Town needs an open mind on Bell Labs redevelopment

Somerset Development, the contract purchaser, has invited Holmdel to hold a conversation about possible future uses of the Bell Labs site. There are many issues to consider.

Citizens for Informed Land Use (CILU) hosted a charrette in April, welcoming a meeting of the brightest minds in architecture, landscape architecture, and engineering in the belief that it might stimulate ideas useful to the seller, a prospective buyer, and the citizens of Holmdel. CILU also supports further study by township-hired world-class consultants whose experience would be useful in advising Holmdel on redeveloping the large, beautiful and challenging Bell Labs site.

CILU is being accused of advocating the preservation of the Bell Labs building and/or building high-density housing on the Bell Labs site. Like most citizens, we are still in the fact-finding stage regarding this new developer's plans. We are looking forward to public hearings on the Lucent advisory committee's report and the developer's ideas.

Recently, partisan letters to the editor and a Web site article have appeared, full of misinformation about CILU, attempting

to tarnish our good name. We have worked hard to build credibility with our friends and neighbors. We can state unequivocally that CILU has never advocated high-density residential development on the Bell Labs property. After careful study, we strongly opposed last year's poorly conceived plan by Preferred Real Estate to cover the Bell Labs site with 350 single-family houses.

Anyone interested in encouraging good land-use policies in Holmdel is welcome to join CILU's meetings in the senior/ community center, which are open to the public. In November we will be hearing about Holmdel's birds in a talk by a Holmdel High School graduate who now works for the Audubon Society, Scott Barnes.

Let us all approach Somerset Development's invitation and the Lucent advisory committee's report with open minds and not with misinformation and partisanship.
Jim McCorkel
Anne Shramko
Co-presidents
CILU
Holmdel