By: Purvi Desai
UPPER FREEHOLD Superintendent Robert Smith said on Monday that the Board of Education is looking at a site on Breza Road the same one that a New York company is seeking to build a warehouse on as an alternative to the proposed middle school construction site on Ellisdale Road.
"We authorized our architect to do a preliminary exploration of the property on Breza Road," he said in a phone interview. "He probably will have it for us by the next board meeting on Oct. 4."
Dr. Smith said that although the board is looking at an alternative site for the middle school, it is still concentrating its energies on trying to obtain permits and contracts for the Ellisdale Road site.
On Jan.25, 2005, the school board unanimously voted to purchase 46 acres (known as Crosswicks Farm) along Ellisdale Road, with a price tag of $2.6 million, to house a new middle school. Since then, school officials have been criticized by parents and residents after environmental testing done in Oct. 2005 by Quest Environmental and Engineering Services, Inc., revealed that the Ellisdale Road site soil contains the pesticides dieldrin and arsenic. From a total of 355 samples collected from 126 locations on the site, 17 samples tested above the non-residential standards for dieldrin, while 9 percent of the arsenic samples were above the residential standards.
The board hasn’t decided if it wants to go ahead with the project at the Ellisdale Road site, since remediation would require an estimated $950,000 and because area residents are not backing the plan fully, Board of Education President Joe Stampe has said previously.
The Upper Freehold Regional School District obtained state approval for the cleanup plan in late May, after the Upper Freehold Planning Board expressed concerns about the soil at the Ellisdale Road site in September 2005. On June 28, hundreds of residents attended the board meeting, citing everything from potential illness to money as reasons for opposing the school project on the Crosswicks Farm site. As a result, board officials have considered moving their proposed building to Breza Road.
The school district’s new plans, however, conflict with those of the township, which is considering a controversial 1.8-million-square-foot, three-warehouse complex, called Commerce Park on the same plot of ground. New York-based Rockefeller Group Development Corporation sought approval from the Upper Freehold Planning Board to build on Breza Road in March. There have been three public hearings with the Planning Board since, and a fourth was scheduled to be held on Tuesday (Sept. 26) after The Messenger Press deadline.
Commerce Park is worth $82 million, and would occupy 254 acres. But the rights to develop on Breza Road are far from secure for anyone.
"It’s my understanding that there’s an option on that property," Dr. Smith said of the Breza Road site. "That means that there’s not a final contract, and there’s not been an exchange of the property and so forth. It’s open for consideration."
"We’re still going to go forth with our plans," said Brian Mahoney, a spokesperson for the Rockefeller Group. "I think the school’s going to face a lot of issues going to the Breza Road site. I don’t think it’s zoned for a school. I’m not sure if they’re going to have to change the zoning for it."
Zoning officer Ron Gafgen said on Tuesday that a school can be built on the Breza Road, as the land has been zoned as an agriculture-residential zone.
Mark Remsa, the planner for Upper Freehold’s Planning Board, said Tuesday that the Breza Road land was initially zoned for residential development, with an overlay zone for office and industrial use.
"The Rockefeller Group has applied for warehousing under the overlay zone," he said.
A majority of Allentown and Upper Freehold residents are opposed to the school site, and the most vocal among them is the entire Allentown Borough Council, which sent a letter in July to the Board of Education requesting that it either select a different site or go back before voters at a special election in December.
The letter, signed by Mayor Stu Fierstein and all of the council members, states that the bond referendum approved by voters in December 2004, was site specific for the middle school construction, not for the remediation of any soil on the same. Testing on the soil was done in April 2004 and again in November 2004, and confirmed there were contaminants in the soil.
Since selection of the site, the board has spent additional money outside the $500,000 allocated to the estimated remediation costs in the budget, on testing soil at the site, according to the letter. The environmental consultant hired by the board further estimated that beyond testing costs, about $1.275 million would be needed to spent to handle and encapsulate the known site contamination, about $527,500 more than that allocated in the budget.
The fact that the school is considering a move, however, is good news ‘, Mayor Fierstein said.
"The Ellisdale Road site could not be the best site for siting a school when it has a remediation issue," Mayor Fierstein said on Monday. "I’m very glad to hear that they’re looking at alternative sites."
Dr. Smith said the board is doing everything possible to get approvals and permits for the Ellisdale Road site at present.
"It’s the desire of the board to build the school on Ellisdale Road," he said. "The consideration of an alternative site is so that we have something that we have taken a look at if it’s determined that Ellisdale Road is not (feasible)."

