"We picked a miserable time to go into the real estate business," Kearney says.
"You have to work with the times you're in," adds Jonathan Orens, whose Orens Bros. Real Estate Inc., best known for condo projects in Center City, is "reconstructing" the half-century-old complex.
If location is everything, Meadowbrook Mews has it all - or maybe too much. The Walt Whitman Bridge and the 42 freeway are close; so is an uninspiring stretch of Route 130, complete with strip club.
But Meadowbrook Mews also is adjacent to the site of the demolished Starlite Drive-In, where an attractive development of single-family homes stands. And the transformation of the first among six former Chatham Square buildings is most welcome.
"Just about everything is new," says Matt Barrabee, project manager, guiding me through the model unit and others in progress.
The city sold bonds to pay $4.2 million for Chatham Square in 2007 and is financing the $1.2 million redevelopment from its revolving loan fund for economic development.
Once all 50 townhouses are sold, Gloucester expects to break even; the Orens company stands to make about $1 million.
The project was envisioned in 2006, before real estate prices went south with the economy. Back then, even blue-collar Gloucester expected to see upscale condo high-rises built on its Delaware River waterfront.
But from the beginning, the city's main intention for Chatham Square has been to rid itself of a nuisance property and bolster its tax base. The sheer number of students from the apartment complex - more than 100 at one point, Kearney says - had been a burden on the school system, and people were getting robbed while delivering pizza there.
"It was getting pretty bad in here. It was one of our biggest police problems," says City Councilman Jay Brophy, who once lived at Chatham. "We saw an opportunity."
