Southside View wins 2025 Under One Roof Innovation Award

The Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey has selected Southside View, a 40-unit, affordable multifamily community developed by Adenah Bayoh and Foya Development, as its 2025 recipient of the Outstanding Project Award for Innovation.

The five-story residence, located at 654 South 11th Street, features four floors of residential housing over ground-floor parking, on-site building management, mail room, and community space. Thriven Design provided architecture, engineering, and interior design services for the project, which was completed in late summer, 2025.

Southside View is distinctive and innovative in its holistic approach to affordable living and numerous amenities that provide multifaceted resident support.  Every apartment in Southside View has free Wi-Fi for 15 years. Children living in the building receive free laptops for school and have access to free after-school tutoring, offered five days a week. Adults have access to a computer lab where they can learn basic technology skills.  Each apartment includes a washer and dryer, and apartments designated for the homeless are fully furnished.

Southside View, and its companion project, Springview, located a block away, directly address the statewide shortage of housing for families of low to moderate incomes by bringing a combined total of 103 new housing units to Newark. The creation of this development also contributes to the preservation of  income diversity and the availability of affordable housing in Newark’s South Ward as gentrification pressures increase and rents outpace incomes for many longtime residents of the Kent-Brenner-Springfield Redevelopment Area.

Southside View’s development team is the first woman-owned and Black-owned real estate development entity in New Jersey to receive 9 percent LIHTC funding from the NJHFMA. The project represents progress not just in the number of units of affordable multifamily housing that will be available for Newark residents, but in the precedent that the project sets for other underrepresented development teams to seek state-level financing to make community revitalization projects across the state a reality.

Members of the project team celebrated this honor for Southside View at the annual Under One Roof conference and membership meeting on Friday, October 24, in New Brunswick, NJ.

This is Thriven Design’s fourth project to be recognized by The Housing and Development Network of New Jersey. In 2024, the Jim and Fannie Floyd House, developed by Princeton Community Housing; Autumn Ridge at Manitou Park, devleoped by Homes for All; and Barclay Place, developed by NJCDC, were honored with awards for new development and healthy homes and communities.