially name the complex, and a website will list services, programs, a guide to the art on display and a list of tenants, more of which will be announced shortly. Projectors are being mounted to display art imagery on a screen on the parking garage at 1 Seymour St., and electrical outlets added to the open-air stage. 

Julia Martin is the 2021 recipient of the New Jersey Society for Professional Journalists' David Carr award for her coverage of Montclair for NorthJersey.com.

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Email: jmartin@gannettnj.com

Twitter: @TheWriteJulia