Burlington wants to be more than just another historic community along the Delaware River
Burlington City, NJ was established in 1677 and while it treasures its history, it also is looking to sustain its downtown and neighborhoods by capitalizing on its proximity to the Delaware River.
Established on the Delaware River in 1677, Burlington City has so much history it sometimes repeats itself.
“I think downtown is on its fourth or fifth revival,” said Rob Engime, who with his wife, Judy, owns and lives above Olde City Quilts. Their shop is on an architecturally eclectic stretch of High Street that’s abloom with flowers, murals, and other public art — but also has a noticeable number of empty storefronts.
Nine blocks upriver, the city’s latest choice to develop the 70-acre U.S. Pipe & Foundry site envisions a mixed-use community of old and new buildings where people will want to “live, shop, play, work, [and] learn.”
A spokesperson for Peron Development said the firm even “hopes to save” the ruins of the McNeal Mansion, built by an industrialist in 1890, later used for offices by U.S. Pipe and empty since 1950. The company shut down its Burlington City operations in 2007, throwing 180 people, mostly local residents, out of work.
» READ MORE: A ray of hope for Burlington City's decrepit, but historic, McNeal Mansion
Principals of the Peron Development team helped create the SteelStacks complex in Bethlehem, Pa., as well as the Pearl Pointe apartments overlooking Burlington’s signature Riverfront Promenade along the Delaware.
It’s at least the third time this site has been targeted for redevelopment: A North Jersey firm’s ambitious 2015 proposal for the U.S. Pipe site — which included saving the McNeal Mansion — was withdrawn. A different developer purchased the northernmost portion of the property; one million square feet of an Amazon fulfillment center was built on the river side in 2021.
While some in Burlington City are supportive of the latest proposal for the U.S. Pipe property, others are skeptical.
“Once I start seeing ground breakings, I’ll have more to say,” said Arlene Felder, who opened her Glassy Brown Cookies shop on High Street in 2020. She’s since added a Moorestown Mall location.
Evolving out of an industrial past
With a population of just over 10,000 in less than four square miles, Burlington City once was home to shipyards and industries, including shoe factories, canneries, and foundries such as U.S. Pipe. Luminaries including Ulysses S. Grant and James Fenimore Cooper once called the city home, and one of New Jersey’s oldest Black churches, Bethlehem African Methodist Episcopal Church, built in 1836, remains a Pearl Street landmark.
As of 2022, the largely working-class population was about 52% white, 31% Black, and 16% other persons of color.
The formerly substantial business district downtown began to fade after shopping centers and malls sprouted on nearby Burlington County farmland in the 1960s.
But downtown remains home to locally owned shops and service businesses offering everything from tattoos to tailoring, as well as a collection of restaurants, pubs, and breweries.
“Downtown is a very nice area, and it’s somewhat of a tourist attraction, so I don’t understand why some people don’t want to come here,” Felder said.
“Burlington has been around since 1677, and that says something about our city,” said Mayor Barry Conaway.
He’d like to see Burlington “become more of a food destination,” citing events such as the Farmers Market and Food Truck Tuesday as “a test market where a vendor might decide ‘I could make a go of a [bricks and mortar] location’ in this city.”
The Burlington City Farmers Market, a project of Main Street Burlington and Arts Guild New Jersey, shifted its schedule this season to coincide with the food truck event sponsored by Pearl Pointe, a $25 million, 184-unit apartment complex that opened in 2020.
More than a dozen trucks or vendors, a rollicking local band called Random Notes, and a sunny breeze brought a diverse crowd of people to the foot of High Street on a Tuesday afternoon in late July. The event was the idea of Pearl Pointe’s property manager, Nikki Rivellini, who runs it with two volunteers: Nancy Curry and Debbie Hoey.
“We want to be part of the community, not just a building in the community,” Rivellini said. “We support local businesses and we use local vendors for all our events. The city has too many vacant storefronts that need to be filled.”
A memorable first visit
John Callahan, the spokesperson for Peron Development, served as mayor of Bethlehem, Pa., during the SteelStacks redevelopment process.
During his first visit to Burlington, Callahan said, he recognized the city’s “great bones,” particularly along High Street.
“Burlington has suffered from a lot of disinvestment, but it has the history, the Delaware River, and the RiverLine,” said Callahan. “All the pieces are here.”
Following a feasibility study and other assessments by Peron, the city in May designated the firm as the redeveloper of the site. Portions of the property, which is owned by the city, carry the scars of more than a century of heavy industrial usage.
“Nothing we’ve discovered so far has scared us away,” Callahan said. “There definitely are areas of concern, but they’re not site-wide. We were pleasantly surprised by that. But there are challenges.”
Including public perceptions, Callahan said. “I don’t blame people in Burlington for being skeptical. They’ve seen a lot of ideas never come to reality. But the architecture and the history and the story of Burlington City is real, and impossible to replicate.”
» READ MORE: Revitalization of the U.S. Pipe Site
A ‘secret’ no more?
Burlington’s downtown is off the beaten track and barely visible from Route 130. High Street west of Broad can seem like a tunnel of river wind. And the center of Burlington City goes not have a substantial government, medical, institutional, or commercial office population to help animate High Street’s 10-foot-wide, brick sidewalks.
“We don’t market ourselves very well because marketing costs money, and we have a lot of volunteer organizations chasing grants and wondering how much to spend on marketing,” said Derrick Owings, a longtime city resident and booster. “So it seems that to many people, what Burlington City has to offer is still a secret.”
Lisa Fox-Pfeiffer, executive of the Burlington County Historical Society, expects the October opening of the $1 million, interactive Children’s History Center at the museum on High Street will bring more families into the city.
Across the street, the Lyceum Hall Center for the Arts will host a jazz concert series and theater arts programs for kids.
“Organizations are realizing the only way to [revitalize Burlington] is not with some miracle project, but by partnering with each other,” Fox-Pfeiffer said. “We’re even getting the Burlington Tourism Council back together. We’re going to put our brand forward.”