By: centraljersey.com
It is difficult to believe it was 20 years ago, almost to the day, that I started as a fulltime reporter at what was then The Central Post.
I had just spent six months in Hillsborough at the Packet Group’s weekly there and was moved into the South Brunswick slot when the reporter covering the township left for another job.
And for most of the last 20 years, I’ve been at the Post (which was renamed the South Brunswick Post in 1999), as reporter, news editor and for the last 11 years as managing editor.
That’s what makes writing this column so difficult. Last week’s issue was my last as managing editor and my last day with The Packet Group was Monday. I am leaving to take on a new position with an online news organization, stepping from the comfort of print into the great unknown of new media.
What can one say to sum up 20 years? The Beatles song, "In My Life," has been running through my head the last few days (it’s a cliche, I know), and I guess the boys from Liverpool sum things up as good as anyone else:
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I’ve loved them all.
Change has been the cornerstone of my time with the Post. In the last 20 years, the township population has grown from about 26,000 to nearly 45,000. Three new school buildings were built – including a massive high school that has already undergone an expansion – while new wings were added or renovations made to five other township school buildings.
There have been five different school superintendents over the last 20 years, three school business administrators and more school board members than can be counted.
There was a change in government in 1999, from a Township Committee to a Township Council/Manager form, which handed off executive power to an appointed manager and made the mayor a directly elected position. The first council was seated in 1999 All told, eight different people served as mayor between 1990 and 1998 and two since.
South Brunswick has had four police chiefs and four administrators/managers.
The South Brunswick Square Mall, now home to Home Depot and Bob’s Discount Furniture, has undergone more changes than its owners – and there have been many – probably wanted to see and has managed to stay afloat even when the number of empty storefronts reached crisis proportions.
The Kendall Park Shopping Center is gone, replaced by the generically named Town Place Shopping Center.
The big story when I started was the development boom and the proposed Metroplex project. At the time, there was a lot of grassroots energy expended trying to beat back the rapid pace of development that was fast changing the geography and demographics of the community.
Developments like Beekman Manor, Summerfield and Southridge Hills all managed to get built, though with far fewer units than originally proposed, while others – like Friendship Village and Woodfield – were stopped before a single unit was built.
And then there was Metroplex, a 7.8 million-square-foot mixed-use project that was to include hotels, retail, office and a rail station. The project, which called for a mix of 14-story and shorter buildings, was the spark that lit the development backlash, and its failure to get built helped spell the end of Sam Rieder and Sons builders – a company that had been responsible for a third of all housing units built in town between 1970 and 1990.
The development fight spawned a rather volatile political culture, with some rather harsh attack ads – paid for by a rival developer – attempting to paint members of the Township Committee as being on the take.
One of my colleagues, former Managing Editor Helene Ragovin, described the political culture of the time as being like a steel-cage match. I prefer the thinking of the political battles as being like the knife-fight scene in "Rebel Without a Cause"; either way, you get the picture.
Party control shifted back and forth three times in five years, but then stabilized – due in no small part to the obscene amount of money spent by the Middlesex County Democrats on behalf of local candidates. The money – and the demographic changes brought on by the GOP-supported development boom – propelled the Democrats into the majority and hastened the collapse of the Republican Party, a deep hole from which the party just now is starting to climb.
The antidevelopment fervor faded as the 1990s moved on, with both parties embracing a goal of limited residential development and preservation of farmland and open space.
Route 92 was on the books, and it took a concerted effort by citizens and elected officials to beat back a boondoggle. The 6.7-mile toll road made no sense locally and little sense regionally, though the N.J. Turnpike Authority – at the behest of the development community, Princeton University and some surrounding towns – nearly pushed it through.
The same goes for the ill-conceived Monmouth Junction alignment of the Middlesex-Ocean-Monmouth rail line, which was designed to address transportation problems along Route 9 without asking Monmouth County residents to make many sacrifices.
A concerted and unified, bipartisan effort was made – a rarity to be sure – and both massive projects are now just bad memories.
For the most part, I have good memories – of the hundreds of people I’ve met, many of whom I consider friends and of the dozens who have worked for me on the Post and its sister paper, The Cranbury Press.
I should add something else: I grew up here, reading the Post, watching for my name to appear in South Brunswick Athletic Association wrap-ups (happened once, when I hit a double and triple in a game). My wedding announcement appeared in the Post, twice, thanks to a snafu (the photos from four different weddings were attached to the wrong captions).
It’s funny. I turn 48 tomorrow (which is not funny), meaning that I am living in South Brunswick for 40 years – half of them have been spent at my hometown paper. And now it’s over.
It’s been a good ride for me. I hope readers of the Post feel the same way.
And feel free to keep in touch.
Hank Kalet is a resident of South Brunswick and the former managing editor of the South Brunswick Post. E-mail, [email protected]facebook.com/hank.kalet.

