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Somerset County Purchases Skillman Village Property for Park (10/25/11) Roads Currently Open & Closed on Skillman Park Property In 2007 the Township of Montgomery purchased a 256 acre parcel of land from the State of New Jersey. This land, one of the largest parcels in the area, is located in the center of western Montgomery, north of Rt. 518, south of Skillman Road, east of Rt. 601, and west of Burnt Hill Road. Much of the property is forest or field type open space. Rock Brook, its tributaries, and Sylvan Lake are surface water features of the property. The parcel is surrounded on two sides by the Selody Sod Farm. At the property’s center is the Village Elementary School, a public school on 12 acres. In addition, the Township has acquired from the State, and is upgrading for further use, an adjacent wastewater treatment facility on 7 acres located off Burnt Hill Road behind the State-owned Skillman Dairy Farm. The property originally consisted of three large farms. These lands were purchased by the State, and established in 1898 as the “New Jersey State Village for Epileptics” at Skillman, during a time when there was no known treatment for epilepsy. The village lay-out was designed by noted Landscape Architect/Engineer Charles W. Leavitt in 1901. For many years it operated as a self-contained “town” that consisted of hospitals, housing, farms, maintenance areas, schools, a theater, a power plant, a wastewater treatment facility, cemeteries, and an on-site landfill. It was one of the first such facilities in the United States. In the mid-twentieth century, with the discovery of medicines for treatment of epilepsy, the facility’s focus shifted and it became the New Jersey Neuropsychiatric Institute. Most recently, and until 1998, the property was "North Princeton Developmental Center" or NPDC, a New Jersey Department of Human Services' residential psychiatric care facility. In acknowledgement of its unique early history, Montgomery Twp. refers to the property as “Skillman Village”. Until 2007 there remained over 100 State buildings on the property, mostly in substandard, unsafe, unsanitary, dilapidated and/or obsolescent condition. Ninety-two of these buildings were abated and demolished in the summer of 2007 by the Township of Montgomery. The few remaining buildings were boarded up while being considered for potential reuse. At the same time, efforts were undertaken to remediate environmental conditions at the site, restore Sylvan Lake, and repair its dam. All asbestos wrapped steampipes throughout the property, part of the original facilities’ heating system, were removed by fall 2008. While most of the environmental clean-up work is completed, the property must be thoroughly remediated and brought into compliance with applicable laws and regulations, ultimately resulting in issuance of a letter of “No Further Action” by the NJDEP. The Township and Somerset County arrived at an agreement for the transfer of ownership of the property and plans for its reuse as a passive recreation use county park in 2011. The remaining derelict buildings from the property's days as North Princeton Developmental Center were remediated and removed in Summer 2011. The actual property closing transaction between Montgomery Township and Somerset County occurred on October 25, 2011. The purchase was for approximately $15.9 Million. This did not include the 7 acre wastewater treatment plant property or another 7 acres of subdivided parcels including the Pine Knolls and Maplewood houses, which remain. The County is beginning tasks to upkeep the trees and grounds on-site. While that work is on-going, the property will remain closed to the public, with the exception of Main Boulevard a public road access to the Village Elementary School, a public Montgomery Twp. school located in the interior of the property.
Questions? Contact Planning Director, Lori Savron, 908-359-8211 ext.
206, lsavron@twp.montgomery.nj.us
Montgomery Township Municipal Offices
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