Jones Lang LaSalle
Lucent selling part of heritage
Pa. developer to purchase Bell Labs site in Holmdel
Friday, March 31, 2006
BY KEVIN COUGHLIN
Star-Ledger Staff
A key question facing Lucent Technologies and Paris-based Alcatel as they ponder a merger is what to do with Lucent's famed Bell Labs and its U.S. defense contracts.
Talks between the two telecom equipment makers yielded no announcements yesterday. But Lucent already is taking steps toward divesting part of its Bell Labs heritage.
A Pennsylvania developer said it has agreed to buy the sprawling Holmdel campus of Bell Labs, which spawned computerized and fiber-optic phone systems and a Nobel Prize.
By late summer, Lucent plans to start relocating 1,000 Holmdel researchers to sites in Murray Hill and Whippany, a consolidation ex pected to save Lucent $27 million a year.
"We need to maximize our real estate portfolio," Lucent spokesman John Skalko said of the pending sale, for an undisclosed sum, to Preferred Real Estate Investments. The Conshohocken, Pa., company specializes in re-developing industrial sites, including a former IBM plant in Fishkill, N.Y.
Skalko could not say how, or if, the Holmdel deal might be affected by a Lucent merger with the larger Alcatel.
Alcatel's board was scheduled to review the proposed "merger of equals" yesterday. Details of the meeting -- even the time and loca tion -- were guarded like a Cold War secret. Reuters reported Alcatel as saying only that merger talks were continuing.
Before the telecom industry crashed in 2001, Skalko said, nearly 5,000 Bell Labs employees worked at Holmdel in a 2 million-square- foot glass fortress.
The landmark structure, which opened in 1962, was designed by architect Eero Saarinen, renowned for the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Washington's Dulles International Airport and the TWA Terminal in New York.
The exterior glass was sup posed to reflect the sky, but a dark coating gave the place a foreboding tint in the early days.
"We used to call it the 'black box,'" recalled Nobel laureate Arno Penzias, who helped confirm the Big Bang theory of creation at Bell Labs' nearby Crawford Hill facility.
Visitors to the 462-acre Holmdel site drive by a water tower shaped like a transistor, the invention of Bell Labbers in Murray Hill that sparked the digital age.
"Every morning when I drove in under that tower, I knew I was going somewhere special," said Robert Lucky, who spent three decades at Holmdel.
In its heyday, the campus bustled with multiple cafeterias, a bank and a laundry.
"It was a city for us, as well as being a home. We thought it would be forever. It's inconceivable for me now that this will be nothing," said Lucky.
"It's the end of an era," said another retired Bell Labs researcher, Jim McEowen, who used to bicycle to work. "It was just a beautiful, gorgeous place. I was proud to take people there for lunch, which you can't say about a lot of corporate places."
Over lunch two decades ago at Holmdel, Steven Chu brainstormed a technique for trapping atoms. Chu, now director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, shared a Nobel Prize for his work.
Bell Labs, then part of AT&T, bought the property in 1929 for radio research. Radio astronomy was born there when researcher Karl Jansky, using an antenna to study how storms caused telephone static, heard strange radio waves that turned out to be from the Milky Way, said Bell Labs archivist Ed Eckert.
In 1979, researchers at Holmdel created the Digital Signal Processor chip, a vital component of wireless phones, video game machines, DVD players and digital cameras, Eckert said.
Scott Tattar, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania developer, said it could take up to a year of property inspections to complete the deal.
"We enter this with a true respect for the land and legacy left there by Bell Labs and Lucent, and look forward to creating a new economic opportunity," Tattar said.
He said it's too soon to say what will be built on the property. "Our plan is to sit down and talk to the community and make sure what we're doing has their support," he said.
Holmdel Township Committee man Terence Wall wants to ensure that Lucent -- now the township's biggest taxpayer, at $3.2 million a year -- is not replaced by McMan sions.
Wall would prefer another corporate campus, along with school board offices, a senior center, athletic fields and a municipal library. He has asked the township planner to see if state laws allow local officials to create a special redevelopment zone to boost their control over the project.
"My position is, we should partner with the new owners for a win- win strategy," Wall said.
Kevin Coughlin covers techology. He may be reached at kcough lin@starledger.com or (973) 392-1763.
© 2006 The Star Ledger
© 2006 NJ.com All Rights Reserved.
Lucent selling part of heritage
Pa. developer to purchase Bell Labs site in Holmdel
Friday, March 31, 2006
BY KEVIN COUGHLIN
Star-Ledger Staff
A key question facing Lucent Technologies and Paris-based Alcatel as they ponder a merger is what to do with Lucent's famed Bell Labs and its U.S. defense contracts.
Talks between the two telecom equipment makers yielded no announcements yesterday. But Lucent already is taking steps toward divesting part of its Bell Labs heritage.
A Pennsylvania developer said it has agreed to buy the sprawling Holmdel campus of Bell Labs, which spawned computerized and fiber-optic phone systems and a Nobel Prize.
By late summer, Lucent plans to start relocating 1,000 Holmdel researchers to sites in Murray Hill and Whippany, a consolidation ex pected to save Lucent $27 million a year.
"We need to maximize our real estate portfolio," Lucent spokesman John Skalko said of the pending sale, for an undisclosed sum, to Preferred Real Estate Investments. The Conshohocken, Pa., company specializes in re-developing industrial sites, including a former IBM plant in Fishkill, N.Y.
Skalko could not say how, or if, the Holmdel deal might be affected by a Lucent merger with the larger Alcatel.
Alcatel's board was scheduled to review the proposed "merger of equals" yesterday. Details of the meeting -- even the time and loca tion -- were guarded like a Cold War secret. Reuters reported Alcatel as saying only that merger talks were continuing.
Before the telecom industry crashed in 2001, Skalko said, nearly 5,000 Bell Labs employees worked at Holmdel in a 2 million-square- foot glass fortress.
The landmark structure, which opened in 1962, was designed by architect Eero Saarinen, renowned for the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Washington's Dulles International Airport and the TWA Terminal in New York.
The exterior glass was sup posed to reflect the sky, but a dark coating gave the place a foreboding tint in the early days.
"We used to call it the 'black box,'" recalled Nobel laureate Arno Penzias, who helped confirm the Big Bang theory of creation at Bell Labs' nearby Crawford Hill facility.
Visitors to the 462-acre Holmdel site drive by a water tower shaped like a transistor, the invention of Bell Labbers in Murray Hill that sparked the digital age.
"Every morning when I drove in under that tower, I knew I was going somewhere special," said Robert Lucky, who spent three decades at Holmdel.
In its heyday, the campus bustled with multiple cafeterias, a bank and a laundry.
"It was a city for us, as well as being a home. We thought it would be forever. It's inconceivable for me now that this will be nothing," said Lucky.
"It's the end of an era," said another retired Bell Labs researcher, Jim McEowen, who used to bicycle to work. "It was just a beautiful, gorgeous place. I was proud to take people there for lunch, which you can't say about a lot of corporate places."
Over lunch two decades ago at Holmdel, Steven Chu brainstormed a technique for trapping atoms. Chu, now director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, shared a Nobel Prize for his work.
Bell Labs, then part of AT&T, bought the property in 1929 for radio research. Radio astronomy was born there when researcher Karl Jansky, using an antenna to study how storms caused telephone static, heard strange radio waves that turned out to be from the Milky Way, said Bell Labs archivist Ed Eckert.
In 1979, researchers at Holmdel created the Digital Signal Processor chip, a vital component of wireless phones, video game machines, DVD players and digital cameras, Eckert said.
Scott Tattar, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania developer, said it could take up to a year of property inspections to complete the deal.
"We enter this with a true respect for the land and legacy left there by Bell Labs and Lucent, and look forward to creating a new economic opportunity," Tattar said.
He said it's too soon to say what will be built on the property. "Our plan is to sit down and talk to the community and make sure what we're doing has their support," he said.
Holmdel Township Committee man Terence Wall wants to ensure that Lucent -- now the township's biggest taxpayer, at $3.2 million a year -- is not replaced by McMan sions.
Wall would prefer another corporate campus, along with school board offices, a senior center, athletic fields and a municipal library. He has asked the township planner to see if state laws allow local officials to create a special redevelopment zone to boost their control over the project.
"My position is, we should partner with the new owners for a win- win strategy," Wall said.
Kevin Coughlin covers techology. He may be reached at kcough lin@starledger.com or (973) 392-1763.
© 2006 The Star Ledger
© 2006 NJ.com All Rights Reserved.
posted by Jones Lang LaSalle NJ News Blog at 9:49 AM
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