Princeton Combines Business With Education; Forrestal Industrial Park Renews Tenant Drive

Princeton University yesterday began a series of eight ads in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to publicize its new Forrestal Center, a 25-year industrial park development project, to prospective tenants.

Initiated last spring after two years of intensive planning, the center is located in and around Princeton's James Forrestal research campus, a major nucleus for advanced research and government programs in physical and engineering sciences, located near Princeton's main campus.

John Hire, development coordinator for the project employed by K.S. Sweet and Associates, said the project is intended to turn an "idle investment" into a moneymaking opportunity for the school, to allow the school to affect the development of the area, and to establish a creative interaction between the research schools and the research-oriented firms the development hopes to attract.

Designed by Sasaki Associates of Watertown, the Forrestal Center will include in addition to sites for industrial plants and office buildings 1600 housing units, a 400-room hotel and convention center, and a small neighborhood shopping center, Hire said. Current tenants of the center include the R.W. Johnson Foundation, RCA Corporation, Mobil Oil Corporation and the Dow Jones Corporation.

John P. Moran, Princeton University Vice-President for Facilities, declined to release any figures on planned investment or return for the project, explaining the information will remain confidential while Princeton negotiates with prospective tenants.

Hire said the school expects the project to prove at least as profitable, if not more so, as other investments. Expenditures by the school are being held to a minimum, Hire said. The price of an ad similar to Princeton's in yesterday's Times is $2,500.

"Everybody's budget is tight," Hire said, "any university with large chunks of land has to look at similar options. You can't afford to be smug," he said.

Reaction from Princeton students and faculty to the project has been slight. "There hasn't been any," said Thomas Pyle, chairman of Princeton's undergraduate assembly. Some student pressure last spring led the university to make a commitment for low-cost housing in the project, an editor of the Daily Princetonian reported.

Reaction

Aaron Liminick, dean of Princeton's faculty, said he "hasn't heard of any general faculty reaction" either.

Hire described the reaction of the university community as a "conservative, wait-and-see one." He said, "They're not cheerleaders, but are basically supportive." Hire added that faculty and students realize the necessity of the project, both to raise money and to ensure a controlled development of the area.

Hale Champion, Harvard's Vice-President for Financial Affairs, said yesterday that no such plans are in the works for Harvard. "We're hard put to take care of our own facilities," he said.