With $3.5M Bond, Holmdel Moves Closer To Crawford Hill Acquisition

HOLMDEL, NJ — With the adoption of a $3.5 million bond ordinance Tuesday, the Township Committee continued to advance its plans to acquire Crawford Hill, the 35-acre site of the scientifically significant Horn antenna.

The bond is in addition to $2 million in notes approved in August, to fund the total $5.5 million cost to acquire the site from a private developer through eminent domain.

At the same time, the township is pursuing a Monmouth County open space funding agreement that might reimburse the township for up to 75 percent of the price of the property.

The committee on Tuesday agreed to enter into a cooperative project agreement with the county through its Municipal Land Preservation Incentive Program.

In October, the Township Committee announced its memorandum of understanding with Crawford Hill Holdings to purchase the 35-acre site, on Lots 6 and 6.01.

The purchase price is $5.5 million, with the seller donating $750,000 back to the township for improvements to Crawford Hill, the township said.

These monies are expected to be used to preserve the Horn antenna, repave access roads, and help complete potential improvements such as a visitor center, the township said.

According to the Memorandum of Understanding (or MOU), the township and the developer, company principal Rakesh Antala, agreed the sale price was "just compensation."

Crawford Hill is the highest point in Monmouth County, the former property of Bell Labs and then Nokia, and it remained undeveloped. But Crawford Hill Holdings purchased the site from Nokia in late 2020 and was planning a townhouse development there.

The acquisition will be funded through the Township’s Open Space Trust Fund without any adverse impact to taxpayers, the township has said.

Holmdel plans to preserve the area as open space, creating a 35-acre park and eventually an education center dedicated to science - symbolized by the Horn antenna sited there in the 1960s.

Another portion of the property, Lot 7, the location of the former Nokia research facility on Holmdel Road, is not included in the deal and remains owned by the developer.

“This breakthrough will allow future generations to observe the Horn antenna, a National Historic Landmark located within Holmdel, as well as the impressive views that can be observed from the highest point in Monmouth County, all as part of a sprawling 35-acre public park,” said Mayor D.J. Luccarelli at the time of the agreement.

At the public hearing on the bond ordinance on Tuesday, Township Attorney Michael L. Collins also updated the public on the status of the legal process for the acquisition.

He said the township and owner will appear before a Superior Court judge in Monmouth County early in January to negotiate the final terms of a consent order.

He said it is most likely the township will pay for the property first, then work with the county for funding to offset the price, given the tight timing for the acquistion.

"The goal right now is to complete the taking as soon as practicable," Collins said, referring to the "significant public interest" in accomplishing the acquisition.

For this past year, preserving the Horn antenna site has been passionately supported by local land use groups, the general public, school students and thousands of scientists and citizens on a worldwide petition who consider the antenna a monument to major scientific discovery.

The Horn antenna is a large microwave antenna used as a satellite communication antenna and radio telescope during the 1960s at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Holmdel. Former Bell Labs physicists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson used the Horn antenna to detect the cosmic microwave background radiation that provided evidence of the Big Bang theory of the creation of the universe. In 1978, Wilson and Penzias earned a Nobel Prize in Physics for this work.

In 1989, the Horn Antenna was designated a National Historic Landmark in the National Register of Historic Places, a list maintained by the United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service. In addition, the Horn Antenna was listed on the New Jersey Register of Historic Places on Feb. 24, 1993.