A year ago, skeptics wondered whether it would be another decade before Jersey City finally saw the Martin Luther King Drive Hub. But nowadays on Martin Luther King Drive, the signs are everywhere that it will be here soon.

After years of dreaming, talking, and schmoozing, Omar Barbour says the Martin Luther King Drive HUB -- and with it the southern neighborhoods of Jersey City -- are coming back to life.

The Martin Luther King Hub has long been a side dish in local political rhetoric -- an obligatory part of the argument that there's more to the city's economic renaissance than the yuppie residential and financial colonies on the waterfront. But while the politicians have spoken in grandiose terms about a new commercial center for southern Jersey City, the Martin Luther King Hub has been little more for Bergen-Lafayette and northern Greenville residents than an optimistic billboard standing over a patch of muddy ground. A year ago, it wasn't uncommon to find the sign defaced with black spray paint declaring: "LIES."

It's only been in recent months that Barbour, the executive director of Martin Luther King Neighborhood Development Corporation, hasn't had to ask visitors to use their imaginations as he takes them on tours of the development area.

"Well, people don't believe in it because they've been waiting for so long," Barbour said as he stopped by a field of weeds and wildflower. "But once they see the brick and mortar going up, they'll turn around."

The Hub is a roughly six-block area around Ege Avenue and King Drive, and, as Barbour envisions it, will be centered around a mall that will include 450 parking spaces, the area's only '"full-service" supermarket, a bank, a Ponderosa restaurant, a 27,000 square-foot post office and about 45,00 square-feet of retail space. The corporation has spoken with 10 or 11 retail chains, including national companies, about opening stores, Barbour said. All three of the current lessors are black retailers living in Jersey City, Tom Ahern, executive director of the Jersey City Economic Development Corporation pointed out.

Just north of the shopping center, the development corporation has taken over and renovated a block of two-family rowhouses, priced at $100,000 to $110,000 and targeted toward middle-income families. Barbour said he hopes to similarly rehabilitate other buildings around the center and make them into affordable housing for a total of about 30 lower- and middle-income apartments. Even the sidewalks have been redone to include brick detailing and tall, faux-antique lampposts. And to make way for the parking lot and supermarket, the corporation had to move more than 100 families and rebuild the Gospel Temple Church of God in Christ and a firehouse a couple of blocks away.

It's a grand plan, and it carries a commensurate price tag. There's been roughly $40 million invested in the Martin Luther King Hub, including grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the state of New Jersey, Barrbour said. Construction on the retail center alone has cost what Barbour called "a pretty hefty $17 million."

But the ultimate goal, supporters say is worth it.

"My interest is recycling the community," Barbour said.

Much of Bergen-Lafayette and the nearby parts of Greenville have been wracked by the worst crime in the city for decades. In the 1960s and 1970s, flourishing commercial strips drained away with a suburban-bound exodus of middle class and ill-conceived urban planning. Since then, the predominantly black neighborhood has been home to vacant, garbage-strewn lots, deserted buildings and sporadic drug-related shootings.

"The hope is to make the area clean and safe and hope that flowers grow, not weeds," Barbour said. "Once people are in the area, hopefully some private investment will follow. Wise businessman will be able to see there's a lot of people here and they're shopping, so why not put a flower shop here, a pizzeria?"