A Camden high-rise is known for ‘decrepit’ conditions. Will a new owner do better?

The prospective buyer of Camden’s Northgate 1 apartments is proposing to transform the troubled high-rise that hundreds of tenants rely upon for affordable housing.

The Hudson Valley Property Group in New York City is negotiating to purchase the privately owned, 21-story, 321-unit landmark and expects to spend as much as $40 million to fully renovate it. On Tuesday City Council unanimously approved a tax exemption the company had described as necessary for the project.

Under the building’s current ownership, city inspectors found 1,155 code violations last March and April related to plumbing, ventilation, mold, and the condition of some balconies. A reinspection on Aug. 22 found that repairs and cosmetic improvements had been made to some apartments and hallways.

That day, on an upper floor, resident Glorimar Malave said she was concerned about the condition of the balcony, as well as leaking windows in the apartment down the hall where her daughter, Pablita, and grandson, Jaeziah, live. Management is unresponsive, they said.

“You’re on your own in this building,” said Malave, who’s lived in Northgate for 10 years.

Built in 1962, the apartment tower looms over the Benjamin Franklin Bridge Plaza — and over the lives of tenants who cope with what city officials describe as “decrepit” conditions.

Northgate 1 nonetheless has few vacancies. It’s a testament to the scarcity of affordable housing alternatives for families in Camden, which after a decadelong wave of development remains one of New Jersey’s poorest cities.

“Issues at Northgate have been going on for years,” said Mayor Vic Carstarphen, who was elected to the office last November. He points to refurbished parks, streets, and public housing sites as evidence that the city continues to make progress.

“I don’t want to hear about what hasn’t happened,” he said, standing on the balcony of Malave’s apartment during the August reinspection. “I want to talk about what can happen.”

Said city business administrator Tim Cunningham: “The expectation of the city is that the existing owner of Northgate, who has been cited for numerous violations of housing, building, and fire codes, will cure those violations.”

Northgate is owned by Camden 7 Realty, a limited liability corporation with an address in Short Hills, N.J. Marc Wolfe, an Oyster Bay, N.Y., resident identified as a principal of the corporation, could not be reached for comment. A lawyer for Northgate did not respond to messages left at his office.

Hudson Valley specializes in renovating and managing high-rises and other affordable-housing complexes. The company also is close to completing the $22 million renovation of Crestbury Apartments in Camden’s Morgan Village neighborhood.

The company got a 30-year property tax exemption for that project, and has now won City Council approval for an exemption on Northgate as well. The developer’s application included a projection that a payment in lieu of taxes, known as a PILOT, would yield Camden an average of nearly $320,000 annually, or about $9.5 million over the 30-year life of the exemption.

Hudson Valley officials declined to comment.

“We want to put an end to owners milking hundreds of thousands of dollars from that building every month,” City Council President Angel Fuentes said in an interview.

With the PILOT, “the city wants to make sure we receive at least the same amount we currently receive in [standard] property taxes from Northgate,” Cunningham said ahead of the City Council vote.

Camden also seeks “the preservation of affordable housing, and perhaps most important, an improved quality of life for the residents” of Northgate, he said.

Karen Merricks has lived at Northgate for 25 years and heads the tenants association. She said residents are anxious about the potential sale.

“They want to know if they will be able to stay here,” she said. “Are they going to be treated fair? Is it going to stay low-income? The city says it will be ‘affordable,’ but affordable for whom?”

Northgate 1 was a marquee component of the city’s early 1960s “urban renewal” plans as the flight of businesses and white residents to the suburbs was gaining momentum. Camden hoped that leveling parts of North Camden and other sections to make way for more upscale residential and commercial development would entice people to stay or even move back to the city.

An imposing, yellow-brick landmark adjacent to the Benjamin Franklin Bridge toll plaza, the high-rise opened as a luxury address, offering a swimming pool with underwater lighting, a “shopping colonnade,” and a penthouse.

“My father lived here, and I remember how beautiful it was,” Merricks recalled.

Although it was hailed by city boosters as a sign of confidence in Camden’s future, the building was only half-rented a year after it opened. In 1968, the lobby was briefly occupied by a demonstration on behalf of a homeless Black family. By 1982, Northgate tenants were organizing a rent strike due to a rat infestation.

The original developers sold the property in 1987, and under a succession of owners since, Northgate 1 has evolved into a rent-subsidized building where many tenants are families with young children. The annual proceeds from rents is estimated at $5.8 million under a Housing Assistance Payments contract with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The contract reimburses the property owner for the difference between a HUD-approved rent and what the tenant is able to pay.

“HUD is reviewing the application for a change in ownership,” said Olga Alvarez, a public affairs officer for the department’s regional office for New York and New Jersey.

The current owner, Camden 7, paid $10.2 million for Northgate 1 in 2011, Camden County records show.

Officials of Hybrid Capital, a New York investment firm, said in a 2014 press release that Wolfe “invested approximately $1 million in capital improvements, including 140 apartment renovations at approximately $5,000 per apartment, state of the art security system with cameras on every floor, new roof, new boiler, plumbing upgrades and repairs to all common areas.”

The release also praised the property’s “excellent cash flow.”

Whoever owns Northgate “is making a lot of money, and we want to hold them accountable,” said Camden County Police Chief Gabriel Rodriguez, who accompanied the mayor, other city and county officials, and a reporter during the Aug. 22 reinspection.

Gabriel Camacho, who was named the city’s director of code enforcement in February, said annual inspections of Northgate and other apartment complexes resumed this year after being suspended due to the pandemic.

The potential change in ownership at Northgate notwithstanding, “we are pressing forward” with follow-up inspections, and issuing municipal court summonses for noncompliance, Camacho said. “Our main concern is the quality of life for the people who live here.”

During the reinspection Camacho translated the comments of longtime Northgate resident Ramon Lopez from Spanish to English.

“He says he’s been living here for 13 years and nothing has been done to his apartment,” Camacho said.

After the inspections last spring, “people came with cans of paint and did a rush paint job, and they didn’t paint the kitchen,” Lopez told Camacho.

“Rodents are a big issue,” a neighbor, Talia Lovett, said.

Malave noted security issues. “We need more than one security guard in here,” she said. Like other Northgate residents, she blames outsiders who freely enter the building to sleep, defecate, and urinate in stairwells for many of the problems there.

“If you call security,” said her daughter, “they tell you to call the cops.”

Affordable housing advocate Peter O’Connor, who was involved in building the successful Northgate 2 senior high-rise and low-rise complex across 7th Street from Northgate 1, said he respects the work Hudson Valley has done elsewhere.

But O’Connor, president of Fair Share Housing Development, also said he has a “serious reservation” about whether there will be enough resources to meet the inherent challenges of managing a high-rise for families.

“If you’re stacking families with economic and social needs on top of each other, you’ve got to have on-site management and social services,” O’Connor said. “Having a police substation there would probably be a good idea.”

City officials said separate plans call for adding a police substation within a block or two of Northgate, and said Hudson Valley also has presented detailed plans for security at the building.

Across town at Crestbury — the 400-unit low-rise complex soon to be renamed “Community Meadows” — longtime tenant Tydeeka Ingram said she is very pleased with Hudson Valley’s renovations.

“I’ve lived here 18 years,” she said. “And this is the best it’s ever been here.”