I’m trying to create a time-line recording when and where the “in” spot was for teens and young adults. So, if anyone can provide more information, please do.
Most of the accounts I've heard or read indicate that Hackensack’s Main Street remained the “in” spots for the teens and young adults of Bergen County for over 15 years AFTER the Bergen Mall and the Garden State Plaza opened as open-air shopping malls. Those were the first two malls, and they opened in the mid-1950’s.
I think 1971 was the watershed year. That’s the year that the Bergen Mall reopened as a newly enclosed shopping mall, and that was the same year that saw the closing of Arnold Constable, a major department store located at Main & Passaic Streets. Those two events were a harbinger of the future. I was a young kid in 1971, and I recall that when the Bergen Mall reopened, and was absolutely mobbed with shoppers, teens, and young adults. I think all the “hanging out” shifted from Main Street to the Bergen Mall in 1971. The Bergen Mall was only the “in” spot for 3 years, and then all the action shifted to Paramus Park, which opened in 1974. The Garden State Plaza was virtually a ghost town until sometime around 1984 when it was enclosed. Then it became the main spot to hang out. It maintains that distinction after over 20 years. Next will be Xanadu when it opens.
But what really killed Main Street was the decline of the surrounding neighborhoods, a problem which also peaked in 1971. In fact, this whole country was going down the toilet in 1971.
As history is written, people should not look at the decline of Main Street in a vacuum, the decline there was directly related to what was happening to the neighborhoods all around it. There was also a lot of urban decline of the neighborhoods near the downtown in the early 1970’s. The vicinity of Fair and Kansas Street was considered a major trouble spot, in particular the two neighborhood bars at that intersection (both are now gone). So rapid was the movement of families out of the neighborhood that Temple Beth-El and the Methodist Church (neighbors on State Street) both moved to the same neighborhood on Summit Avenue. The entire neighborhood once called “Little Dublin” in the vicinity of Union & Lawrence Street was in exodus. A few families moved to the Fairmount Section, but most left Hackensack entirely. Lawrence Street in particular was in pure chaos, and the city was considering leveling the entire western block of Lawrence Street. A huge abandoned and dilapidated Victorian House at Union & Myer Street (visible squarely from the length of Union Street looking south) seemed to symbolize the sense of hopelessness of the area. Fears of decline took root on Park Street, and when the Simon Sez liquor store opened up at State & Clay Streets, there was immediately so much loitering and trouble that the entire neighborhood from Park Street to State Street was considered “lost”. The only neighborhood near downtown that remaining strong in the early 1970’s was the apartments around Anderson Park, but that was only for a few more years. The early 1970’s also saw the explosion of luxury high-rises on Prospect Avenue, and people all across Bergen County were convinced that all the prosperity of Hackensack was shifting from Main Street to the hill. Plans were afoot to build the Riverside Square at the same time.
It’s important to talk about this because there are clues in the lessons of history as to how to recover. MAIN STREET WAS STRONG WHEN THE NEIGHBORHOODS AROUND IT WERE STRONG.
We are now rebuilding the neighborhoods around Main Street with luxury condominiums. The Union Street/State Street neighborhood is rapidly improving and approaching “critical mass”, but a few more good size buildings need to be built along the State Street corridor. It’s not quite there. The new shoppers parking lot at State & Berry is a waste of land that could otherwise become a condo project / ratable. The 90 condos planned at 94 State Street might bring about the CRITICAL MASS OF PROSPERITY. Once this is achieved, the whole area will be perceived as “upscale”. Private section investment will flood onto Main Street in order to serve the new clientele. There will be more restaurants, quirky little shops, and eventually upscale shopping.
There is a future for Main Street, and we have to keep on course.