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employees to the city in a growing segment of the economy, one that hinges on in-person collaboration, creating a ripple effect beyond a typical office user.
“They looked everywhere,” Gov. Phil Murphy said during a Dec. 11 event in New
Brunswick,
where Nokia
Bell Labs
announced its
plan for the
new facility.
“This is not just
a question of
relocating in the
state of New Jersey. They looked around every corner of the United States of America and probably beyond that, and after having assessed all of their alternatives, they landed right here in New Brunswick in the great state of New Jersey. And I think that’s a huge testament, not just to their process, but also what we have to offer.”
The decision is at least five years in the making for Nokia Bell Labs, the firm behind the transistor and other Nobel Prize-winning innovations during 80 years in Murray Hill.
For the the not-for-profit New Brunswick Development Corp., or Devco, it’s another monumental step in a plan to a transform a parcel just south of Albany Street, across from the New Brunswick train station and steps from Rutgers University, one that would leverage the city’s long-established anchors in health care, government and academia.
The project, officially known as the Health & Life Science Exchange, has taken shape in recent years with strong public support from Murphy, who has highlighted the site in his push to grow the state’s innovation economy. Construction is underway on the first of three phases — a 12-story, 574,000-square-foot building with an incubator known as the New Jersey Innovation HUB, the new home of Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and
a Rutgers translational research facility.
“That was a very big step,” said Dan Loughlin, a broker and vice chairman with JLL who leads the project’s leasing team, referring to Murphy’s support of the project. “And when Chris and Devco were able to secure Rutgers Medical
School, that just gave the site another level of definition and really made the balance of the campus that much more attractive — and
I think Nokia picked up on that immediately when they came and visited the campus.”
That visit took place in February, when Nokia executives joined representatives from Devco,
SJP Properties and JLL at a site that was one of more than two dozen locations it considered, the company said. But New Brunswick would provide a manageable option for its existing workforce “that was
probably more suburban in nature,” Loughlin said,
said Loughlin, who represented ownership in the lease alongside JLL’s Blake Goodman, Jason Benson, Dan Spero and Peter Ladas. He added: “There was no height restriction, so they were able to really design and implement all
of their highly special, technical requirements in a building, which is not easy to do.”
Nokia executives said as much during the Dec. 11 event, noting that the building will rise more
than 250 feet despite having just 10 floors. Many floors will be double or triple the height of a typical office
Phil Murphy
a state-of-the-art, highly specialized facility.
“There was no preconceived design other than a building footprint,”
TM 29
Dan Loughlin
while allowing it to recruit younger talent from New York, Philadelphia and other cities.
It also provided a blank slate for what would be
Long-term
relationships,
built on trust.
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