It will cost $50 million and takes two years of work, but by late 2008, the old Block Drug headquarters on Cornelison Avenue in Jersey City will become Hudson County Plaza, the new home to 1,100 county employees.
The nearly 80-year-old building was once the national headquarters for Block Drug, which developed, manufactured and marketed pharmaceutical and household products such as Sensodyne Toothpaste, 1000 Flushes, and Gold Bond Powder.
Block Drug was sold to the British-based GlaxoSmithKline in 2001. Hudson County purchased the Block Drug building from GlaxoSmithKline in 2004 for approximately $15 million.
County officials gave a media tour of the building on Oct. 17, and presented completed design plans.
The 292,000 of 340,000 square foot building will house 14 county departments including the Hudson County Sheriff’s Department and the Department of Health and Human Services.
Also, there will be a new, county-operated chest clinic to replace the old county facility located at Murdoch Hall in the former Jersey City Medical Center.
Staff from the old clinic is slated to occupy the new building first, since their current lease at their old location is expected to expire by the end of the year.
They will be followed by the Sheriff’s Office, then other departments.
Changes to the building include new entrances, two new elevators, new lighting fixtures, and a new air conditioning system for the clinic.
Assistant County Administrator David Drumeler said the first phase of the project will be asbestos removal from inside the building’s walls starting by the end of the November.
In early January, bids will go out for the rest of the construction.
The estimated cost of the upgrades and changes will be approximately $36 million.The center of county operations
Drumeler said before the tour that relocating most county services under one roof will be helpful in the long run.
“While we will spend more upfront to bring Hudson County Plaza online, there is no doubt that the long-term benefit, both financially and from a service perspective, will be worth it,” said Drumeler.
He said that the county has been leasing spaces for county departments in a building on Newkirk Avenue and in other parts of Hudson County, which was becoming a money waster.
County spokesperson Jim Kennelly pointed out that there will be a good deal of work that was at first not anticipated, since the county was unaware there was more space than expected.
“We initially thought we would do what is called a dust-off. That is, we would go in and used what space was available,” Kennelly said, “but what we found was there were about 100,000 square feet of labs and other space. So let’s go forward and use every available space.”
Drumeler noted that GlaxoSmithKline did about $5 million in improvements when they occupied the building.
The tour made its way from the first floor, where the chest clinic will be located, to the seventh floor, where employees from the county’s Department of Health and Human Services (expected to occupy 65 percent of the building) will be placed.
Other floors will hold the County Clerk, Superintendent of Elections, the Board of Elections, and the Sheriff’s Department, which will be responsible for the 24-hour security for the building. From Block Drug to Hudson County Plaza
The Block Drug property is a total of 16 acres. The Block Drug building is seven stories high, sitting on little over 13 acres of land that also includes 600 parking spaces. A second nearby parcel is nearly 3 acres.
According to Joe Baker, member of a small crew of ex-Block Drug employees who have been maintaining the building since it closed, said the building has existed on the site since 1928. Block Drug moved into the building in the 1950s after it moved from a building on Baldwin Avenue.
The county retained several employees from Block Drug to take care of the interior and exterior of the building. There is a front gate leading from Cornelison Avenue and a back entrance on Academy Street.
Transformation from Block Drug to the new Hudson County Plaza will feature upgraded grounds, including a small public park, widened sidewalks, and new bus stops and new landscaping.
“One of the things the county executive [Tom DeGise] talked about was we wanted to support the neighborhood,” said Kennelly. “We want to make this more inviting. You’ll have 1,100 employees working here, and people coming in and out.” Ricardo Kaulessar can be reached at rkaulessar@hudsonreporter.com