With NJCDC, the award-winning nonprofit community development corporation based in the Great Falls Historic District, we are working with residents to implement a new plan for the revitalization of the Great Falls Historic District and surrounding blocks. Here is the plan NJCDC completed with extensive citizen participation.
The Greater Spruce Street neighborhood is nestled in the heart of Paterson. Surrounding the Great Falls, the community exists as a diverse collection of people, buildings, industry, and nature. Over the years, residents have identified this area using many nicknames including “Downtown,” “the Falls,” “Hinchliffe,” and “Totowa.” “Greater Spruce Street” is simply short-hand for what has become a dynamic community, one filled with great potential. For the purposes of this plan, the Greater Spruce Street neighborhood is the area located west of Main Street, south of Totowa Avenue and West Broadway, east of Preakness and Reservoir Avenues, and north of Interstate 80.
The Greater Spruce Street neighborhood is a neighborhood of diverse contrasts—it is dense but filled with natural wonders, home to many children and a wide range of schools but lacking things to do after school, a walking neighborhood but not walkable, the birthplace of this nation’s industry yet lacking in jobs, and a center of immigration yet undiscovered by many others. A mere 13 miles west of Manhattan, the Greater Spruce Street neighborhood is at once famous (for its landscape, history, architecture, literary cameos, sports, and even hotdogs) yet unknown and unseen.
