The Environmental Record on the Kenvue Site: What Exists, and What Doesn't

Start with the honest part: there is no published independent environmental impact study of the former Kenvue campus at 199 Grandview Road. No such document appears on the township’s site, and no comprehensive study has been heard in any proceeding about the property. Pieces exist — the developer told the Planning Board in September 2025 that the wetlands had been delineated and that a DEP letter of interpretation and a flood hazard area verification were in — but none of it has been published. Anything you read that claims otherwise is wrong, including an earlier version of this page, which presented unsourced environmental findings as though they were an independent review.

That is not unusual, and it is worth understanding why. In New Jersey, environmental review of a project like this does not happen through one comprehensive study commissioned in advance. It happens in two places: through state permitting at the Department of Environmental Protection for things like wetlands, stream buffers and stormwater, and through local site plan review, where an applicant’s engineering is examined in public by the Planning Board and its professionals. The DEP track is already underway. The local track has not started: E. Kahn Development’s by-right site plan application was declared administratively complete in June 2026, according to Patch, and as of September 17, 2026 the township attorney told the Committee there is a by-right application at the Planning Board but “it has not been scheduled yet.”

So what does the record contain?

The setting

The property is the 382.771-acre former Kenvue campus at 199 Grandview Road (Block 14001 Lot 2 and Block 13001 Lot 15), whose Limited Manufacturing core is about 257 acres; the September 2026 redevelopment study reaches only Block 14001 Lot 2.

The township’s own affordable housing FAQ describes the property as sitting at the base of the Sourland Mountain, and identifies the Rock Brook Category One stream corridor as a designated preservation priority. The same FAQ records that the site holds roughly 765,000 square feet of buildings, lies inside the sewer service area, and adjoins County Route 601.

At the June 23, 2025 Planning Board hearing on the original Fourth Round plan, residents raised the Sourland foothills, the wetlands, and the effect of development on wells and septic systems in the surrounding neighborhoods. Those concerns are on the record that night; they were not answered with study data, because none was before the board.

In February 2026, resident Carolyn Hoeschele told the Planning Board that holes were being dug across the E. Kahn property, including north of Grandview Road. The Planning Board had no explanation, suggested septic testing as one possibility, noted that a landowner may dig on their own land, and referred her to the township engineering department. What the digging was for is still not on the public record.

The traffic figures on the table

The most concrete environmental comparison in the record is not about habitat. It is about vehicle trips, and the figures are the developer’s own — produced by its traffic engineer, Dolan & Dean, and read into the record at the June 23, 2025 hearing from the traffic summary sheet the developer supplied. They set out two futures for the site side by side:

• The developer’s original 617-unit all-residential concept: roughly 4,065 vehicle trips per day. (The 417-unit version that actually went into the housing plan was later put at about 3,200.)
• The by-right flex-industrial alternative: roughly 7,820 car trips and 402 truck trips per 24 hours.

Attach a date to those figures whenever you use them. They describe the by-right concept the developer drew in August 2024 and presented again to the Planning Board on September 8, 2025 — about 1.6 million square feet of flex space plus 13 residential lots, four of ten acres and nine of five. A smaller scheme the developer showed at community meetings — roughly 1.2 million square feet plus 9 single-family homes, with 300 to 400 truck trips a day — was reported by The Monty News in February 2026. Two different concepts, both the developer’s own work, and merging them produces a number that describes neither.

Those numbers matter now for a reason nobody anticipated in 2025. The residential concept is gone from the plan. The industrial alternative is the application actually on file. When Committee Member Ahn explained his September 17, 2026 vote for a redevelopment study, the by-right industrial scenario — trucks, and lighting through the night — was the thing he said he wanted the township to retain options against (video, 1:53:20).

What the 2025 plan would have demolished

At the June 23, 2025 hearing, resident Shellie Jacobson established on the record that the concept plan then before the board cleared essentially every building on the site, including the former Johnson & Johnson headquarters building. Residents told the Township Committee on July 17, 2025 that it was designed within I.M. Pei & Partners, by Henry N. Cobb and W. Steven Wood with oversight by Pei himself; the 2025 plan the board was hearing made no such acknowledgement, finding instead that there are “no historic or architecturally important sites or buildings on the property.” Under that arrangement the developer would have dedicated roughly 125 acres to the township, and the township’s FAQ notes that land north of Grandview Road would have become open space.

That plan is no longer Montgomery’s plan. The buildings still stand, and their future is the open question. At the September 17, 2026 meeting Jacobson argued the campus should be repurposed rather than cleared; Laurie Cleveland of the Sourland Conservancy thanked the Committee for the data-center ban and asked it to consider preservation instead.

Water, energy and noise: the data-center argument

The one place where environmental evidence was actually argued in public was the June 18, 2026 hearing on Ordinance No. 26-1779, the townwide prohibition on data centers and detention centers. The ordinance’s own recitals cite increased electrical demand, noise from cooling equipment, large water consumption and incompatibility with surrounding land uses.

Both sides made their case that night, and both deserve to be reported.

Mike Pisauro, policy director of The Watershed Institute, argued that even closed-loop cooling systems use significant water, that New Jersey is in drought, that data centers are pushing electricity costs up across the regional PJM market, and that noise has produced litigation at a data center in Vineland. Mary Reece, chair of the township’s Environmental Commission, cited electricity demand, water use, heat and noise against a small number of jobs for the footprint.

A partner in the Grandview Road property answered with the site’s technical case: dual 69 kV transmission lines feeding an on-site substation, fiber along the rail corridor, roughly 2,000 feet from the buildings to the property line, and a closed-loop cooling system he said loses about five percent of its water a year and makes far less noise than the evaporative systems in the news. That is a serious answer, and the ordinance passed anyway.

Two separate open-space facts, often confused

On December 4, 2025, the Township Committee adopted Resolution #25-12-387, a purchase agreement for 11.42 acres at Route 601 and Grandview Road — Block 13001, Lot 21 — for open space, with Somerset County contributing funding. That is a different parcel from the former Kenvue campus, though it sits on the same block. It is not part of the redevelopment study, which covers only Block 14001, Lot 2.

What to watch for

The environmental facts that matter most have not been argued in public yet — but some of the documents already exist. E. Kahn’s engineer told the Planning Board on September 8, 2025 that the wetlands had been delineated under an NJDEP letter of interpretation, and that a DEP flood hazard area verification had been sought as well. What has not happened is the public test: a stormwater management report, a traffic study, and the township engineer’s review of all of it, argued at a public Planning Board hearing on an application that has been on file since June 2026 but never scheduled. That is the meeting to attend. Check the township board calendar rather than relying on a fixed schedule — every board in Montgomery moves and cancels meetings.