The Future of Bell Labs

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/realestate/commercial/future-takes-shape-for-bell-labs-site.html?_r=0&adxnnl=137935510-rr72QMtMepcp1Lkr0BW1v...

Aerial view of Bell Laboratory Holmdel, New Jersey
en.wikipedia.org

Hello Everyone:

Today we move from post-Hurricane Sandy New York City to Holmdel, New Jersey and the proposed redevelopment of the former Bell Laboratories site. Bell Labs functioned for nearly forty-four years as the research and development facility for Bell Systems. The campus was one of the final projects designed by Eero Saarinen between 1959 and 1961.  Bell labs were responsible for developing the technology that helped usher in the digital age.  The 472-acre (1.91 sq. km.) site has been closed since 2007.  Now, may get a new lease on life.  In August 2013, Somerset Development bought the mirrored glass building and the surrounding property from its former owners, Alcatel-Lucent, for $27 million after the Township Holmdel approved a redevelopment proposal that includes plans for a health care center, residences, hotel, and retail space.

Exterior of Bell Labs building
archpaper.com

The sale of the site concludes a long debate over the fate of the vacant building located in a wealth rural area, just what to do with all 1.9 million square feet of space may prove to be a more difficult task.  The Garden State is already saturated with aging office parks, similar to the Bell Labs site.  A prospective tenant looking to lease space in a large commercial building in Monmouth County has his or her choice of almost 2.53 million square feet of available space to choose from, according to data provided by commercial real estate brokerage firm, CBRE.  The plethora of available space in rural communities, such as Holmdel, is not likely to be filled so quickly as American work habits have changed and companies relocate to urban centers.  It seems that the former Bell Labs campus has fallen victim to its own success.

Interior of Bell Labs
archpaper.com

The research and development, once performed at Bell Labs that helped bring about tablet computers and smartphones, helped untether workers.  The ubiquitous cubicle was no longer necessary.    Somerset Development has commissioned architect Alexander Gorlin to design into the atrium urban amenities such as coffee shop or bank.  However, the building needs more than another Starbucks or P.F. Chang's to support it.  What is just as necessary is a critical mass of commercial tenants to support retail enterprises.  "It's very difficult building for adaptive reuse,"  according to Suzanne Macnow, a broker for CBRE.  "It's set up with this gigantic center area, like the Mall of America in Minneapolis...."

Bell Labs atrium
nj.com

As far back as the thirties, the campus was the research center for AT&T (Atlantic Telephone and Telegraph).  The scientists who worked there were among the first to develop the transistor, cellphones, touch-tone dialing, and fiber-optics communications.  In the process, they amassed seven Nobel Prizes.  The property has been closed in 2007 by Alcatel-Lucent, an off-shoot of AT&T, and the fate of the campus has been up in the air.  At one point, another developer suggested demolishing the building, setting off a maelstrom of architects and scientists who feared the loss of a piece of intellectual and architectural history.  According to James W. Hughes, the dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, "Bell Labs is such a great historical and architectural icon...It's one of the few buildings that I worry about."  Signs of decay at the massive building are quite evident-plastic buckets catch water leaking from the glass roof under which scientists developed satellite communications.  In 2007, Preservation New Jersey named it one of the state's top ten most endangered historical properties.

Horned-antenna satellite
en.wikipedia.org

 "Personally, I find it difficult to drive by it and see it abandoned, I worked there.  My friends worker there," said Janet Jackel , a former Bell Labs physicists.  "You see it as representing the American forward-looking attitudes of the last century, and that's all been abandoned."  The proposed redevelopment plan, which could cost over $100 million, has the potential to transform the campus into a commercial center for Holmdel, a central New Jersey community with a population of 17,000 people.  Homdel has no downtown, most of the town's retail sites sit along the busy Route 35.  The six-story building would house 50,000 of retail space, the town library and a hotel.  The grounds would have pedestrian trails, bicycle paths, and eventually an outdoor exercise complex.  Part of the property is protected wetlands.  Ralph Zucker, the president of Somerset Development promises that the property will be a "...virtual city" with multiple uses.  So many, in fact, that it will have its own identity.

Atrium garden
nytimes.com

The Township of Holmdel hopes the plan will also restore its tax base.  Previously, Alcatel-Lucent paid $5 million in property taxes.  Since the site has been vacant, the tax bill has plunged to $475,000.  Mayor Patrick Impreveduto estimates that the township could gain $7 million in payments in lieu of taxes once redevelopment is completed.  First thing, though, the building needs tenants.  Community Healthcare Associates, a healthcare developer, plans to purchase up to 400,000 square feet of building from Somerset.  Community Healthcare Associates  has plans to build an ambulatory surgical center, an assisted-living facility, medical offices and services.  Finding people interested in buying large luxury homes planned for the site will be a simpler task.  Data provided in August 2013 by Heritage House, Sotheby's International Realty, show that thirty-eight percent of homes on the market in the township listed for over $1 million.

Somerset Development plans to sell half of the land, 237 acres, to Toll Brothers, a luxury home builder. Toll Brothers will build about forty single-family homes with prices beginning at $1 million for a 4,000 square-foot house to $2 million for a square-foot residence on a 2.5 acre lot.  The company also plans to build 185 high-end town homes for residents aged fifty-five and older.  However, the scale of the proposed housing development irritates some of the residents and preservationists who are concerned that it will detracted from pastoral appeal of the land.  "I don't care for an excessive number of residential units that sprawl all over the property," says Ralph B. Blumenthal, a founding trustee of the Friends of Holmdel Open Space.  "They could have accomplished something different that could have been more compact."  Reservations about the Somerset proposal aside, supporters of the building are relieved to see the architectural icon survive.  Michael Calafati, the chair person of the American Institute of Architects New Jersey Historic Resources Committee and an advocate of the property declared, "We're all going to come and go, but these buildings are out legacy."

The opposing views presented by Messrs. Blumenthal and Calafati highlight the sometimes antagonistic relationship between preservation and development.  Mr. Blumenthal questions why a sprawling housing estate is necessary when more compact housing-i.e multi-resident buildings-could provide housing without taking up a lot of open land.  Mr. Calafati seems to take a more romantic view of building.  It is true that people come and go while buildings remain, I wonder if this is the right approach to development of the former Bell Labs property.  Also problematic is attracting retail and commercial tenants.  Holmdel is not near any metropolitan area, thus the ability to attract retail clients, i.e Gap or J.Crew, would be limited.  Therefore, any retail/commercial ventures would have to focus on servicing the employees of the health care facilities and the residents in the immediate area.  The prospect of rehabilitating the former Bell Labs property looks promising but what direction it takes will be the product of both developers and residents concerned with preservation of the site working together.

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