By Phaedra Trethan as seen in Courier Post Online
CAMDEN — As Dana Redd spoke Wednesday, a construction worker standing four stories above the ground began pounding a steel beam with a sledgehammer, punctuating the former mayor’s sentences, the sound echoing off nearby buildings.
Back on terra firma, another steel beam was adorned with signatures and messages inscribed in black Sharpie ink that told the story of Camden over the last few years.
“JHSC (Joint Health Sciences Center) Innovation & Collaboration!” wrote Redd, who now heads the Rowan University-Rutgers Camden Board of Governors, referencing the building that would soon receive the beam in a topping-off ceremony. “Another great step forward for Camden,” wrote former New Jersey Gov. Jim Florio.
“Gov. Christie!” someone else wrote without signing his or her name. “The man who remade Camden!” Christie, still governor, was in Camden in October when ground was broken on the center on Broadway.
And, at the end, “EDA was here,” a nod to the billions in state aid and tax incentives that have lured corporations like Holtec International, Subaru of America and American Water to move to Camden, and enabled longtime city institutions like Rutgers, Rowan and Cooper University Hospital to expand their respective, and in this case shared, footprints in the city.
Redd was joined by her successor, Mayor Frank Moran, and her predecessor at the Rowan-Rutgers board, Kris Kolluri, as well as Florio, state legislators, city officials and the presidents of Rutgers University, Rowan University and Camden County College at the ceremony.
She said the 95,000-square-foot center, slated to open in spring 2019, will be the first of its kind in the state, offering labs, classrooms and other facilities for three educational institutions — Rowan, Rutgers and Camden County College — under one roof.
But its significance for the city went beyond education, said Kolluri, now CEO of Cooper’s Ferry Partnership.
“This is four years in the making, and it is arguably the most significant piece of the eds and meds corridor in downtown Camden,” he noted. “This is a continuation of the narrative that the eds and meds corridor is vibrant and adaptive to a changing environment.”
Kolluri recalled how, when he was on the Rowan Rutgers Board, “this was still just a drawing on a piece of paper.”
His message on the beam proclaimed the building “a masterpiece” that has “shown NJ what true collaboration looks like.”
Kama Jean-Juste, a 2015 graduate of the city’s Woodrow Wilson High School, said he’s worked as a medical assistant at nonprofit Project HOPE and plans to continue his education at the Joint Health and Sciences Center, studying psychology at Rowan.
“Camden is my home,” he said. “I shouldn’t turn my back on it the first chance I get. I should use my future success to help children here reach their desires, other than what they’ve been labeled to be.”
