The Lawrence Township Planning Board has given the Educational Testing Service an additional 10 years to construct three office buildings Monday night.
By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
The Lawrence Township Planning Board has given the Educational Testing Service an additional 10 years to construct three office buildings Monday night.
The Planning Board granted a 10-year extension to the plan to build the trio of office buildings, which were approved in 2003. ETS, which is located on a 355-acre campus on Rosedale Road, requested the extension.
Outlining the request, attorney Mark Solomon told the board that the state Municipal Land Use Law allows the board to grant an extension of time for the approval. He represented ETS.
”ETS sees this (campus) as its home. They want to plan over time for predictability,” Mr. Solomon said, explaining why ETS is asking the Planning Board to extend its prior approval for the three office buildings to 2023.
The plan that was approved in 2003 calls for demolishing Conant Hall and its cafeteria, and Brigham Hall, toward the rear of the campus. In their place, ETS will construct three office buildings totaling 427,500 square feet, plus a multi-level parking garage with 1,124 parking spaces and additional “surface” parking. ETS had 10 years to complete the project.
But economic issues caused the project to be put on hold, T.J. Elliott, ETS’ vice president and chief learning officer, told the Planning Board Monday night. ETS lost an important contract in the United Kingdom and that put the expansion plans on hold, he said.
Mr. Elliott said the expansion plan is important and that ETS is looking ahead to plan for the next 30 years. It has grown from a domestic organization to an international organization and to a global one over the past few years, he said.
ETS is most often associated with the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), which colleges may use as part of their application process, and the Graduate Record Exam (GRE), which may be a factor in graduate school admissions. ETS also is associated with the Advanced Placement (AP) tests, used in high schools.
Mr. Elliott told the planners that it is important for the organization to plan for renewal. The original buildings on campus are more than 50 years old, and the way in which people work today has changed — both their behavior and the technology.
He also told the Planning Board that ETS’ expansion ends with the construction of buildings 4, 5 and 6, as they are known now. There are no plans to hire additional employees. Nearly 2,700 staffers work at the Rosedale Road campus, which is ETS’ headquarters. The staff will be re-distributed among the new buildings.
As part of the request for an extension of time, ETS commissioned a community impact statement prepared by consultant Richard B. Reading Associates.
Mr. Reading, who is a principal in the Princeton-based firm, told the Planning Board that the new office buildings — if they were constructed today — would add approximately $35 million to the property tax base.
And if they were in place today, the buildings would generate $321,850 in municipal property taxes; $821,930 in school district property taxes and $424,950 in Mercer County property taxes, Mr. Reading said. The total property taxes generated would be $1.5 million.
There was some concern expressed about the traffic impact, but traffic engineer Kenneth Mackiewicz told the Planning Board that ETS has “flex time” for its employees to spread out the arrival and departure times. Some of the employees “telecommute” several days during the week, he said.
Mr. Mackiewicz also told the Planning Board that ETS would monitor the traffic flow at the Rosedale Road and Carter Road driveways, and install traffic lights at the driveways if necessary.
Before casting his vote to approve the request for an extension of time, Planning Board member Michael Powers — who also sits on Township Council — said that ETS had made its case and that it has been a “good corporate partner” with Lawrence Township.
”I look forward to their expansion,” Mr. Powers said.