Salute to the flag was followed by roll call.

Statement was made that the meeting was held in accordance with the requirements of the Open Public Meeting Act.

Patrick Gillespie: There is a sign in sheet in the back for anyone who would like to get up and make a presentation or speak and address the group, as well as any members of the public, in addition to any representatives of the development community that want to come forward and speak to the Board this evening.

Patrick Gillespie introduced the members of the Board as well as Councilman Green and Councilwoman Panos and Sam Rizzo, Township Planner.

Mr. Gillespie: The reason we are all gathered here this evening is to talk about the Olympia and York Tract. This piece of property - and Russ was kind enough to bring up some newspaper clippings - that talk a little bit about the history of this property, for those of you who remember, the Olympia and York Corporation, which was owned by the Reichman Brothers of Canada, had assembled this huge tract of land in Old Bridge and a proposed massive development project for which they had gotten the general development plan approval in the late 70's, early 80's. For a lot of reasons, the Reichman Brothers went out of business because of real estate holdings they had in other places, and the project was never built. Portions of the property were purchased off by Middlesex County, of which is now known as the John A. Phillips preserve and the John A. Phillips Park. As part of that transaction the Township of Old Bridge purchased portions of the property that were deemed to be used for economic development purposes and for positive economic growth within the community.

We are going to call upon Russ and some of the township professionals, as well, to talk about that particular portion a little more in detail. This piece of property was designated as a redevelopment area by the governing body of the Township of Old Bridge as fitting the legal criteria under the New Jersey State Law, New Jersey constitution of a redevelopment area. The Governing Body then charged the Economic Development Corporation with the responsibilities to prepare a plan for that purpose that we would then submit to the Governing Body and to the Planning Board for them to consider as part of the redevelopment process. That is why we are here this evening. We primarily called this meeting to try and gather input from the development community to talk about what the highest and best possible use of that property is. I will call upon Anne Babineau now to tell you a little bit about what this process is and is not going to be this evening.

Anne Babineau: Good evening everybody. It is a pleasure to be here this evening to talk about what is obviously a very exciting tract. We are really very privileged to have all of you in attendance. I know that the Board is very excited about having this great a response, but it is not that surprising when you pick up today's Star Ledger and you get what is probably one of the most talked about development projects in a long time - the Meadowlands project - you sit back and recognize the size of that site is probably a little less than half of the size of just the developable acreage of this particular site.

In fact, there is terrific opportunity for Old Bridge. As Pat said, Old Bridge is looking for economic development. Economic development can mean an awful lot of things as you all know from your professional lives. Lots of different uses can qualify for economic development and the Municipality, I think, has been really wise in involving two private groups in the development of their redevelopment plan. One of those is this Board right here, which is really a very good representative body that brings together many people from different walks of life, different governmental functions, different private functions, to basically further economic development in Old Bridge. And then this group had the foresight to look out to you, the private development community, for what they hope will be realistic ideas that will make a redevelopment plan more than just someone's pie in the sky scheme rather the hope is that it will truly generate economic development for Old Bridge.

I'd like to begin tonight with just a little description, as Pat said, of what tonight is and what it is not. Normally, my role is to represent you the private sector or whole communities, community entities such as redevelopment agencies or municipal governing bodies that are involved in redevelopment projects. A redevelopment project normally proceeds by declaring an area, small area, large area, it could be anything, declaring the area in need of redevelopment. The status of the declaration in need of redevelopment provides the basis under the state statute to authorize acquisitions of property, if necessary, by condemnation. It also authorizes the redevelopment entity to dispose of that property to private developers under contracts that would require that it be developed a certain way within a certain period of time or else the property will revert to the redevelopment entity.

Likewise, other features are available in conjunction with redevelopment projects once an area in need of redevelopment has been declared, for example: tax abatement is available, long term tax abatement. Normally, when I am involved in a project we start out with an area in need of redevelopment designation and then we proceed to a redevelopment plan. The plan looks a lot like a zoning ordinance and I apologize for those of you for whom this process is familiar, but I find that it is often not familiar to some members of the development community and so I will continue.

The redevelopment plan will specify the uses, density, public facilities, and other things that the municipality would like to see developed on the site. Now, the third step in this process is to actually go out and solicit the private development community to facilitate the actual implementation of that plan by really doing the bricks and mortar aspect of the project, but very often it also includes employing the private development community to actually be responsible for the whole development function, organizing of what gets developed when, etc. That is the normal pattern and why is tonight different? Tonight is different because this municipality has chosen to use a non governmental body - the Economic Development Corporation - to get involved in this process. It's a unique and novel approach for some. It has done very well for towns like New Brunswick who have used entities like Devco for many years to actually implement the New Brunswick redevelopment plan.

But in this particular instance even the Devco model is not necessarily being followed to the letter because the municipality has asked this Board to get involved in actually putting together the redevelopment plan for the site. We start with a site that is very unusual in a sense that it is already municipally owned; there will not be any need for any acquisition of property within the area that is within the boundaries you have looked at on the map, so you have property control already. Secondly, it is unique in a sense that the area in need of redevelopment designation is behind us - it has already been completed. This area has been declared in need of redevelopment. If any of you are familiar with the old term blythed, that's synonymous with an area in need of redevelopment under the new statute. The bottom line is that that is behind us, so all those tools that are available to a redevelopment entity in an area in need of redevelopment are already available to Old Bridge. What remains to be done is the next and very significant step, is to put in place a redevelopment plan and this body has been asked to do the leg work for the governing body and planning board to help put together a proposed plan that will then go through the normal municipal process of being considered by the governing body, referred over to the Planning Board for determination of consistency of the master plan and that kind of thing, and then come back to the governing body for adoption.

So the ideas that you will be good enough to share with the Board tonight will form the basis for the development of that redevelopment plan. After that, and those of you who might be interested in actually building this project, will understand that we are not yet at this stage of selecting developers. After the redevelopment plan is put in place by ordinance then the process of developer selection will proceed immediately thereafter. Now let me say two things about redevelopment plans and developer selection. There is a fair amount of latitude under the statutes for how the Township can proceed with regard to a redevelopment plan. The statutory language is very broad and it enables the municipality to either come up with a very specific redevelopment plan, for example, the one that I've worked on in Hoboken for the waterfront specifies everything down to the nature of the cornices on the buildings, because that is what Hoboken wanted to do on that particular project. Take another plan that I have worked on, such as Jersey City's Newport project, and you will see what you have there looks a lot like a general development plan. It's a mixed use project, it would involve not even a specific percentage of different kinds of uses and it leaves a lot of latitude to the developer to actually establish for example things like location of roads, etc.

So the municipality would appreciate your input regarding such things as whether the plan that ought to be put together by the governing body should be a broad plan that will leave a lot of latitude to the development community or whether a specific plan would be more appropriate. The second thing I want to let you all know with regard to developer selection, is that developer selection can mean a lot of different things as well. We can wind up with one master developer being selected to do the entire project, we can wind up with many developers being involved in doing the project, actually constructing the improvements, we can wind up with the EDC being involved as a redeveloper to perhaps organize a group of developers, all of whom could participate in the project with perhaps EDC being responsible for organizing the infrastructure development that would precede individual parcel development. So there again, the Board would very much like to hear your recommendations regarding whether you think that you would be well advised to go in the direction of one developer, many developers or something in between.

Also, I should say, that even if the municipality decides to go in the direction of one master developer, the redevelopment statute provides plenty of latitude for that one master developer to bring other sub developers in as part of the project, and I cite there the example of West New York. Their waterfront project, down by the Hudson River, is a project of Roseland Development; whom I think is supposed to be here tonight. That project is not really completely being done by Roseland Development, they brought in other partners such as Hovnanian for the commercial piece of the project and that is also within the scope of what can be done here. You can have one master developer and then other developers working on piece parts of the project, perhaps bringing to the table different areas of expertise for different portions of this large site. Again, we are looking for your input.

Lastly, and probably most importantly, I think that the municipality is really interested in your suggestions for what you think would be the highest and best use for the project. It is certainly a site that is well located in our very populated section of New Jersey, it's wetlands characteristics have sometimes been looked upon as a challenge, but I like to think at those as a positive opportunity because it does provide an awful lot of ability to have a sense of open space in a project that could, in fact, be fairly sophisticated and fairly intense and certainly the most important thing is that what we want are marketable uses, and that is really where you come in and we very much welcome the opportunity to hear from you. So enough of me, I am here tonight to answer your questions, as the evening goes on there will be some opportunity to do that. I feel comfortable that I can deal with most process questions that you raise and I will introduce Russ who will talk about the site.

Russell Azzarello: What we do have is the original general development plan back in 1980. If you look at that and you look at what the outline is you will see that it is pretty close to what our commercial plan was back then. So Olympia and York, when they were planning their development, had an obligation under our ordinance to give us some commercial entity as part of their general development plan. When the Township of Old Bridge took the land and the County acquired their land, which is known as the John A. Phillips preserve, the Township of Old Bridge took that piece that we originally planned to have for economic development and commercial use and said let's continue to do that, and that is why we now have that property.

As a description of the property, for those of you who are familiar with this part of the State, Highway 9 comes straight down here and Highway 18 comes around this way. Texas Road goes there and the property sits in that area. So the intersection of 9 and Texas is the critical intersection, and I have copies of this map right here, which is the topo side, and I have a smaller version which just gives you the location. In addition, through the help of our Engineering Department, we have put together what was the former LOI that we had from the original developer. That sits up there. We do not have any copies of those. However, once tonight's meeting is over my business cards are on the table and I would ask you to contact me for the materials that you might need and we will see how we can provide those details. There might be a nominal monetary cost for us to provide those copies.

I ask John Vincenti and Sam Rizzo if they'd want to add anything to the description of the property. It basically is wet to the tune of 40-50%. There is a lot of up lands in the middle. It does border on two major highways: 9 & 18. It's a great location, and it does border in the back and is contiguous to some residential areas like Pleasant Valley Road, some parts of Texas Road and Marlboro Road. I say great location because those of you that are familiar with the New Jersey patterns of traffic, as you come North from what I consider the greatest work force that New Jersey possesses, is anything south of the Raritan River. Just turn on 101.5 or any other news channel in the morning to hear about the bottleneck at the Cheesequake Toll. We provide the ability to not have to cross that bridge. We have probably one of the greatest parcels of land that we could locate for business development that could attract a work force. Not only the work force from 60,000 people in Old Bridge Township, but the work force south of us like Lakewood, Jackson, Bricktown and Toms River. You just offer these people an opportunity not to have to cross that bridge and you've got a work force that you can bring forward. And we all know what we suffered in New York City with the tragic losses of a year or so ago, major corporations are considering back office operations in New Jersey, but, believe it or not, a lot of firms are starting to come into South Jersey to better access the more suburban communities and recognizing that we are the first major Township with sizeable land when you come south over that bridge. The first place you hit is South Amboy and then Sayreville, but when you look at Old Bridge and what it has to offer in the way of great highways, Garden State Parkway access, Turnpike entrance right up the road on Route 18, Highway 9, we are a pretty attractive community.

So the purpose of you folks being here, the private development community, is to give us some thoughts, give us some ideas. If we are saying we think the color should be green, when quite frankly the real marketable color out there is orange, we have to know that. We have our own dreams, we have our own visions as to what we would like to see there. We have talked among members of our Board for a Hotel and Conference Center; we still think that is doable. We'd like to know that that is a vision you might share. We think office space is an offering. You might say that is a tough market right know. We think retail has a place, you might say that's a good idea or you are surrounded by Freehold, East Brunswick and other areas that you are competing with. So you know what the market is, you guys are out there doing this everyday. We ask for this input to get the best marketing plan and the plan that is going to make the greatest revenue productions for Old Bridge Township. So, with that I will give the mike back to Pat.

Patrick Gillespie: It is important to us that we hear from all of you in terms of what the private sector or what the market is really going to produce for this property. I do want to mention that we are going to leave the record open in terms of anyone who wants to submit a written comment or a written plan or any written materials after having this evenings' meeting and having had a chance to review the topo maps and other materials that we provided tonight. Anyone who wants to submit that to Russ as the contact person here in town hall on behalf of the Economic Development Corporation, we are going to leave that written part of the process open until January 1. I also want to recognize Reggie Butler, Council President. Before we get to members of the development community, I wanted to also state that this meeting is a regularly scheduled and advertised meeting of the Economic Development Corporation. Other people here who are not representing developers or development interests, members of the public in general who would care to comment at this time, we are keeping a record of this. Board members and myself may ask you questions. If you don't feel comfortable about answering any of the questions that is fine, just tell us. This is not a tribunal, we are not going to subject anybody to cross examination. We do want to hear your input. Is there anyone who would like to speak and address the group in terms of what they think is an important feature of our redevelopment plan, an important feature of the site, anything that they feel comfortable sharing with us in this setting?

Mitchell Newman - Senior Vice President, SGS Communities - I very much appreciate the opportunity to address the Corporation tonight. We are a residential developer, the New Jersey Division of DR Horton. DR Horton is a national homebuilder. The fourth largest builder in the country. We see this as a tremendous opportunity not just for economic development but for prosperity in the Township. One of the uses that we think would be an excellent component for the site would be for age restricted or active adult housing. We haven't taken the time yet to go do a formal study of the property and come up with a formal concept plan, but this is our thinking as to what might be a fantastic addition to development of the site.

Kevin Calogera: Just out of curiosity, is this strictly on residential or do you have commercial and are you prepared to have a mixed use?

Mitchell Newman: We would certainly be prepared to have a mixed use on site and that is the first thing I was going to say is just using generalities, if the property is 500 acres and if 40-50% is wetlands which nets 250 acres, I would like to propose that residential development be allocated to a portion of that. Is that 50%, 40% or 60%? I don't know. So maybe this is premature but I want you to understand that at least from the perspective of this developer, part of your consideration can be a residential component and I would like to show you how we think that could work.

Kevin Calogera: That's fine. Thank you.

Mitchell Newman: I'll keep this brief. SGS has residential developments around New Jersey. What we envision for this property is an active adult community, very simply said that is age restricted - 55 and older, although our marketing department tells me that is not the proper way to say it - it's 55 or better. We propose what we call a Village Grande concept. I want to show some of the features that we would like to bring to Old Bridge in this single family community. We like for our communities to have open space mixed throughout the site. We like to keep open space behind as many homes as possible so you don't have back-to-back homes, so that everyone has a chance for an open space component either in their rear yard or side yard. We also like to create centers for recreation. Of course, we have the fantastic club house, the outdoor pool, the indoor pool, the tennis courts, the Bocci courts, the putting green and all that, but in select locations we will put a trellis with a water fountain. It becomes a lifestyle. A lifestyle of recreation a lifestyle of friends getting to know one another and a fantastic environment. That is just a brief overview of some of the attributes we like to see in a development we'd love to see here.

This is just a rendering of what a club house would be like that we build in another community. It adds a recreation component that keeps the community enjoying the lifestyle that becomes the central point of a housing opportunity. Very quickly I will show you some models. They range from 2000 to 2,500 sq. ft., 2 car garage, 2-3 bedrooms, a ranch style house. Kids are not permitted in an age restricted community but sometimes they visit. The grand kids visit. It is not a step down by any means. It may be a little smaller than the typical four bedroom colonial that someone is moving down from, but it is single family lifestyle in an age restricted community. There is an economic factor to this also. There is a tax benefit to age restricted. I can tell you from my experience in this type of community, say 350 homes, with this recreation component, you can see on average every year $1.5 million dollars in tax revenue to the Township. So there is an economic development factor to it. We'd love to bring this opportunity to Old Bridge.

Patrick Gillespie: Creating that sort of a life style with this active adult community, would that include commercial amenities? Does your firm have experience and have you done it in other similar type communities?

Mitchell Newman: In other situations, we are a residential developer, but we typically will join venture with a commercial or non residential developer and what we do is we create a center because you have a housing opportunity and relatively close, within walking distance, you have a retail and office component. People can walk to that component, whether it is the dry cleaners and the bagel store or Foodtown, anything works fantastic. Also, while we call this age restricted, that does not mean they are not working. Typically, people that are going to live in an active adult community aren't coming from North Jersey or Brooklyn or South Jersey. It is right where the development is. We typically see that the people living in this type of community are from a 10 - 15 mile radius. They live in town, they like the restaurants, they like their doctors, they like the library, they like living near their kids and grand kids. So they want to stay in town but they don't want their big home with their big yard. They want a maintenance free living. What you are describing and what you are planning, that's the home run.

Patrick Gillespie: What is your sense of the market conditions for age restricted in this part of New Jersey?

Mitchell Newman: In Middlesex County, Southern Middlesex County, the market conditions continue to be fantastic and we would think they would even if our economy took a slide. This type of housing is always going to be in demand. Typically the people that are buying this type of housing, again, already own a home and they are in a sense stepping down, although I do not think that is a fair characterization to use the word down. Their house is paid off and they are financially capable of making this type of move, in this economy for sure and in other economies. Our commitment to this type of housing in Old Bridge is already evident. In fact, we are before your Zoning Board seeking site plan approval for a similar active adult community but with condominiums and that is a slightly different active adult community only because as a condominium you see a slightly older active adult. We are very confident that this is the right product for this market.

Patrick Gillespie: Two questions: one, what would be the average assessed value of each unit? What would be the asking price of each unit? And two, if there were to be a commercial or retail space, how much per square foot do you think this portion of the market would generate?

Mitchell Newman: On the first part of it, generally speaking, this home on this type of lots in Middlesex County in Old Bridge should be selling somewhere between $250,000 and $275,000. What that equals in terms of assessed value and how it relates to taxes I will go back to my generalization of $1.5 million a year for the development.

Patrick Gillespie: There was one other person who wanted to speak, please come on up.

Jim Kraft: I represent the largest home builder in America which is the Pulte Corporation and our Dell Web division is internationally recognized as the finest provider of active adult housing in America. I also represent the finest assisted living company in America as a separate client and therefore I represent the go-gos of the senior population as well as the slow-gos, and in this area we are currently under construction with an active adult Dell Web community in Franklin Township that is a combination of single family detached plus multi-story developments. In terms of assisted living, we've done it surrounding Old Bridge in East Brunswick and Marlboro and Middletown.

I am not here to pitch the Pulte Home Corporation as the right buyer for this particular piece of property. What I am here to stress, as per your instructions, is that this community has a wonderful and fantastic opportunity to create the city of the future. It is nothing less than that. Your opportunity here, with a very well located piece of property, with infrastructure in place - you have sewer capacity, you have water, or at least it is going to be here because if it's not you are not going to be able to develop this property. You know you have something that a lot of developers very much want. The reason why they want it is because the market is terrific. But for you to do this as one thing and not another you would be missing an opportunity. This is the challenge that I would like to put forth to you. Go in other parts of the world and you don't have to physically travel because of the Interne. Right now you can go on to the web site of, for instance, Celebration Florida. If you look at Celebration Florida you would see a mixed use community that has been called by Urban Land magazine the finest community anywhere. That was a community that was built in a swamp, and right now you can go into Celebration Florida and you can see the mixed use. You can see the homes within walking distance of the shopping area, the homes that are near to schools. If you don't want schools and the burdens, you can gear this community entirely to an active adult and inactive adult population and it would still be extremely popular.

What I would love to see you do is study the successful cities of the future. The cities, for instance, Celebration, for instance, Columbia, Maryland which was a planned city. You look at the Urbine Ranch in California, you look at some of the other big developments that have been done in Texas, you see some of the big multi faceted linked communities. Go into the website for the country of Singapore. If you go into Singapore you would see a community that was planned beautifully. The kind of planning that you have the opportunity, with a blank piece of paper, that can be developed. You can come up with great ideas by seeing what people in other parts of the country and other parts of the world have done. From that learning experience, you will be guided by what makes sense. You will see some of the mistakes that were made at Celebration Florida, and there is many of them. People have written books about them. You don't want to make those same mistakes.

You might think that let's have a Celebration with all the cutesy little stores, maybe that is not what you should have because what Americans really want is a Walmart. Maybe you should have the retail component of nothing more than a Walmart and a couple of other accessory stores. You are going to come to that conclusion and those conclusions are going to guide the future for this project. I just hope that the future will allow this to be developed in a way that you will be very proud of the outcome. The outcome is going to be a very successful project by default. We would love to have 250 acres that we could just develop and put "another adult community on" but it would be more successful if it would be an adult community next to shopping, next to good shopping, next to a hotel, next to an office building. If it's an office building you are going to want people around that office building so it just doesn't become a ghost town after 5:00 p.m. These are all of the urban planning challenges that you are going to have and your eyes are going to be open to the challenge by seeing what people have done successfully in other parts of the country and other parts of the world. Thank you.

Patrick Gillespie: Are there any questions from any members of the Board? Anybody have any questions? So, Jim, you think that the market conditions here could sustain office space, retail. Is a housing component required as part of those things or could we sustain commercial, office, industrial or other things absent any sort of residential development? Or, how do you view this mix, does it have to be a mix?

Jim Kraft: If you would say this is a property that is available to the highest bidder, on something that we will approve, you being the planning, zoning board, approving it for something. The answer is sure, it could be approved for a single use, very easily. On 250 acres we are doing that in Franklin Township, but you would be missing an opportunity. An opportunity of taking advantage of a major intersection. It might be terrific for a shopping mall, but if it is done just as a 1970's vintage shopping mall or a 1980's vintage shopping mall, like the one in Freehold, the one down in Freehold, everyone has to drive there. What's wrong with the idea that has been fostered in many parts of the country and many parts of the world to take the old stand alone, East Brunswick shopping malls, for instance, and have a residential component next to it. Have the ability that people turn that into their community by being able to walk there and not drive. That does a lot of things for your community. It keeps traffic down, it makes the office building that is next to the residential, that's next to the shopping, a more vibrant life.

It doesn't necessarily turn it into a city, because what you are going to have because of the wetlands constraints that you have here, it's going to require open space next to residential. So you are never going to turn this into Queens or Brooklyn, it's never going to be that dense. You have the opportunity here of doing something special. That is what I would just urge you to look at.

Kevin Calogera: I was just curious, if you would indulge me, if we could get a feel from the audience - how many feel that only a commercial aspect would work, how many feel there has to be only residential, how many feel there might be a mixed use. I'd also like to get a consensus of how many of these builders are commercial versus how many are strictly residential to find out what kind of audience we have.

Patrick Gillespie: Well, we can see from the list of people that signed up beforehand, again, there was a mixture. We can show you the original list of people that were contacted to show you who we were actually pitching it to. At this point, I think what we want to do is that if there are people who don't want to speak, who have competitors here obviously, we want to preserve that competitive environment and encourage you to submit written plans. So, rather than have anybody tip their hand in terms of what they are proposing, that might be a more advisable way to go.

Anne Babineau: I think Pat's point about the list tonight is a very valid one, which is that we really have a mix in the room of residential/commercial developers. I think that if we are going to make a little progress tonight we need to get more than just two of you talking to us. We could maybe start it off with a fairly open ended question for any of you who would like to address it. This is an interesting thesis, that the site looks like it would do very well if we were to propose a mixed use project. For those of you in the audience who are residential or office, I just throw that question out. Would you prefer to see this plan developed along the lines that would afford you the opportunity to be in the context of a mixed use site or would you tend to prefer a more single use or two use project? (Majority raised their hand for mixed use)

Jim Kraft: I would like to go on the record and say to the municipality as a seller of property, that the parts are going to be worth a lot more than the whole, and from a selling standpoint you would be crazy to just give the keys to a developer and that developer then parcels them off. If you come up with a nice master plan and could sell lots and blocks with building permits available very quickly, without the necessity of having a lengthy approval process, with a reasonable variance process from that, just in case you didn't contemplate a particular use, you are going to achieve a much higher value and that is one of the motives that you should have from the very beginning.

Patrick Gillespie: So let me restate what you said. You think we should encourage, as opposed to assigning this all to one single builder/redeveloper, that if we better plan and allow for a variety of uses that we could then get a multiple number of developers involved. Just a show of hands of people who might agree with that.

Patrick Gillespie: I think it might also be fair before we continue, you mention about the availability of utilities and that is an issue that we should probably mention to everyone and I don't know if Sam or John Vincenti want to help me out here. One of the reasons why the property was declared in need of redevelopment is that there could potentially be a utility access problems.

John Vincenti: I don't believe it is an insurmountable issue. However, there is certainly an off site utility component to it.

Sam Rizzo: I think that is sufficient. The Utilities Authority has a plan for this area.

Patrick Gillespie: I think it is important though that you are all aware of that factor and that issue. Any other questions from anybody?

Is there anyone here who is purely from a commercial office or retail development group that would care to share with us what their thoughts and views at this preliminary juncture might be?

Mayor Cannon: I just wanted to clarify something regarding the infrastructure, because I just want to make clear that there is water and sewer capacity and availability. It is just a matter of getting it to the site. I don't want anyone to think there is a capacity problem, it's just a matter of getting the pipes laid together to the site, which you know is an expense but it's minuscule compared to the dollars you can make.

Patrick Gillespie: Another question from Russ. Is there anyone here who has an idea regarding a hotel conference center they want to share with us?

Jim Kraft: I'd just like to answer that question. That business, right now, for the next two years, is dead as a doornail. In two years when you come up with a plan that says we have a site at the intersection of 9 and 18 that's available for a hotel/conference center and, oh by the wa,y it's going to be next to an office building, next to a shopping center, believe me somebody, Hilton's going to be there, Radisson is going to be there, they are going to come. You just can't do it now because nobody is going to come to your door and say, by the way I'm Hilton and I want to put a hotel there.

Russell Azzarello: Well, I think this is a 500 acre site of property, and we don't expect this thing to be developed by next week, so I agree with you. And that is what I'd like to point out to the audience. There are those of you that probably represent residential and some commercial or maybe do both. What we are asking you to consider is if you think that we could proceed with a plan that incorporates that particular use that was just mentioned. If a high tech office park has some merit. Quite frankly, I am the Economic Development Director, I talk to businesses all day long - they tell me that that market is dead. You don't have to be a genius - look at the stock market to see what the high tech world has done. Look at what Telecom has done and look at where they are with their stocks. But on the same token, it is cyclical, and it is going to turn around. Should we be prepared? Should we get ourselves prepared so that we do have an office component that can attract the jobs and the people? But we want to do this with a plan that is salient, with a plan that has merit in regard to what the private developer community sees. Because when we put forth the plan, we want something that is going to have some basis, and I have shared in what was said earlier in towns like Las Calinas, Texas.

Your office buildings are then backed up by some higher density homes and the deeper you get away from the office buildings, the bigger the homes get. And, quite frankly, it's because these people commute to those buildings. They don't get on super highways and spend 45 minutes to two hours going to NYC; they literally drive five minutes and they are at work. I've seen it work and I have worked in them, and I know that they do have merit - but what we are saying is that we have 500 acres, 250 of which we can definitely maneuver around. It's kind of like a little city within a city so to speak, but we need that kind of input from you folks.

Patrick Gillespie: Before we move on I just want to recognize that we have Dennis Maher here who is a Councilman at Large for the Township. Good to see you.

Before I go back to the Board, Councilman Greene had his hand raised. Did you want to add anything?

Richard Greene: I just want to encourage everybody who is here to really get back to the Board. This piece of property, as Russ mentioned, has a long history to it. It actually goes back to the late 70's. Firstly, I feel that whatever happens there it is going to really affect the tone of 18 and Route 9. If you come down 18 southbound there is virtually nothing except the WAWA now. The same is partly true for Route 9. So whatever happens there is crucial to the development of Old Bridge. I want to point out one thing that I felt I would be remiss if I didn't say it. We have always looked at that as industrial development. To me maybe it's a hotel, maybe it's office buildings, maybe it's an office park. I'd be hard put to consider housing. We have another area over in town where the Township is spending millions of dollars to keep that open space, to keep it from having houses built. Not too far from that on Cottrell Road we have people fighting about apartment housing, senior housing. They would rather put low density housing there. So,
I feel remiss, or to tell you, or to walk away tonight with the feeling that there is going to be housing there. Maybe that will happen, but you are going to have to convince me very hard.

Patrick Gillespie: I am going to call on Pete, who is the Vice Chair of the Corporation.

Peter Davis: I'd like to take the opposite side of what the Councilman just said. I think we are here for you to challenge us on what belongs there. Then it's up to us to decide. The Councilmen will have the final say, but as has been said before, we have been given the charge to come up and go back to the town and the Council and recommend what we as a Board believe is the best economic use of this property that has sat there for years and will sit there for years if people let it sit there. All we can do as a Board is our best. That is what we intend to do. That is why we've come to you. You are the professionals. I know a lot of you, I am in the banking business. Several guys aren't going to stand up and say this is my plan, that's my plan, because that is not the way it works. What we encourage you to do though is to try and do what the members of this Board are trying to do, and that is to think outside the box. We have presented you the facts, we have laid it out there. Does it make sense the way it's laid out?. We have powers of condemnation, we are not going to condemn the whole town, 'cause that's impossible. But I would hope that the Council members keep an open mind, otherwise take us off the committee now and let's walk away.

Patrick Gillespie: We had a debate about what pre-conditions, if any, we should put on this solicitation to the private development community and I think the Board felt very strongly, with some dissent (there was minority opinion) that we should put little, if any, pre- conditions upon this stage of the process. So again, we want to encourage everyone to submit a written plan for us and give us something to chew on and as Pete had said, to challenge us.

I am going to go to Councilman Testino, then to Greg and then back to the Mayor and then Larry.

Councilman Testino: Well, Pete said a lot of what I wanted to say, but just so you know, my mission that I gave charge to this Board and I will restate it, was to decide what the highest and best use was; I didn't give any limitations. When it comes back to the Council and starts getting in a political arena, sorry Rich, but for now, we want to hear what you have to say about this property, that's my perspective. Not speaking from the EDC but speaking from my Council seat, as I understand it this has to be driven by the market and as a professional and a businessman I want to know what the market is saying and that is why we asked you here tonight. To tell us yes we would prefer to see a nice hotel, we would prefer to see some economic rateables there besides housing, but we do understand that there are some hurdles to overcome here and that's that water and sewer do have to be brought to the site.

We have to understand what component the Township is going to handle on that, what component the MUA is going to have to handle on that. What other things this site needs in order to be developed. You should talk to the Township Engineer, the Township Planner if you are interested in making a proposal, and I encourage you to get over and see the people and the professionals at the MUA. We want this site developed. The Township does not want to hold on to it the rest of its life. This was never thought that the Township would hold onto it for anything other than economic development. That does not exclude any uses that you may be here tonight thinking about because what the ultimate exclusion is going to be, is what this Board votes on to send up to the Council and what the Council votes on, and there is a whole process, as you might understand it, with the redevelopment statute. I would not limit your thoughts and your ideas here tonight, although you should understand that there are certain political components that's going to be grappling with whatever plan that you do submit.

There is an anti-housing component that's in the Township and I wouldn't say that I wasn't part of it, but I am coming to this with an open mind. I would hope that all my colleagues come to it with an open mind and that if you have a plan that will make this property develop, we want to hear it and don't think we are excluding it.

Greg Matzel: I am not prepared tonight to put forth a proposal either, however, I would like to urge the Board to consider one issue when it comes to single developers versus multiple developers. Speaking as somebody who has developed apartments, retail locations and obviously one of the largest residential developers in the state. The concern that I have in your property is making sure that you come up with a package that is feasible in totality. You have significant issues here with the property, forget about uses, various uses. Deciding physical constraints in terms of sewer, water, the amount of infrastructure that we need you to put in in order to develop this particular project. I would tell you that I think what I would consider your best interest is to select a master developer. The reason for this is there is continuity. You have an individual or a group that is going to commit developing the entire project not hit and run. They are not gonna come in and say I want to do this residential portion, and all of a sudden three years later you are standing there saying where are all the office buildings that you promised us. Where's the hotel conference center that you said was going to get built? Oh, we don't do that, you have to find somebody else. So, I urge the Board to give stronger consideration regardless of the uses to the proposals you receive that involve the totality of the project as opposed to individual pieces. There is going to be tremendous economic burden, a developer is going to have to come in and bear these expenses, and they are not going to want to do it unless they know they control the project.

The last thing I want is for developers to develop a portion, and I have a guy next door to me developing another portion, I am bringing sewers in, and he looks and says I am not bringing them in right now because sales aren't as good as I thought. So now your portion stalls. When you look at a lot of the larger redevelopment plans, you will find most of the municipalities do pick a single master developer. And that is one of the single greatest reasons why, if a developer then goes out and chooses to pick sub developers, or do all of it himself, you really shouldn't concern yourself with that because I think the overall goal of the Board is to get a project that is 100% feasible and gets developed in a reasonable time frame. I don't think the Board's desire here is to get sold a bill of goods where someone comes in a promises you things on a portion of the site that you want to hear, that you want to see done, and then after he does the portion that was most marketable, you are left sitting with what they cannot market. That's the one direction that I would urge you to take a look at regardless of the uses.

Patrick Gillespie: You're saying that for efficiency and for accountability the Township should consider one master developer or one master redeveloper for the site.

Greg Matzel: Absolutely. In my experience it's always been you put multiple developers together, you wind up with more finger pointing and more issues. You want one accountable group that you are going to be dealing with and then its issues to work everything out. He doesn't have to point to somebody and say they didn't do this or I didn't know they were going to do that. On a scale from a project this size you, it may eliminate some developers who will turn and say I don't do office or I don't do retail and my interest is if we can part it out 100 acres of this and turn it into for sale market rate units, gee, I ‘m interested in that. I am just telling you be wary and make sure that whatever you conclude the single greatest insurance policy in my mind that you will have as the overall plan is developed, is by getting a single overall developer.

Anne Babineau: Speaking not necessarily independently, but for the organizations that you represent, if we could have a show of hands on just that one question. Do you think on the perspective of a site of this size that we would be best advised to be looking for one master developer or a series of developers managed by the EDC or the redevelopment entity or some governmental entity? Who would favor one master developer? Does that mean that the rest of you favor an opportunity for a variety of developers? You're not far enough down the road yet.

Same question with regard to mixed use. I mean it's obvious that we could dictate the uses with an awful lot of latitude being left to the private development community to decide where those uses should be, what the mix should be. How many would favor mixed use for this site as opposed to say one use or two uses? That looks like about the majority. A good bit of this site does not have highway frontage. For those of you who think that that is significant, how many think of that as an asset of this site? How many think of the lack of highway frontage as a detriment? We would welcome you to answer these questions in writing or with a concept plan after tonight, but, frankly, highway frontage is something that suggests itself when you look at the map. Some people have said to us that they think that if you are going to do a project of this size, highway frontage is not the most significant think. The project itself is going to be a destination and it is not like a drive by Walmart site. It's a much larger project and it may create a destination in and of itself and the frontage may not be an issue.

We'd like to hear from you regarding that issue, whether or not you think that highway frontage is an issue. I mention that because someone mentioned before that we have condemnation power. The municipality has condemnation power but we really need to change the nature of the site in order to use condemnation power. Right now the area in need of redevelopment is limited to the area that is within the boundary that you see on the map. If you think that we need more access through picking up other portions of property around the site, we need to hear about that as well. There has been a fair amount of discussion tonight about utilities. In my experience, and I guess I should say that I have been doing redevelopment for about 20 years all over New Jersey from urban to suburban sites, you name it, I've hardly ever been involved in a redevelopment project that did not include bringing utilities to the site from the cross site location. I certainly don't think that this is that different than any other project.

Lastly, I'd like to throw out a questions in terms of something that I alluded to when we started tonight. Redevelopment plans can be really specific, my Hoboken example, or they can be really general. Obviously that is an issue that's got to be dealt with at the Council level because they may have some pretty specific ideas as people in Hoboken did about the fact that there is no way they want to see any reflective glass in this development. That is one end of the spectrum. The other end of the spectrum is a very broad open ended description of uses, densities, public improvements, recreational sites, but with a fairly broad open ended vocabulary. Now, in my experience, when I've been involved in jobs that have involved several developers working on a site, one of the only phase that anybody ever stepped up to the plate was willing to develop, let's say the hotel, was because they knew that they had a conference center across the street and there were redeveloper agreements in place. Even with multiple developers.

But that kind of development necessarily dictates a very specific redevelopment plan because you really need to know is it going to have a hotel, are you going to a conference center, and you can't take a chance that the redevelopment plan is not going to require the uses that feed one another. So, we could use some input on that issue as well. If you think it would be best advised to have a strong, tight redevelopment plan with a lot of dictates, let us know about that. If you prefer, you think what is going to be more marketable for you is something that would afford you the latitude to make decisions about where things should go and really control things like design, from the perspective of what you think is marketable, let us know about that as well.

Mayor Cannon: I just wanted to make some comments. I don't want to get into a combative discourse here. Having been Mayor now, I am in my eleventh year, and when the County approached us about buying this property, we did it in concert as a team effort with the understanding that this land would be preserved for economic development because I'm sure as most of you know, Old Bridge is primarily a residential community and that we are trying to balance out our community by getting in more purely economic development rateables. We certainly have the population base to support it. We are the third largest community in Middlesex County, the 22nd largest in the state of New Jersey. You can't get a better location. We are a very popular destination as far as people wanting to come and live here, and what we are trying to do is to bring an economic component that will help not only with the tax base, but bring more services to our community.

We are a community of 60,000 people that have no movie theater, no hotel, no conference center. We lack certain basic services and consumer goods which we have to go out of town to buy. There are services that are needed in this community and jobs. There are a lot of people who would welcome the opportunity to be able to work and live in our community so the idea of this going back was that this would be purely an economic component, and that is what we need in our community and that is why it was so important to myself and the Council at that time to preserve this acreage so that we wouldn't lose that economic base, recognizing that the rest of the property was going to be developed primarily as residential and that certainly we welcome the opportunity for it to be set aside as open space and as a county park.

It is my feeling very strongly, that my priority is to have it, whether it's hotel, conference center, office building, other components that I am probably obviously not even thinking about, but I am certainly not supportive of a residential component. I know we have to be realistic, I know we have to understand what the market is out there, but it works in other communities that have much less than we do, and I just think you have the wherewithall to tell us how we can make it work, what will work and be realistic about it and put the housing component aside. We have a lot of residential going on in the community, we have areas that are still zoned residential. This is zoned economic development and we are very flexible with zoning and obviously with the redevelopment we can accommodate a lot of different components and make it work so we have the highest and best use.

Jim Kraft: To comment directly about your comments about an office park. The day of the suburban office park stand alone is dead. They want to live near where they work. They want conveniences near those offices. They want shopping. They want someplace they can walk at lunchtime and the fact of the specific market I represent, which is the senior housing market, please don't think that that's not one of the best economic indicators that there is because they stay in your community, they are the wealthiest people in your community that have accumulated wealth, and they will spend it here. That is the finest economic generator that you can have as a community especially when they don't have kids to put in the schools.

Patrick Gillespie: There are no constraints on the site other than the wetlands. There is no contamination, no remediation. I don't think the site was ever used in any sort of an industrial capacity. The wetlands is an issue that we have already disclosed.

Before we wrap up I want to stress the fact that we are still going to accept written submissions until the end of the year. Larry and then Kevin and unless there is anyone else who is dying to make a comment, I am going to adjourn the meeting. We are also going to hang around for anyone who wants to ask questions informally.

Larry Redmond: First of all I want to thank everyone for coming tonight. I had hoped that tonight was going to be a night where Old Bridge put it's best foot forward and I hope we have accomplished some of that. I did not want to get into what goes where and any of that. We heard from a couple of people, I had hoped we would hear from more and hopefully that will come in the future. I just want to say that I am encouraged by the number of people that showed up tonight to listen. I think you got a feel for some of the history of the property and certainly if there is anything that anyone out there has to ask of the Council or of the Economic Development Corporation, I think we are all accessible. We would be more than willing to be helpful in moving this plan along and I don't want anyone to be discouraged by some of the things they heard about utilities, and what we want and don't want. I think we all have the same goal in mind. We want what is best for Old Bridge and sometimes Old Bridge doesn't always come across like that. So I just wanted to leave you with that.

Kevin Calogera: Just briefly, I would like to thank everybody for being here. I think that the site has enormous potential. You do, or I don't think you guys would be here. I think you know you are dealing with a municipality and, because of that as a Councilman myself, I have some differing view. We all may have some differing views, just as I am sure you and your companies will in what to develop there. I know this gentleman from Pulte said he is willing to bring housing in, which would bring people in to fill jobs. As a Councilman, I already have people here that I would like to stay here with jobs. So, I would like to create jobs for our residents to stay here. I think we have a diverse social economic level of employees and being a bedroom community one of the most important things is to stabilize taxes in this town, which you do by increasing commercial rateables and providing good jobs for your residents here. If that can be done precluding any housing, that would be fine with me. If not, I understand that that might be a reality which may have to be incorporated into that. But to those of you who do have the commercial development, I don't want tonight and its presentations to foster an atmosphere that you feel you have to have housing. I don't feel that you have to. Your plan does not have to. Don't go back to your companies and say these guys are looking for housing as part of the component. Just as much as people are saying it's not or it is, it doesn't have to be. I want to thank everybody, if you have any questions, you can direct them to Russ or Patrick or, if not, you can always get one of the Council people involved in economic development also.

Respectfully submitted,

Rose LaFergola

Township of Old Bridge
1 Old Bridge Plaza
Old Bridge, NJ 08857
Main Phone: 732-721-5600