"Newark has significant demand for new retail centers, as evidenced by the fact that 38% of retail purchases by residents and workers are made outside of the city," says the firm's president, Richard Tucker. "That's a loss of $575 million in sales to the city every year. This development will help recapture the enormous leakage of retail spending. It will also provide a necessary resource for neighborhood residents, create employment opportunities and help increase the city's tax revenue base."

What Tucker has planned is a layout with two anchor tenants of approximately 90,000 and 65,000 square feet respectively, with the rest of the space accounted for by a combination of national and regional in-line stores. No tenant announcements have been made yet. Plans also call for a two-story parking deck and store-front parking, which combined will add up to 825 parking spaces.

"Building out this strategically important site will help strengthen one of the city's key neighborhoods and create a regional asset," says Stefan Pryor, the city's deputy mayor for economic development, in a statement. "It will add a significant number of new jobs to this city as well as capture local sales taxes that have been leaving Newark."