Town centers in plans for fort host towns
Fort re-use vision calls for green industry, open space, housing
BY JENNA O'DONNELL Staff Writer
Three town centers linked by trails and public transportation are envisioned for three local towns following the closure of Fort Monmouth, according to plans unveiled last week.

The Fort Monmouth Economic Revitalization Planning Authority (FMERPA) retained the San Francisco- based consulting firm EDAW Inc. to develop a reuse plan for Fort Monmouth, which was made public on March 19 at Monmouth Regional High School.

EDAW Vice President Tim Delorm presented the plan to an audience of about 300 county residents and officials at the public unveiling and to the press during a briefing one day prior.

"In all three of the communities, there is one thing that's really missing at this point," Delorm said at the press conference, held at FMERPA's offices on March 18. "There's no place that people go on Main Street where they can be entertained, where they can shop, where they can dine and just meet with friends."

The plan incorporates the idea of a town center into each of the boroughs that host FortMonmouth- Oceanport, Eatontown and Tinton Falls.

The town centers would be connected by updated roadways, jitney service and a continuous "blue-green belt" of open space and trails.

The reuse plan also proposes to attract "green industry" companies to corporate parks and open up 450 acres of open space by incorporating clustered development.

"Green is now a rage … but I believe that in 20 years it will be the normative way that buildings are constructed and sites are developed," Delorm said at the public unveiling.

The plan also includes 1,500 units of mixed-income housing, 1.5 million square feet of office space and research and development facilities, two hotels, and the preservation of many of the fort's existing housing and high-tech facilities.

Yet itmay take asmuch as two decades to replace the 5,000 jobs that Fort Monmouth will take with it when it closes and regain the billions of dollars that it pumps into the regional economy.

Planners anticipate that about 40 percent of the plan would be realized within 10 years and stated that they would be trying to attract high-tech companies to occupy the facilities and equipment in the existing Myers and McAfee centers.

The three host towns are being encouraged to look into sharing services and revenues on FortMonmouth lands, which are not well served by current infrastructure, according to Delorm.

"The concept of ratable sharing was introduced as a means of spreading the wealth across the communities," EatontownMayor Gerald Tarantolo explained at the press conference, held at FMERPA's offices in Eatontown on March 18.

"This ratable sharing will treat all of Fort Monmouth as a region where expenses would be arranged in some sort of formula."

Such an arrangement would take into account factors such as education and revenue and attempt tomitigate the effects on the three boroughs.

"The devil is in the details," said FMERPA Chairman Robert Lucky at the press conference.

"The mayors have to lead in this discussion because it is ultimately their communities that are affected," said Frank Consentino, executive director of FMERPA.

Members of the planning team went over historic preservation details, traffic, infrastructure, environmental constraints, andmarket analysis in their presentation, which Delorm went over in seven principles.

The first principle was to decrease density west to east and createmixed-use live, work and leisure centers, Delorm explained, recognizing Oceanport as a more environmentally sensitive area due to its position.

The other principles Delorm explained were to link the centers of three towns by increasing mobility with connected transit such as jitneys and buses to serve the region and the fort; to enhance auto mobility with roadway infrastructure improvements; to combine open space and waterways to create a continuous "blue-green belt;" to create bicycle and pedestrian trails along the connected parks; to remove fort boundaries; and to make use of existing Fort Monmouth assets.

Those assets would be in the people, buildings, technology and infrastructure of the fort. The plan makes use of 50 nonresidential buildings and 98 percent of historic housing within Fort Monmouth.

"This is one of the mostly highly skilled trained work forces probably anywhere in the state, and they are a tremendous resource," Delorm said of the current fort employees.

Planners included statistics that anticipated that some 3,000 of FortMonmouth's 5,000 employees would need jobs after the fort's closure in 2011.

"What we're really after here is the creation of a sustainable technology community at Fort Monmouth," Delorm said at the press conference.

Oceanport saw the realization of about 90 percent of the plan that the borough submitted with planners Clarke Caton Hintz this month, according to Mayor Michael Mahon at a council meeting following the unveiling.

"Oceanport residents have been very active in this process, and it is more important that ever for the community to remain involved," Mahon said in a release.

The borough's 419 acres within Fort Monmouth are slated for 700 units of residential development, a community retail center, a medical and educational campus, the reuse and expansion of the McAfee Center and 229 acres of open space.

The plan for Eatontown's 450-acre share of Fort Monmouth includes a lifestyle town center with 300 units of mixed-income residential housing, a CECOM incubator and offices, space for additional offices and research and development facilities, the preservation of the existing Sun Eagles golf course, and the reuse of an existing building as a municipal complex for the borough.

Additionally, the planners included a possible 150-room hotel and conference center on the golf course, which they thought would be an asset to the corporate parks in the plans.

"My personal reaction is that it reflects a lot of positive features that will impact, fortify and encourage future smart growth for the Borough of Eatontown," said Tarantolo in a release. "I see nothing but good things in Eatontown's future once this plan is implemented."

The 250-acre Tinton Falls portion of the reuse plan preserves the existing childcare and youth centers, but reserves 670,000 square feet to be devoted to office and research and development space when added to the existing Myers Center.

The plans also include a convenience and retail center, 260 units of mixed- income housing, a library and 115 acres of open space.

Mayor Peter Maclearie called the preliminary plan a solid starting point, in a release to the press.

However, this idea deviated significantly from the plan submitted by Tinton Falls planners last year, according to Planning Board Chairman Joel Davies.

"Part of that plan that was adopted by the Planning Board specifically addressed the wants and needs and hopes of the borough of Tinton Falls for the fort property on those 250 acres," Davies said during the public portion of the presentation. "I see tonight the presentation showing 15,000 square feet of retail space being provided for the plan for Tinton Falls in this little shopping center area, but what I don't understand is, the plan that we presented, that we worked on as a community, provided for a more extensive downtown center with mixed usage … I don't understand, why reinvent the wheel without any input from people that already spent a year doing this work?"

Consentino replied that there would be an opportunity to discuss the plan further when FMERPA brings the plan around to borough planning board meetings.

FMERPAand EDAWwill bring the plan before the planning boards of each of the three boroughs at presentations April 21- 25. The Final Redevelopment Plan public presentation is scheduled for Aug. 13, following themunicipal review period and the submission of the Final Redevelopment Plan to the governor in June.

During the press conference, Consentino explained the process through which the fort's 1,126 acres will change hands when it closes in 2011.

For public benefit and homeless purposes, interested parties such as municipalities may submit a Notice of Interest (NOI) that may enable them to acquire property at a discounted rate, he explained. Public benefit requests require a federal sponsorship to move forward.

"The land ultimately is sold by the Department of Defense either to a master developer or individual developers, and the master developer could be any number of different forms," Consentino said.

He added that in the past the local redevelopment authority had become the master developer.

"Clearly history tells us that's one option all the way to one single master developer, a third party coming in and buying the entire plan, and anything in between," Consentino said.

He confirmed that there were many developers interested in buying the fort property, but that no discussions had been held or would be until the appropriate time.

The plan drewmixed reactions fromthe nearly 300 county residents at the March 19 unveiling, and they addressed questions to planners and FMERPA board members after the presentation.

Some residents were concerned that their towns' Notices of Interest (NOI) - requests for space on the fort submitted to FMERPA by towns and organizations - had not been included in the plan, and others were worried about the environmental state of the fort following the closure and how it would be dealt with.

Several wanted to know whether affordable housing would be a part of the plan and if it would help to make up the deficit that all three of the host towns have in their third-round Council onAffordable Housing (COAH) obligation.

Planners from EDAW replied that the Army would be responsible for cleaning contaminated sites and that 25 percent, or 375 units, of the proposed housing would be affordable- to low-income units.

One resident thought that the development seemed like an excellent opportunity for a transit stop and asked if the idea had been explored.

A train station had formerly been included in Oceanport plans but was removed by borough officials and planners after residents raised strong objections.

"It's extensive and ongoing," said Consentino. "I think you will see in the coming plan in iterations that we will address this, but we want to do a very comprehensive review of this with the appropriate agencies before we come forward with [the train station]."

Other residents were positive and hopeful about the plan, particularly where it related to sharing services.

Bob Rumsby, of Oceanport, saw the reuse plan as an opportunity for a better quality of life for residents of the three boroughs.

"I suggest that we look at this as one area, as one entity, where we can consolidate all municipal services, whether it's public works, law enforcement," Rumsby said. "We can build this area to leave a legacy to our children and we can do it now, so let's take advantage of it."