north princeton developmental center

The ghost town next door

By Jessica Bruder

February 6, 2005 - New York Times

 

A FENCE surrounds the playground of the Village Elementary School here. On one side, kids laugh, shriek and dart around the yard, burning off the pent-up energy of an ordinary school day.

On the other side of the fence, the scene is eerie and subdued. More than 100 abandoned buildings dot the landscape, like some kind of empty village of the damned. The sagging porches and toothy windows suggest years of neglect, as if, suddenly, an entire town had packed up and left in an uncanny exodus.

These grounds were once host to three generations of mental health facilities, starting with the State Village for Epileptics in 1898. The last of them, the North Princeton Developmental Center, closed seven years ago.

"It's on creepy Web sites, we're in Weird N.J., and now there is my daughter going to school in the middle of this mess," said Valerie Smith, a Montgomery resident. "It is literally out of a horror movie."

A horror movie? Perhaps. But others would call it a typical Trenton thriller, the kind that pits ordinary New Jerseyans against the skulking bureaucracy of the state.

Over the past eight years, the Township of Montgomery has been negotiating with state officials to buy the 260 acres of land where the North Princeton Developmental Center once stood. The local board of education acquired a 12-acre tract to build the Village Elementary School under a lease-purchase agreement in 1998. Since then, Mayor Louise Wilson says, the town has made at least four offers for the rest of the property, but each was turned down without so much as a counteroffer.

While talks drag on, steel rusts, paint peels in long lead curls and water seeps into the buildings, some of which date to the 19th century and pique the interest of the state's preservationists. And the truth grows clearer with each passing year: Montgomery Township, an upscale bedroom community five miles north of Princeton, has a ghost town in its backyard.

"I think that it's shocking," Mayor Wilson said recently. "I think that it's just an example of government at its absolute worst. The paralysis, the money that has been wasted by keeping that place in state hands, is breathtaking." Maintenance, which includes boarding up windows, welding doors shut and paying for private security, costs $500,000 to $1 million each year, according to the state.

 

The Calculus of Cleanup

What seems like simple neglect, though, is actually a complex calculation of dollars and cents. Any proposed deal must take two estimates into account: the value of the land and the cost of cleaning it up. After a century of use, the property has plenty of environmental quirks to sort out, including asbestos-covered pipes, old landfills that hold who-knows-what, lead-based paint and hydraulic fluid steeping in elevator pits. In past negotiations, the town has offered to take charge of the cleanup if the price of the land were adjusted accordingly. Ms. Wilson estimates that, all told, the cleanup could cost as much as $10 million. Treasury officials say the figure is outlandish.

"The town has grossly overestimated the cost of cleaning up the site and the danger that the site presents," said John McCormac, the state's treasurer, "although we realize there is work to be done."

 

Hoping to break the impasse, officials in Montgomery Township did what any red-blooded Americans would do: they sued. On Dec. 23, they filed a claim against both the state and its Treasury. The claim cites violations of the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and the state Environmental Rights Act, and demands that the state start cleaning up the North Princeton Developmental Center. As an added barb, the lawsuit also names Mr. McCormac and Edmund F. Jenkins, the director of the Treasury's Division of Property Management and Construction, personally.

"My objective now is to get this site cleaned up" Mayor Wilson said. "The more time that passes and the further the property descends into ruin, the more worrisome the presence for the school and the staff is, and the greater the risk."

Bradley Campbell, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection, is skeptical of Ms. Wilson's motives. "What's essentially happening," he said, "is that, in order to leverage a negotiation over the sale price, local officials and their counsel are exaggerating the health and environmental concerns that the site presents."

From either side, it's hard to tell if the lawsuit will prod the state into eventually cooperating with Montgomery, or if it will just drive a wedge between them, raising the specter of outside development.

John Payne, a law professor who specializes in land-use issues at the Rutgers School of Law in Newark, offered a simile. "The township suing the state is a little bit like the younger brother who sticks pins into his older sibling to get Mommy and Daddy's attention," he said. "I don't think it will work as a matter of law, though it may work to hasten the negotiations in the long run."

On a dreary midwinter afternoon, Ms. Smith, whose daughter attends Village Elementary, walked the grounds of the North Princeton Developmental Center. She was joined by fellow members of an advocacy group called N.P.D.C. Act Now, founded in September to lobby on behalf of Montgomery's efforts to acquire the property. Ms. Smith pointed out fresh plywood nailed across doors and windows, noting that the state had paid $40,000 to have a private contractor reseal them after complaints that the old boards had rotted or been torn away.

"It's not a safe and secure place," she said, a filigree of exasperation in her voice. "It attracts vandals, thrill-seekers." Indeed, some graffiti writers had already used the wood to scrawl their own grievances against the state. "Why you gotta board us out?" read a message in black spray paint.

Not all of the buildings were boarded up, though. Along an old industrial road, the splintered door of a utility cottage banged open and shut, complaining in the wind. Part of the roof was missing and, inside, the floor had collapsed into the basement below.

"We should get the treasurer in here," muttered Michael Fedun, a local lawyer. "With a thousand kids in a schoolyard right nearby, six kids can wander off and end up in something like this. Sure, it's fun to look at and play in, but it's dangerous. It's incredibly irresponsible."

 

Houses of Secrets

Though Village Elementary School students do not have access to the grounds, it's clear that other people do. Two days before last Thanksgiving, a volunteer firefighter from Lawrence Township was driving past the property in the early morning when he saw smoke. One of the buildings was burning. He called the Montgomery Police, who arrived as Lakeside House, a two-story brick building, was consumed by the fire.

"There was no reason for that to start on fire by itself," said Michael Beltranena, director of the Montgomery Township Police Department. "There's no power into the place." He added that it seemed like a case of arson, and that his own officers had beaten the state's private, on-site security force to the scene. "They need to do better than that," he said. "I've never seen more than one security guard."

Mr. Payne of Rutgers suggested that state officials shouldn't take the blaze lightly. "Suppose somebody had been killed in that building," he said. "Then there would have a been a big hue and cry, with everyone pointing fingers at everybody else."

But risks have their own set of attractions. Neither rot nor fire will keep curious teenagers and armchair archaeologists from the site, which most visitors simply call "Skillman" after the surrounding town. In 2001, Weird N.J., a popular magazine of Garden State oddities, published an article called "Weirdly Mental ... the Skillman Institute." Though the place was quietly popular before, recognition from Weird N.J. put a brand-new pin in the exotica map. Explorers come from miles away, armed with flashlights and searching for the site's most storied places, including the morgue in the Gerry Building, a former hospital.

 

"Personally, I've always been drawn to these abandoned institutions for a couple of reasons, and one is the history," said Mark Moran, a co-publisher of Weird N.J. "It's sad to see them discarded like this, because there really is a tremendous sense of history that goes along with them. You can still kind of feel that when you wander through them. You get this sense of awe and wonder."

Like rings on a tree stump, the grounds of Skillman hold a hidden history. The mental institution evolved over a century, changing to reflect the needs and philosophies of its times. It opened in 1898, when Acting Gov. Foster M. Voorhees signed a bill into law establishing the State Village for Epileptics. The village was designed to be a self-sustaining agrarian community, where epileptics could live together in a wholesome environment, learn trades, receive medical treatment, and leave behind the almshouses, insane asylums and even prisons to which they had been consigned in the past. Built on farmland bought by the state, the sprawling grounds included a farm with chickens, cows and pigs; fields for growing fruits and vegetables; a power plant; a firehouse; and even a sprawling theater where the residents staged operettas like "The Pirates of Penzance."

The village was considered a model of progressive treatment for epileptics in its early years. Through the Great Depression and World War II, however, the institution suffered from cutbacks, understaffing and overcrowding, so much that the press dubbed it "the snake pit of New Jersey." As the village deteriorated, however, new drugs were being invented - notably Dilantin, Luminal and Mesantoin - that helped control seizures, making the institution obsolete by the early 1950's. Many of the epileptics were reintegrated with their communities, and in 1953 the village was transformed into the New Jersey Neuro-Psychiatric Institute, a research and treatment center focusing on alcoholics, drug addicts, emotionally disturbed children and people with cerebral palsy.

 

'Demolition by Neglect'

The institution's final chapter began in 1983. Renamed the North Princeton Developmental Center, it narrowed in scope to treat developmental disabilities, cerebral palsy and other neurological disorders. In 1995, Gov. Christie Whitman declared the site surplus property. The last of the patients were transferred to other facilities and, in 1998, the center closed for good.

Curiously, the grounds were left untouched. Much of the original village - from the power plant to the theater and even the greenhouses - remains. Time and weather have taken their toll: vines twine across walls, roofs sag and now the only regular residents are herds of deer, which roam as if they own the place.

"In the preservation world, the term is 'demolition by neglect,' " said Brad Lay, president of the Van Harlingen Historical Society, a local heritage group. "The state is, through neglect, demolishing these buildings. Through not making a decision, they're making a decision, and we're seeing a real preservation tragedy as a result."

As the village deteriorates, its neighbors imagine a better future. Former Mayor Don Matthews uses his own tractor to mow the hip-deep weeds that are choking off one of two cemeteries where patients were buried. A local Rotary club tends to the other one. Members of Sourland Hills Actors Guild, a community production troupe, look longingly at Smalley Hall, a grandiose theater complete with balconies, dressing rooms and even an old ticket booth. If Montgomery buys the property, they would like to bring new life to the stage inside.

"It's sort of like a 'Phantom of the Opera' feeling in there," said Debbie Meola, a founding member of the guild. "Kind of like, 'Wow, if this place could talk.' "
Perhaps most poignant, the Epilepsy Foundation of New Jersey wants to refurbish Maplewood, a Greek revival farmhouse on the property that is listed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places.

"We hope to see a museum and learning center about the origins of epilepsy and how it's been handled in the United States," said Eric Joice, the foundation's executive director. "We've been very much zeroed in on the Maplewood building, because it was the very first building. It was the institution in Year 1, it was the sum total of it. Our position has been thousands of people were residents of this particular institution and they really represented how we treated people at a part of time, and how we continue to treat some people even today."

Montgomery officials imagine readapting some of the old buildings to creating a town center with parks, shops, health care facilities and housing for seniors. "If you look at the whole site, it's potentially Montgomery Township's cultural, recreational and civic hub," Ms. Wilson said, "a place where people can come together for fine and performing arts, for a good meal, for a picnic, a place where your whole family can go and spend the day together. Montgomery is one of the places that's called a poster child for sprawl. We grew really fast in the 1990's, and now we want to be a poster child for what to do about it."

One of her biggest concerns is that the property will be sold to a developer and become a new annex for suburban sprawl. Though developers have taken a keen interest in the land and have been approaching the Treasury, state officials say that they have not solicited any recent proposals.

"I think, early on, it was assumed in light of the budget crisis, the biggest return to the state would be from offering the parcel for development," said Mr. Campbell of the D.E.P. "In light of concerns raised from both the town and the D.E.P., the treasurer has been amenable to the town's proposal for alternative uses for the site."

When the town first filed its lawsuit in December, talks with the state skidded to a halt. Mr. Tom Vincz, a spokesman for the Treasury, said at the time that his department would not negotiate with Montgomery while being sued. Over the past two weeks, however, both sides have agreed to try settling the matter out of court with nonbinding arbitration. Mayor Wilson hopes the dialogue will go past the terms of the lawsuit and settle future ownership of the site. "Our intention with mediation is to address the whole enchilada," she said.

Mr. Vincz, however, said the mediation process would only tackle the environmental issues raised by the lawsuit. He added that the state had started to explore options for fixing up the site and had already started to repair an aging sewage plant that serves Village Elementary School. "The state wants a sale, not a stalemate, and the residents want the same thing," he said. "Pointing fingers doesn't get us there. Cleaning the site up will."

State officials have yet to fix a timeline for a cleanup. So the wrangling continues, and the site's future remains as murky as its past. "You think of ghost towns, and you think of the Wild West, but here's a ghost town in the middle of New Jersey," Mr. Lay said. "The unfortunate fact is the community around it wants to save it, and hasn't been able to. We're just standing on the sidelines watching it decline."

 

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