Special meeting set for July 31
By: Lea Kahn
Township planners are expected to consider the RCN Corp.’s application for an amended preliminary site plan and final approval for Phase One of its planned headquarters on Princeton Pike.
The Planning Board has scheduled a special meeting, set for July 31 at 8 p.m., to consider the application. The meeting will be held in the Lower Level Conference Room at the municipal building.
The Planning Board granted preliminary site plan approval to RCN’s planned 1.5-million-square-foot corporate headquarters in March. When it is fully developed, it will be the largest office park in the township. The Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. occupies 1.3 million square feet.
RCN’s planned headquarters will be located on 134 acres on Princeton Pike at Lewisville Road – the 55-acre former Union Camp property and an adjacent 79-acre tract owned by Princeton Pike Park Inc.
The telecommunications company is seeking final site plan approval for Phase One, which consists of 560,000 square feet of office space in four buildings. It includes four parking garages. Phase Two will consist of 960,000 square feet of office space in six buildings, plus parking garages.
RCN provides local and long distance telephone, cable television and high-speed Internet services. It has over 1 million connections and expects to grow to serve several million over the next few years.
The company is seeking to amend its preliminary site plan approval to allow a 15-square-foot freestanding sign on Franklin Corner Road. Ten square feet is the maximum size for freestanding signs next to residential uses.
Several design waivers also are being requested for the final site plan for Phase One. They range from requests to allow narrower parking stalls in the parking garages, to removing nine specimen trees.
About 2,500 employees are expected to work in the new buildings in Phase One, said James Herring, RCN’s corporate vice president for real estate. The company now employs about 600 people in 225,000 square feet of leased space at the Carnegie Center office park. The company expects to hire 1,500 to 2,000 people in the next couple of years, he said. It employs more than 4,300 people nationwide.
The plans call for demolishing the existing 132,000-square-foot Union Camp building – but not the 255-year-old Brearley Oak that stands in front of it on Princeton Pike, opposite Lenox Drive. Early plans showed the tree was going to be cut down.
A special tree conservation and construction damage mitigation plan for the Brearley Oak has been filed, in addition to the amended preliminary site plan and final site plan for Phase One.
The Brearley Oak is a black oak, according to a report prepared by Bartlett Tree Experts, the company hired to prepare the tree conservation report. Black oaks over 200 years old are rare, the report said.
The 83-foot-tall Brearley Oak has a trunk circumference of 18.8 feet, making it the second largest black oak tree recorded in New Jersey. The largest tree has a circumference of 19.1 feet.
The tree is named for the Brearley family, which owned the land during the Colonial and Revolutionary War periods. The site was a farm that served as the boyhood home of patriots David and Joseph Brearley.
David Brearley served in the Revolutionary War military, attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was a signer of the U.S. Constitution and served as chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court. President Washington appointed him to be the first federal judge in the District of New Jersey.