Pallavi Shinde (MCRP ’12), Planning and Zoning Director for Newark, is featured on the cover of Planning Magazine (American Planning Association), Winter 2026 edition. The cover story highlights Newark’s leadership in adaptive reuse, showcasing how underutilized office and historic commercial buildings are being transformed into much-needed housing and vibrant mixed-use spaces downtown.
In the article, Shinde reflects on how Newark’s growing housing demand is reshaping the way cities think about their existing building stock. Projects like the historic Walker House at 540 Broad Street, originally built in 1929 for the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company and now home to 264 apartments with ground-floor retail, demonstrate how preservation, policy, and development can work together to restore life to the urban core. Twenty percent of the Walker House’s apartments are reserved for households earning 40–50 percent of the area median income, aligning with Newark’s inclusionary zoning goals and ensuring current residents have first access to new housing opportunities.
Other downtown projects featured include the conversion of office space at 10 Commerce Court into 110 residential units with retail and amenities, as well as the long-vacant 10 Park Place, which is slated to become 231 affordable housing units. Together, these initiatives underscore Newark’s proactive response to national trends of high office vacancy and a persistent housing shortage while preserving architectural heritage and strengthening access to transit, green space, and jobs.
For Shinde, adaptive reuse is about more than sustainability. As she shared, it is about “restoring dignity to the built environment” and reconnecting older buildings to the life of the city, especially meaningful in a place that has lost much of its historic fabric over time. Over the past decade, her hands-on leadership at the intersection of policy, preservation, and development has helped balance public goals with private investment, feasibility with history, and long-term planning with the urgent need for housing.
We congratulate Pallavi Shinde on this national recognition and thank her and the many public- and private-sector partners she acknowledges for investing in Newark’s past while building its future.