Oh my God how can this be good for Newark? You have a boarded up Mervyns Superstore across the street, a forelorn and empty Toys Are Us, and weed strewn former car dealerships on Ballentine. This town looks like depression-city.

There is no shortage of marijuana in Newark,just a shortage of common sense when it comes to accommodating medicinal marijuana dispensaries in our community. While Hayward,Berkeley,Oakland not to mention San Jose & San Francisco receive millions of dollars in revenue each year from the taxes on dispensary sales our city leaders believe that attacking patients rights is more important. Now that the state Supreme Court has agreed to vacate & review the lower court decisions regarding moratoriums,bans & irrational zoning restrictions the city of Newark no longer has a leg to stand on since all lower court rulings are now void. Life has remained pretty much the same in these other communities with no hordes of cannabis crazed zombies terrorizing their cities. Why do the citizens of Newark have to travel out of town to procure the marijuana they not only have a legal right to,but are going to bring back here to consume anyway ? At this point Newark's leaders should consider themselves lucky if any dispensary would be willing to pump some badly needed revenue into our town after the shabby way they treated the last two !!! These cretins closed two legitimate businesses causing the layoff of several dozen people & leaving two more storefronts empty. While our elected geniuses were wasting their time & the taxpayer's money on this controversy of their own making Toy's R Us,Target & Staples moved out of town. It's good to see that they have their priorities in order,bunch of clowns !!

Can newpark mall just sell to Westfield so they can
Take over the mall And make it a whole new mall? It's been getting worse and worse every year. There's really no particular store in the mall that's worth going to. Valley fair, stanford and stoneridge are getting all my money, because I'd much rather go there. Newark is stupid, of they had a Good mall residents of Newark, Fremont and union city would come shop their instead of traveling to Pleasanton, Santa Clara and Palo Alto. Newark is loosing out on revenue, the people of this area have the money to
Spend, we definately are still shopping, but where we are shopping is not here, because Newpark has nothing to offer us! The old Mervyns should be a Home Goods, and the mall should add some better department stores, a higher volume Macys, Dillard's, Nordstroms, Bloomingdales. Bring in quality stores like H&M, Sephora, Ann Taylor, Guess, J.crew, urban outfitters,etc get rid of all the cheapy stores. Newpark is worse than any mall in the bay area! So Sad!

@ Gary: Yes, all Mervyns stores closed but why is it that no one wants to come to Newark? In Mountain View, the Mervyns that closed there shut its doors one day and the next day a new tenant began construction and it re-opened as a Kohls only weeks later. Some Bay Area cities function better than others. Newark looks more and more dysfunctional every day.

In order to keep money in Newark, I would love to see an Apple Store, H&M, and how about Home Goods in the old Toys R Us to name a few stores? I assume the Newark theater will close once the Pacific Common theaters open, so bring in the bulldozers. Then get Macaroni Grill, Mimi's and/or Cheesecake Factory to build in that area. Any other ideas out there???

The city of Newark did make a mistake by ousting MMJ businesses but its not the only issue. NPM was placed there in 1980 and was great for its time. Now Pacific Commons is building and doing a wonderful job of it. NPM needs to look to other malls such as Stoneridge, Valley Fair, and Stanford to get an idea on classing itself up. Doesn't have to be major, but noticeable and creative (more unique products for one as they have mostly standard items). Its still better than Southland and only slightly less than the Great Mall (which is newer and again filled with lots of stores which keeps that place alive).
But do something quick before Michael Moore comes to do a documentary on Newark.

What is an "MMJ" business?

Newark sucks. Mall sucks. The stores in the mall suck.

@Nadja: MMJ is shorthand for medicinal marijuana. Newark chose to ban the dispensaries and the possible revenues they could have brought in. I understand the Federal theats of litigation and property forfeiture had a lot to do with this, but it would have been nice if our City Council had the intestinal fortitude to take a more progressive stance on this issue. By demonstrating that MMJ businesses can be integrated into the mainstream community, we may have been able to establish a precedent that even the Feds couldn't ignore
I did take a look at the C of C website. I saw on the "About Newark" page that a 20 screen Century Theater was supposed to have been constructed at NPM (start date in 2005), but that clearly never happened. I wonder when they'll update the website and remove that little item.
IMHO, a good part of Newark's problems come from a City Council that doesn't look past lunchtime when trying make plans. Every time I read about how the CC is trying to fix the problems in Newark, its too little, too late. They ignore the problem as long as possible, then overreact. The ban on MMJ businesses and the recent decision to bring in drug-sniffers at NMHS are cases in point. All reaction and little foresight. I'd bet that half of the CC members are surprised when the sun rises in the morning.

Maybe the mayor & council can line up for a kick in the pants prior to each meeting ?

There is really no hope for Newark, because half of you are ignorant and think that a good mall good Retail is not able to be supported. And when did Newark become low income? That's pathetic! Our schools suck, Now our city is losing businesses and they are talking about adding more
Affordable housing. No wonder almost everyday I read something about someone being caught with Meth. This city has turned into the dumps. We are filled with empty buildings and druggies. Look around people, if we had a good mall, good schools, Newark would be fine. The rest would Come with time. It has nothing to Do with high end stores, high end or not, my point is bring in big name retailers and stop bringing in cheapy stores that won't service a year in the mall! I grew up here ive been here my whole life and to see Newark crumble is sad and depressing. Newark used to have good schools, we used to have a good mall, we used to have a nice city. What happened to it lies in the hands of someone other than the residents!

No wonder everyone's leaving Newark!