Preservation NJ announced the annual 10 Most Endangered Historic Sites list for 2008 yesterday. Included in the list were: Arneytown Historic District (Burlington County), Atlantic City Post Office, Lake Solitude Dam (High Bridge), Beach Theatre (Cape May),

  former Belcoville Post Office (Weymouth Twsp), 160 Willard Avenue in Bloomfield, Sacred Heart Church (Jersey City), Forney House & Clinic (Milltown),

Speedwell Avenue (Morristown) and Shady Rest Golf Club (Scotch Plains).

Listings bring attention to these sites and many like them that are equally endangered across the state. Many previously-listed sites have found new life, often thanks to the attention brought to their plight by the 10 Most listing.

Carlos Rodrugues, RPA-NJ Director, PNJ Board member and Bell Labs Charrette participant, recently shared some thoughts on the challenge presented by the preservation of Bell Labs project:

Struggling with Our Modernist Heritage – the Bell Labs Charrette

The 2 million square foot former Bell Labs facility located in Holmdel, NJ, designed by famous modernist architect Eero Saarinen and set within a site plan designed by equally famous landscape architects Sasaki, Walker and Associates, is part of the famed Bell research centers that for the better part of a century helped set the technological agenda for the nation and the world.

Now, Holmdel and most of the other Bell Labs are vacant, undone by both economic and political changes. In New Jersey, civic and public officials are figuring out what to do with the Holmdel facility, important both architecturally and in terms of economic history.

Built between 1959 and 1962, and expanded in 1966 and 1985, the facility once housed 6,000 scientists, researchers and support staff on a 472-acre tract in Holmdel. Both the building and the surrounding landscape, significant examples of mid-century modern architecture, have been deemed eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Research conducted in the building led to several significant technological advancements, including the transistor and the cell phone.

RPA participated in a recent inter-disciplinary design charrette organized by Preservation New Jersey, AIA-NJ, DocoMomo, The National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Recent Past Preservation Network and the Cultural Landscape Foundation. The charrette – which took place April 11th to 13th – was hosted by Holmdel Citizens for Informed Land Use and facilitated by Clint Andrews, chair of the planning program at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University .

The charrette was part of an ongoing attempt to find a graceful future for the facility, vacated by Alcatel-Lucent (successor to Bell) two years ago and on the market ever since. So far, the proposals that have surfaced have not been kind. An interested developer proposed several schemes which did not respect the historic qualities of the building and site, and included demolishing the building and subdividing the site into single-family lots. Fortunately, this was not well accepted by the municipality and the developer has since left the scene.

The redevelopment of the former Bell Labs facility poses thorny questions for the planning and design community. While clearly an icon of a certain period of our recent history, where corporate America and modernist architecture aligned to create new models for the corporate workplace, the facility – with its vast building set in splendid isolation within 472 acres of lawns, ponds and woods – is also emblematic of a bygone era of suburban sprawl, with all that it represents in terms of waste. From a sustainable-development point of view, the Bell Labs site is as outdated as Stonehenge. A simple re-tenanting or re-purposing of the building has no future in the world we now live in.

Bell Labs and other comparable case studies raise some difficult issues with which the historic preservation movement must come to terms. The rigid formality of the massive building and the strict geometry of the access roads, circulation system and parking lot layout seem terribly dated and mall-like. Indeed the same formal model was used all over the nation to build regional malls. Should we seek to preserve all the early examples of the auto-oriented environments we created in the 1950s and 1960s, whether they were workplaces, places of commerce, residential or other, no matter how unsustainable these land use models are? I think not.

The charrette brought together top-notch professionals from leading architecture, landscape architecture, historic preservation and engineering firms from throughout the Northeast. There was also compelling testimony from former workers at the facility and current residents.

Many valuable ideas came out. There was clearly an emphasis on finding viable models to both re-purpose the building and retrofit it to make it and the surrounding landscape perform better from a sustainability point of view, without compromising the essential elements of its historic character. This objective appeared achievable, from a technical point of view, no matter what the ultimate use – or combination of uses – ended up being. Indeed there was a noticeable emphasis on mixed-use solutions as the most viable and most appropriate.

However, perhaps RPA’s most significant contribution was to point to the bigger picture. If all we achieve is to find more energy efficient ways to run the same building within the same land use pattern, how ultimately sustainable is that? Even if a “silver bullet” solution is found (a single user with deep pockets willing to take on the entire facility – a GooglePlex was suggested as were a university or some other large research, educational or health care institution) will that not simply perpetuate the existing, unsustainable land use and transportation pattern? Regardless of current market conditions – and there is a lot of vacant office space in Monmouth County, with more to come as a result of the decommissioning of Fort Monmouth – is a replacement office use the most appropriate solution to this challenge?

In a sense, Holmdel and Bell Labs is a story oft repeated throughout America. We are all well acquainted with the history of company towns, whether the industry was cereal mills, roses, blueberries, steel, defense, tourism, gambling, electronics or whatever. In a world of global markets and global corporations, the single-industry town is not a good bet.

– Carlos Rodrigues, PP / AICP, Vice President and New Jersey Director, RPA

Don Heirman, a Bell Labs “Pioneer” who participated in the April 11 - 13 charrette, has shared these photos of one of the other buildings on the Bell Labs site that help to tell the remarkable story of innovation at Bell Labs.

“One of the other buildings is made entirely out of plastic.  Photo #1 is the interior and the other is a tunnel that lead to the basement of the main [Saarinen] building, as no metal could be above the elevation of the ground plane above.)  This dates back to the early 1980’s when the Federal Communications Commission passed regulations requiring special radio frequency levels to be met.  The measurement of those levels had to be in a non-reflective building and hence no metal or conductive resins could be used.  The all-plastic building that still stands there is where many if not most of the telecom products coming out of Holmdel were measured to assure they met the new regulations which still stand today.”

In March, using LEED as a framework, the United States Green Building Council and the American Society of Interior Designers released remodeling guidelines known as Regreen, which do not include LEED certification. The Rutgers Center for Green Building is using Regreen to develop green renovation standards specifically designed for New Jersey that eventually could be adopted by the state.

“What we want to do is anticipate what are the typical renovations a homeowner might make and insert green,” said Jennifer Senick, executive director of the Rutgers center, adding that specifications would address the different weather conditions around the state. She said the center constantly gets calls from people who don’t know where to turn for professional help or how to decide on products.

“Advertising and marketing is what’s confusing to the consumer,” said Robert Wisniewski, senior technical consultant at MaGrann Associates, a green-building consulting firm in Moorestown, N.J. “In reality, green is not really about what you can see; it’s about good building science. If you want something to show off, you can show off your energy bills.

“It’s not just the gadgets. It’s not just throwing in the geothermal system. It’s more looking at the house as a whole thing.”

Read more

Charrette organizers are compiling sketches, presentation boards, etc. from the charrette wrap up on April 13.  The concepts were visionary, illustrating a range of solutions that predominately focused on improved performance of the building and incorporating a sustainable restoration scheme that would bring the building into the 21st century with new systems and building elements while preserving its historic and character-defining features.  For example, some proposed that the distinctive mirrored exterior walls could be retrofitted with interior glazing.

Additional natural light could be introduced into the original windowless laboratories by means of new light wells; the flat roof and parking lot areas could easily accommodate photovoltaic cells to produce “green” electricity on site, and air could be better circulated.  The groups also invented new programs for the building, from high-tech laboratories, healthcare, educational and cultural, to residential with a consensus being to maintain the 472 acres as publicly accessible land.

Watch here for further postings.

Bell Labs charrette facilitator Clinton Andrews has summarized “what the charrette participants learned” this past weekend

• Proposals demonstrate flexibility of building
• A range of cultural uses are economically feasible
• Program suggested schemes are combinable
• Opportunities for better integration into community
• Poetry possible from unexpected quarters
• Expense of energy was Bell function-dependant and this expense is not a necessity for future use
• Retain existing structural cultural landscape because of its strength: it can be adapted
  
• Price of land is low, various financial incentives for reuse

• Scale becomes an advantage
• Improvement by subtraction
• Model for sustainability which on this scale has important value, e.g. green roof space
  
• Puncturing is enlivening
• Vertical and lateral punctuation enlivens building

• Smarten curtain wall, retrofit it, entire envelope can be improved
• Atrium is more than open space, with possible functionality

• Landscape is integral part of work experience

Preservation NJ, along with coalition partners AIA-NJ, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, DOCOMOMO, the Cultural Landscape Foundation, the Recent Past Preservation Network and the NJ Conservation Foundation, sponsored a charrette, which wrapped up today, that explored the adaptive use and green preservation potential of the iconic Bell Labs site in Holmdel, NJ.

Designed by architect Eero Saarinen (see TWA Terminal, JFK Airport; Dulles Airport, Gateway Arch, St. Louis; John Deere HQ, Moline, IL, etc.), the nearly 2 million sf landmark, set in a stunning Sasaki-designed landscape, has been empty for 6 months and is for sale. The site was listed in Preservation NJ’s 10 Most Endangered Historic Sites in NJ catalogue in 2007.

More than 35 architects, landscape architects, preservation professionals, engineers, building systems professional, planners and the like, from all over the Northeast, volunteered their time and talent to collaborate during the weekend.

The charrette opened on Friday afternoon with a tour of the shuttered building. It’s a magnificent modernistic masterpiece - huge by every measure. It’s in relatively good condition for having been empty and on minimal “life support” for six months. Friday evening saw the participants, and many members of the public from Holmdel and beyond, gather at the town’s Community Center to hear more about the history of Saarinen and the project.

A group of Bell Lab “Pioneers,” folks who worked in the building, joined in a roundtable discussion which helped to describe the building’s functionality and “spirit.” Quickly debunked was the often-stated claim that the building’s “inflexible” design and plan - it was laid out for laboratory work rather than for traditional office use - will make it unusable for 21st century commercial purposes.

On Saturday the designers and planners took to the paper and pencils almost immediately, brilliantly led by charrette facilitator Clinton Andrews, from Rutgers’ Bloustein School. Breakout teams explored possible reuse scenarios from various perspectives: architectural, marketing, systems, etc. The interchange among diverse disciplines, and the intergenerational synergy created among the senior designers working alongside young professionals and students, was exciting and stimulating.

Findings from the charrette will be presented today at the Holmdel Community Senior Center, and the Bell Labs Coalition plans to publish the results more formally for broad circulation. Bell Labs can be reused, and the charrette results we believe will demonstrate both its preservability and its marketability.

Thanks to AIA-NJ, the National Trust and the many individuals - local and national - who helped to underwrite the costs of the charrette.

More soon.

New Jersey Future, in a recent Future Facts column, points out that:

• On a per capita basis, in 2005 New Jersey residents emitted an estimated 16.7 metric tons of carbon dioxide from three principal sources: transportation (34 percent); residential, commercial and industrial fuel use (32 percent); and electricity consumption (24 percent).

• A key component in reducing greenhouse gas emissions involves driving less. According to the U.S. EPA, each gallon of gas typically results in 19.4 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.

• Residents of compact, mixed-use communities—where it is safe and convenient to walk, bike, carpool and accomplish errands with shortdriving trips—typically drive 20 to 40 percent less, according the Urban Land Institute’s “Growing Cooler” report.

And where are the compact, mixed-use communities? In existing towns and cities - historic neighborhoods and Main Streets! While planning grants to NJ communities to help them explore how to locate and design compact growth is great, the opportunity is now to offer incentives for revitalization of existing, historic and already compact communities!

How about dedicating some of the funds generated by the carbon cap-and-trade law recently passed by the NJ Legislature, which directs $40 - $70 million in annual proceeds from the sale of carbon credits in the “Global Warming Response Fund,” to the Historic Rehabilitation tax credit program proposed in the Historic Properties Revitalization Act (HPRA)?

How about that for energy efficiency?

Hydroelectric proposal for historic Solitude Dam
Thursday, February 14, 2008
High Bridge, NJ

by Sue Sharpe

A group that wants the borough to repair, rather than breach, Solitude Dam is thinking ‘green,’ hoping to help re-establish a once-active hydroelectric power plant that could bring revenue into the borough. Tonight, Borough Council will vote on a resolution to explore the idea when it meets at 7:30 at the firehouse.

The dam, part of the 140-acre Lake Solitude property, once powered the Taylor-Wharton steel mill and even some High Bridge homes, according to Bill Honachefsky Jr. of the Union Forge Heritage Association. With alternative energy initiatives gaining momentum across the county and state, he believes that the time is right to use the dam for its original purpose. ‘Reinstituting hydroelectric power is a logical choice,’ he said.

In 2005 the state Department of Environmental Protection ordered the borough to bring the 42-foot-high structure up to current standards or open the dam and let the river flow unimpeded. Council is revisiting a 2001 decision for remediation and must either begin repairs or request a breaching permit by August to avoid being fined.

To create hydroelectric power, falling water from a dam’s spillway is used to turn a propeller-like turbine that rotates a metal shaft in a generator, creating electricity. Power lines from the generator carry the electricity to its intended destination. The amount of power created depends on water flow and the height of the drop.

According to Ed Smith, chief of staff to state Assemblyman Mike Doherty, much of this infrastructure is already in place at Solitude Dam, making it attractive to a potential financial partner who could help repair the dam, build the necessary equipment and sell the electricity it creates. ‘It’s probably the only standing dam in the state with a hydroelectric port,’ said Mr. Smith, who grew up in Lebanon Township.

He met with Mr. Honachefsky and borough officials on Feb. 6 to discuss reusing the dam and is enthusiastic about the prospect. ‘It combines economics and ecology,’ he said, creating electricity without carbon dioxide emissions and saving a lake ecosystem that’s existed for more than 100 years. ‘You have a historical hamlet with a steel plant that used to make cannonballs for the Revolution, and a pristine setting with a dam that’s got problems,’ he said. ‘Here’s an opportunity where everyone wins.’

Mayor Mark Desire said that the resolution, if adopted, will show potential partners that High Bridge is serious about pursuing hydroelectric power. He also encourages residents to attend the Feb. 28 council meeting, where state and borough officials and experts will discuss the dam and answer questions from the public. A larger, town-wide meeting will also be held at a later date.

© 2008 The Hunterdon Democrat

According to the National Trust’s Preservation Nation blog, the US Green Building Council has decided to launch an interim version of LEED this year called LEED 3.0, with public comment sought before May 1st, adoption by the membership at GreenBuild in November and going into effect about Jan. 1, 2009.

According to Barbara Campagna, Graham Gund Architect of the National Trust, LEED 3.0 will adopt a new system where the credits are weighted according to Life Cycle Analysis Indicators. The amount of LEED points a building will get will be different for every building depending on its materials, their durability, etc. In many cases it may mean more points for existing buildings, but more importantly, the inherent durability and embodied energy will be much better represented, where it currently is not addressed at all.

The historic preservation community has been concerned about the present LEED point system, because current version (LEED 2.2):

1. Overlooks the impact of projects on cultural value;

2. Does not effectively consider the performance, longer service lives and embodied energy of historic materials and assemblies;

3. And is overly focused on current or future technologies, neglecting how past experience helps to determine sustainable performance.

Exciting and important news for all of us who recognize the sustainability value of existing, historic buildings. Many thanks to the National Trust and partners for working closely with USGBC on this terrific step forward!