CommVault HQ Signals Early Fort Success

FORT MONMOUTH, NJ— With the impending opening of the new $100 million world headquarters of CommVault Systems at the corner of Tinton Avenue and Hope Road in Tinton Falls, the state agency overseeing the transition of this century-old Army base into a master-planned community believes it is starting to achieve modest early success. The Fort Monmouth Economic Revitalization Authority is working to fashion the sprawling 1,126-acre base into a “live-work-play” master-planned community, despite the challenges it faces wrangling the Army bureaucracy to respond more quickly to market-based forces, GlobeSt.com learned in an exclusive on-site briefing and tour. You can watch a video news report about GlobeSt.com’s tour of Fort Monmouth in the player below. Because of the base’s research heritage, FMERA is trying to attract technology- and research-oriented companies and institutions to the base’s two million square feet of office, research and other commercial space, says David E. Nuse , deputy director of FMERA. Princeton University and Monmouth University are interested in locating some research programs on the base, he says. In addition to CommVault’s development, JF Kiely Group , a Red Bank, NJ, construction firm, will occupy the former garrison command building, Russel Hall, as its headquarters. Lennar Homes will construct housing (including about 20% affordable housing) on the Tinton Falls tract. The entire base will have a maximum of 1,500 housing units. “We have an allocation among the three towns, a maximum we can build,” says Nuse. “The towns didn’t want to be overwhelmed by the services they would be asked to provide. So those caps were agreed upon.” AcuteCare Management Services’ unexpected acquisition earlier this year of the former Paterson Army Hospital will keep open the medical facility, originally slated for demolition. “They are renovating it for outpatient use and it’s slated to be open in 2015,” says Nuse . CommVault’ s new headquarters is being built in three phases, and will grow eventually to about 650,000 square feet, housing about 2,500 employees when it reaches completion, says Nuse . CommVault received state incentives to build the site and relocate from existing office space in Oceanport. Nuse says CommVault looked at space on the Oceanport side of the fort, but since the Army has not transferred title to FMERA yet, CommVault decided not to wait. Fort Monmouth was the linchpin of the Army’s communications and electronics research for nearly a century, since the military first stationed elements of its Signal Corps at Camp Alfred Vail in 1916 during World War I. Carrier pigeons were trained at the base, which eventually became the Army’s Signal Center and School, training generations of military communications professionals and conducting basic research that led to technology firsts like atomic clocks, night vision goggles, weather balloons, walkie-talkies, radar, solar cells, and many others. Because of the fort’s research and scientific missions, many of its buildings remain highly suited to technology companies or tech incubators, as well as research labs and educational organizations, says Nuse . The 1997 vintage McAfee Center is a research facility that includes a modern anechoic (soundproof) chamber for acoustic testing.   FMERA officials are currently in discussions with Princeton University’s Princeton Autonomous Vehicle Engineering (PAVE), to create a world-class research facility and test track at McAfee Center. The base closed in September 2011, with most of its mission transferred to Aberdeen, MD. FMERA took title to the Charles Wood area, a 489-acre section part of the fort property in Tinton Falls, in June 2012, and is poised to take title to the 637-acre main post, straddling Eatontown and Oceanport, in a second phase financed by Monmouth County bonds later this year. Because the military base was a self-contained community, many amenities are already in place and can be reactivated relatively easily, says Les Smith III , managing director, Cushman & Wakefield, exclusive marketing and leasing agents working with FMERA to market the property. The base already has a bowling alley, a movie theater, a fitness center with a gymnasium and pool, and a chapel that can be converted into a house of worship. There is also a catering hall that could be repurposed as a café or microbrewery, says Smith . “For specialty buildings, we are trying to maintain those uses for the future,” says Smith. Requests For Offers To Purchase (RFOTP) have been issued for the 32,000-square-foot fitness center and for 600-seat chapel; and RFOTPs for the bowling alley and 900-seat theater are in the works. The base’s former officers’ club at Gibbs Hall on the Tinton Falls portion of the base has been reopened for catering and events, and the 6,300-yard golf course is open to the public as SunEagles Golf Club, with fees set comparable to county public courses, Nuse says. An RFOTP will soon be issued for the golf club–the 171-acre property will remain a golf course. “The Reuse Plan calls for 42 existing homes at the golf course to be demolished and replaced with a 150-room hotel and conference center,” said Smith . “We are seeing considerable interest in this offering.” And an RFOTP will be issued shortly for the Fort’s Parcel B in Eatontown, adjoining the arched gateway along Route 35. The 70-acre site is targeted for a combination of retail and residential units in a town square environment, with the numerous existing buildings on the site scheduled for demolition. The former Fort Monmouth Marina on Oceanport Creek, renamed Marina at Oceanport , is up and running again as well. The marina, dormant for several years, is leased to FMERA by the U.S. Department of the Army and now operated under contract to a local partnership. A long-dormant liquor license in Oceanport will facilitate operation of an on-site restaurant. Fort Monmouth has easy access to the Garden State Parkway via Exit 105, where $40 million of improvements are underway, including a new Exit 105A that would serve the Tinton Falls part of the fort. The Little Silver NJ Transit train station, just one quarter mile from the Fort, provides one-hour New Jersey Transit train service to New York’s Penn Station, and there will be future shuttle service from the Fort to the train station. One relatively mysterious and little-seen artifact on the base may not survive, however. World-renowned nuclear physicist and amateur artist Dr. Stanley Kronenberg, who led experiments in nuclear radiation detection from a nondescript concrete building on the Tinton Falls part of the base, painted an elaborate Mayan mural on the inside of the 40-inch thick concrete wall of his research lab. The mural incorporates Mayan symbolism intended to connect the themes of communications, atomic radiation, and the creation of the world, but the building is slated for eventual demolition. Efforts to determine how to preserve the wall itself have not been successful, says Rick Harrison , director, facilities planning, FMERA. Harrison says FMERA will document the mural with high-resolution digital photographs before the building is torn down.