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Center will represent a $700 million investment by its partners and another manifestation of the developer’s ties to the state’s health care, academic and business community.
It also required Devco to navigate
a different kind of challenge. The freestanding cancer hospital will occupy the former site of the Lincoln Annex School, which sparked
some backlash among parents
and other community members during planning, but construction is now underway on a new facility that will serve as a replacement. RWJBarnabas is paying for the
$55 million Blanquita B. Valenti Community School, located about a mile away, as part of its cost for the project, on land donated by developer and RWJBarnabas Board Chair Jack Morris.
Devco still has more to come,
even after a banner year. That includes another 500,000 to 750,000 square feet within the next phase
of The Hub, which could attract major biotech or pharmaceutical companies or an operator that
builds speculative lab space for multiple users. Landing such a tenant would “smooth out and enhance
the ecosystem we’re creating,” Paladino said, complementing the medical school, research center and entrepreneurs on the site.
He also noted that Atlantic City Development Corp., the Devco affiliate created in 2015, owns two acres of oceanfront property in Atlantic City. The sites could provide additional expansion capacity for Stockton University, which opened
a 533-bed student housing complex and a 56,000-square-foot academic building in the city as a result of the AC Devco-led, $210 million Atlantic City Gateway project completed
in 2018. That’s in addition to the project’s second phase, a 416-bed residence hall that Devco now has under construction at Atlantic and South Providence avenues.
“What you have to always appreciate, particularly when you’re doing public-private partnerships,
is that you’re often stepping on somebody’s toes from the standpoint of people who work at a university, people who work at a county (who say), ‘Wait a second, this is what I’m supposed to do,’ ” Paladino said. “We had a willing partner at Stockton. This was their first foray into
anything like this, so there was some education that had to come along with it.”
While the experience differed in some ways from Devco’s other projects,
it also paralleled developments
such as the College Avenue campus expansion for Rutgers in New Brunswick and the performing
arts center. Aside from the role of academic institutions and nonprofit partners, Paladino pointed to that of influential county executives and public authorities, which helped the developer access tax-exempt bonds to finance the projects.
“There were components of all of those things, and we just refined it every time,” he said.
Devco is now trying to bring that formula to Paterson after being recruited by local stakeholders
to spearhead the $47 million, 135,000-square-foot Great Falls redevelopment project. The initiative, which recently secured a critical piece of state funding needed to move forward, calls for
The first phase of the New Jersey Innovation and Technology Hub, a 555,000-square-foot research complex in New Brunswick, will comprise a new Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and the Rutgers Translational Research facility, along with an innovation center that
will feature collaborative workspaces, wet and dry laboratories, conference facilities and other amenities that will allow researchers to convene with startups and entrepreneurs.
components such as the Hamilton Visitor Center at the Great Falls, a 270-space parking garage and a youth center.
“We have been able to take this model and utilize it in different environments that are not always
as experienced,” Paladino said. “So sometimes it’s more of a challenge, but it’s more of an educational endeavor than anything else. And I think they look at places like New Brunswick or the work we’ve done in Atlantic City or Newark, and they say, ‘You know, we trust them.’ ” RE
DEVCO:
A BRIEF HISTORY
Seeking to revitalize their company’s home city, a group of Johnson & Johnson executives formed New Brunswick Development Corp. in the mid- 1970s to help guide redevelopment in the municipality. Paladino joined the organization as its president in 1994, following four years of working under Gov. Jim Florio and as the deputy director of the Economic Development Authority, with the initial goal of rebuilding an entity that was then teetering financially.
At that point, he recalled, the organization had a dwindling bank account and millions in unsecured debt. And it hadn’t built anything in several years.
“There was a real discussion amongst the existing board at the time about just closing Devco,” said Paladino, who was brought to the role by George Zoffinger, the former Department of Commerce and Economic Development chief under Florio.
By 1998, however, Devco had
completed a new 135,000-square- foot administrative office and retail building on George Street for what was then the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. A year later, it delivered a new Middlesex County administration building on Bayard Street as part of the state’s first privately conceived, planned, developed, constructed and maintained government complex.
The ensuing years brought projects that were progressively more complex and impactful, including a privatized student housing complex for Rutgers, the Heldrich Hotel and Conference Center and the mixed-use, $143 million Gateway transit village, which brought 192 residential units and a new Barnes & Noble Rutgers University bookstore
to the heart of the downtown
in 2011. That trend has only continued over the past decade, during which Devco has guided multiple projects to completion, delivering for governors from both parties, local officials up and down the state and leaders of universities and hospitals
systems.
“Usually you have a couple of things going
Sarah Clarke
at a time, and then out of the corner of your eye you see a spark,” Paladino said. “And that’s where you then spend
your time and your resources — and your political and financial capital.”
Paladino has taken the journey alongside
Executive
Vice
President
Sarah Clarke
and Vice
President
Merissa
Buczny, who
joined Devco
in 1994 and 1995, respectively.
“These are the two people I rely on 175 percent,” he said. “Not only is it stability — it’s that they have evolved and matured and learned, with us all joined at the hip.”
Merissa Buczny
Courtesy: New Brunswick Development Corp.