Corrections or additions?
These articles by Barbara Fox were prepared for the May 16, 2001 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Life in the Fast Lane: BASF Leaves
If those cows aren’t already gone, they soon will be.
The last vestige of Princeton’s bucolic past — the farmland at
the fourth corner of three big shopping malls — is history. BASF
will shutter the former 40-year-old American Cyanamid agriculture
research site, across from Quakerbridge Mall and Nassau Park and diagonal
to the Mercer Mall. By this time next year about 600 jobs will be
gone from that location, including 85 workers still employed by American
Home Products’ animal health division.
American Home Products also still owns the 640-acre property, with
25 acres of buildings, including lab space and greenhouses. In comparison,
the Carnegie Center is 540 acres and has six buildings to go before
full build-out. The Sarnoff Corporation has 335 acres and has proposed
a 3.5 million square foot expansion. Until its project was scuttled,
RCN had planned to build 5 million square feet on 134 acres at the
old Union Camp site.
Developers have looked longingly at this property for years. Estimates
of its worth range from $160 to $224 million for mixed use. But it
would have to be rezoned for mixed use, and now is a crucial time
in West Windsor’s planning process: A severe reduction has been proposed
that would affect this parcel and Sarnoff’s parcel. The proposal brought
vociferous protests from both companies. “I’m not sure what buyers
would be interested in developing that land for office use if the
proposed master plan goes through,” says Micky Landis of Boston
Properties, the development company that manages Carnegie Center.
“The current code allows certain areas to build up to .30 FAR
(the square footage equaling 30 percent of the land, or less, in the
case of multistory buildings),” explains Landis. “If, as just
proposed, the code goes to .15 (15 percent of the land), that would
double the land cost per foot of buildable office space and reduce
incoming ratables by half.”
The Carnegie Center got approval for its full buildout under that
code, but its actual plan, allowing for the six unbuilt buildings,
is scheduled for 21 percent. Sarnoff’s first proposal called for 24
percent, but it has said it could accept the 21 percent, and a spokesperson
for American Cyanamid concurs.
What happens to the real estate is a far away problem,
but at least 500 people have an imminent problem, finding a new job.
To put this in perspective, Fleet Boston is trimming 193 jobs in Central
New Jersey after its merger with Summit, RCN sliced 70 jobs at the
Carnegie Center, and Dow Jones lost 98 people from its Route 1 North
campus.
An estimated 100 people have already left AHP. BASF said last year
it would cut $250 million in operation costs and 2,000 jobs from agricultural
operations globally. Two hundred of the 500 jobs remaining are scheduled
to be gone by September of this year, and the rest of the workers
will be encouraged to stay to finish ongoing projects. AHP employs
85 people in its animal health division and their fate, and that of
the livestock, is not known. “We just heard about this on Monday,”
said Doug Petkus of American Home Products.
Industry sources point to the historically tight margins for the agri-chemical
business and say that the furor over genetically engineered crops
has exacerbated the problem. But the reason behind this site closing
probably lies in BASF’s reason for buying American Cyanamid from American
Home Products last year. When the German company won out against Bayer,
Dow Chemical, and Sumitomo Chemical with a $3.8 billion bid for the
agricultural products division, it went from being the ninth largest
agro-chemical company in the world to being in the top three. Even
more important, BASF acquired Cyanamid’s vaunted marketing force in
Mount Olive to introduce its own crop-protection products.
The company cites “research efficiency” as the reason to concentrate
future research at its headquarters in Ludwigshafen/Limburgerhof,
Germany. Some development will take place there, and some at Research
Triangle Park in North Carolina. No information is available about
the value of longitudinal studies at Princeton’s location. “The
company has determined it can carry out the studies that they need
at the locations they are going to move to,” says Sue O’Connor,
spokesperson for BASF at the Quakerbridge Road site.
BASF is a trans-national chemical company with the thrifty aim of
integrating its products: high-value chemicals, plastics, colorants
and pigments, dispersions, automotive and industrial coatings, agricultural
products, fine chemicals, crude oil, and natural gas. It has 103,000
employees worldwide and sales last year of about $34 billion. It has
a polymers division in Cranbury and another laboratory on Lower Ferry
Road.
If you were a researcher worried about your job, a glance at the company’s
listings at HotJobs.com could have foretold the tale. Of 56 jobs listed
in the United States, only one is for Princeton.
BASF/American Cyanamid Agricultural Products ResearchDivision (BF), Quakerbridge Road, Box 400, Princeton 08543-0400.Jurgen Oldeweme, president. 609-716-2000; fax, 609-275-5234. Homepage: www.basf.com.Top Of PageExpansionsCentury 21 Rich Abrams & Associates, 666Plainsboro Road, Building 200, Suite 200, Plainsboro 08536. RichAbrams, broker/owner. 609-750-7300; fax, 609-275-1099.Rich Abrams has doubled the size of his real estate broker’s office infive months. He opened in January with 1,800 square feet at PrincetonMeadows Office Center and is moving to nearly 4,000 square feet atPlainsboro Plaza, a former seafood and steak restaurant. After themove, expected to take place at the end of June, he will have 25licenses and expects to have 50 by the end of the year.”I am a poster child for starting at the bottom and working my way up to have my own business,” says Abrams. “We have taken all ourexperience and escalated into a very high profile office.”The son of a steel mill worker, Abrams graduated from Trenton State, now College of New Jersey, in 1978 “when the job market was tight: andwent to Rutgers for a master’s degree in human resources before going into real estate sales. He had just six sales that year, compared to169 units in 2000.Century 21 agents are known for wearing the company blazer. Abrams says this association with a firm that spends $40 million in nationaladvertising “breaks down the barrier. People feel more relaxed knowing who they are talking to. People feel more comfortable knowing thatthey are working with a fully trained individual with corporate backing.”His biggest surprise, on opening his own office, was the cost of technology. “Nobody is allowed to work here without a computer, andeveryone has their own work station,” says Abrams. Tony Nami of Prior Nami has provided the hardware and networking. The office manager isSteve Fields.Top Of PageNew in TownAppliance Dealers Cooperative, 49 Sixth Street,Center Point at 8A, Box 787, East Brunswick 08816. Helene R. Siegel,executive director. 732-257-6665; fax, 732-257-8821.The regional buying group will consolidate two smaller facilitiesin East Brunswick and purchase a 204,000-foot facility at Center Pointat 8A. Matrix Development Group is building the facility on MatrixDrive. The group is expected to take close the tax-deferred transactionby October of this year.Formed in 1972, the cooperative brings multi-billion-dollar buyingpower to 87 smaller appliance retailers from northern Virginia toConnecticut. It helps them stay competitive with larger chain stores.Equitable Life Assurance, 168 Franklin Corner Road,Building 2, Lawrenceville 08648. Robert J. Bunsa Jr., district manager.609-620-0025; fax, 609-620-0026. Home page: www.equitable.com.The insurance company expanded its regional office with a move withinthe same building on Franklin Corner Road. It does retirement planningfor public school and nonprofit organizations.Top Of PageContracts AwardedXechem Inc./Xechem International Inc. (ZKEM), 100Jersey Avenue, Building B, Suite 310, New Brunswick 08901-3279. RameshC. Pandey, chairman, president, CEO. 732-247-3300; fax, 732-247-4090.Home page: www.xechem.com.Xechem is suing the University of Texas over ownership and “correctinventorship” of a patent on paclitaxel, the generic for Taxolof Bristol-Myers Squibb. The co-researcher, UT’s M.D. Anderson CancerCenter, had sought to negate a 1995 agreement granting Xechem someproduction and licensing rights. At that time, Xechem had no money.Now it does, and it wants to help supply the billion dollar market.bfTop Of PageLeaving TownGateway Country (GTW), 275 Route 18 South, EastBrunswick 08816. 732-698-2198; fax, 732-698-9019. Home page: www.gateway.com.One year after moving its showroom into 30 Nassau Street in downtownPrinceton — and even while a huge billboard advertised its presenceon Route 1 — Gateway closed that shop and is referring businessto a store on Route 18 in East Brunswick. Last week a call to theformer Princeton store got a “disconnected” reply, not a forwardingnumber.”Our chairman retook the CEO’s job in late January. On February28 we announced a change with Wall Street analyst,” says GregLund, a spokesperson with the San Diego-based firm. “We changedfrom a significant `store opening’ strategy, opening 80 to 100 storesa year, to maximizing the stores that are opening and closing someunderperforming stores.” In four years the company had opened326 stores, and on March 6 it closed seven of them. The stores servedas showrooms for selling the made-to-order computer systems.TRISH USA Corp., 379 Princeton-Hightstown Road,East Windsor. Shandy Amin, CEO.An 11-year-old software company has moved from Princeton HightstownRoad and has canceled its telephone number here. It had a six-personstaff that customized and installed software for such clients as LucentTechnologies, but most of its clients were in Brazil.Top Of PageDeathsMichael Ekizian, 62, on May 11. He was an English professorwith the College of New Jersey, a partner in Phoenix Books in Lambertville,and past president of Delaware Valley Poets.Greta Schmidt, 31, on May 12. She was a teacher’s assistantat Grover Middle School in Plainsboro and had been a corporatetrainer at Bristol-Myers Squibb on Scudders Mill Road.Next StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
