Planning Board — September 8, 2025

What happened

This was a hearing with no application in front of it. Chairman Dave Campeas opened by setting the limits: no formal submission, no township professionals to review anything presented, and no board discussion or opinion on the merits. It was, he said, a chance for the public to hear directly from the prospective owner of the former Kenvue campus at 199 Grandview Road.

The only formal business was housekeeping — minutes of the June 23 and June 26, 2025 meetings, the two sessions at which the Fourth Round Housing Element and Fair Share Plan was heard. Both sets were approved, the June 26 minutes by Battle, Blodgett, Glockler, Roberts, Taylor Todd and Campeas, all aye. No dissent is audible in either. No vote of any kind was taken on the Kenvue site. Deputy Mayor Vincent Barragan opened with a storm-recovery update, and the board adjourned after announcing its October 2025 dates.

Eli Kahn introduced himself and his partner Matt Adams as “equitable owners” — under contract, not yet closed; the purchase completed in or around December 2025. He said the company first presented a by-right industrial plan to township staff and selected elected officials in August 2024, that the township was not enthusiastic, and that it asked for alternatives. Eli Kahn was explicit that those alternatives were the developer’s own work: “the township did not lead us in any direction.”

Adams then walked through the numbers, all of them the developer’s, from consultants the developer hired. He described the campus as three tax parcels — about 125 acres north of Grandview Road zoned for five- and ten-acre lots, a 257-acre main parcel in the Limited Manufacturing zone holding what he called the 279,000 sq ft office and R&D facility — the building residents attribute to I.M. Pei & Partners — and a 455,000 sq ft former diaper plant, and a two-acre parcel bought for a future sewer connection — and said its dual-fed 69.5 kV, roughly 20-megawatt electric service was what attracted them. That breakdown reconciles the competing acreage figures in circulation: the township’s own 2025 housing plan puts the whole holding at 382.771 acres across Block 14001 Lot 2 and Block 13001 Lot 15, of which the Limited Manufacturing core is the ~257-acre main parcel, and the “160 acres” quoted elsewhere comes from a resident reading the assessor’s records aloud at the June 23, 2025 hearing — the commercially assessed portion of that core, with an adjoining 97 acres in farm qualification. That 160/97 split is her arithmetic from the assessment files, not an official subdivision of the Limited Manufacturing core.

Four scenarios were compared: a by-right build-out of roughly 1.6 million sq ft of flex light-manufacturing space plus 13 residential lots over 10 to 15 years; a mixed-use plan keeping and expanding the south building; an all-residential concept of 617 units; and the 417-unit plan the township adopted into its housing plan. Their consultant put daily trips at about 5,468 today, more than 8,000 at full by-right build-out and roughly 3,200 under the housing plan — of the by-right total, 402 are truck trips per 24 hours, and the residential options generate no truck trips at all. Impervious cover: about 36 acres today, 102 by right, 28 under the housing plan. These are the September 2025 figures; by February 2026 the by-right concept had shrunk to roughly 1.2 million sq ft with 9 single-family homes and 300 to 400 truck trips a day, and the two sets of numbers should never be merged. Adams said the property is assessed at $41.6 million, is the township’s second-largest tax generator, is over-assessed by more than 60 percent, and that a tax appeal is coming — a short-term drop of roughly $700,000 to $800,000 a year.

Why it matters

This is where a trade-off the township had been weighing privately for a year was set out in public: 417 homes, or a by-right industrial build-out the township could not easily refuse. Much of what followed turns on that framing. The numbers were the developer’s, unreviewed by any township professional, and residents said so. But the flagged tax appeal is worth remembering — a year later, as the committee voted to study the site for redevelopment, Mayor Singh told residents the township faced a $1.4 million revenue gap once Kenvue leaves, and that E. Kahn had already signalled he would seek a tax reduction.

Worth watching

• The presentation begins (10:36) — Kahn and Adams introduce themselves and the company.
• The four scenarios, side by side (30:04) — trips, trucks, units and impervious cover compared.
• Public comment opens (43:20) — the proposal to turn the I.M. Pei building into an art centre.
• Sourland Conservancy statement (50:07) — for affordable housing, against high density in the Sourlands.
• Township officials answer on process (1:20:03) — mediation, and an admission that communication fell short.
• If the site leaves the housing plan (1:30:02) — the developer says it will fight to stay in it.

Public comment

Residents spoke for about an hour, three minutes each. Shellie Jacobson, whose late husband was a Princeton architect, asked the developer not to demolish the I.M. Pei campus and proposed an art centre in the headquarters building instead. A member of the Sourland Conservancy read a statement supporting every township providing its fair share of affordable housing, calling the idea that affordable housing brings “an undesirable element” odious, and saying there was still no justification for high-density development in the Sourlands.

Several speakers went at the numbers. One calculated that the claimed tax revenue implied $20,000–$23,000 a year per unit and asked how that could be affordable. Others said the by-right traffic projections were inflated to frighten the town, pointing to flex buildings in Hillsborough that struggle to find tenants; Chris Newman called the report cherry-picked. Evan Kavanagh set out the site’s flood history — closures of up to eight months under J&J ownership, temporary flood barriers, DEP-verified flood hazard and riparian zones across Block 14001. Jennifer Winell asked what happens if the traffic study finds the roads cannot take it; Mike Allison asked to see a picture of what would be built, and was told none existed.

Asked what becomes of the site if the township meets its obligation another way, the developer answered plainly: they would fight to stay in the Fourth Round plan, and failing that, “some version” of the industrial plan is what the property would be used for. Residents also pressed the township rather than the developer — that officials had engaged the developer for a year while the community learned of it only at the end. Committee members did not dispute it: they said they could have communicated more effectively, that the June statutory deadline left little time, and that more town halls would follow.