Newark North Ward Councilman Anibal Ramos Jr. announced today that an abandoned home that had been an eyesore on Parker Street in Newark’s Forest Hill neighborhood for nearly two decades has been finally torn down.

Crews from the City of Newark began razing the building Thursday morning, reducing the 100-year old home that had been the bane of neighbors into a pile of rubble by afternoon.

Getting to this point was not easy, Ramos said, because the home is located in the Forest Hill Historic District and required state approval for demolition.

“We’ve lived for too long with this eyesore in our neighborhood,” Ramos said. “Nobody should live next to an unsafe, abandoned building. I made a promise to residents that we would get this done and I’m proud today that I was able to keep my promise.”

A long abandoned home on Parker Street in the Forest Hill neighborhood in the process of being razed.

Councilman Anibal Ramos Jr. was joined by Newark City Council colleagues Gayle Chaneyfield Jenkins and Luis Quintana as well as union officials at St. Michael’s Medical Center on Wednesday to denounce a report recommending the hospital be turned into an ambulatory care center.

“We’re going to put our boxing gloves on and we are going to make sure we fight to keep St. Michael’s Medical Center in the community,” Ramos told more than 200 employees who had gathered in the hospitals lobby for a rally.

Newark Councilman Anibal Ramos Jr. speaks at a rally to save St. Michael's Medical Center in Newark.

Beginning November 2012, many residents of the North Ward began complaining to my office about an increase in noise from airplane traffic.

The Forest Hill Community Association (FHCA) organized an Air Traffic Committee, which has been working with an organization called PlaneNoise to study the impact of changing aircraft procedures and the resultant increase in aircraft noise.