In one of his last Town Council meetings, Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell made a passing comment about plans to move the county’s High Tech High School to a site near Laurel Hill Park in his town.
The comment, made in response to a question about the tax base in Secaucus, was likely overlooked by many people there, who were primarily interested in knowing when the 2009 budget would be finalized.
But possible plans to relocate High Tech High School from North Bergen to a plot a land adjacent to Laurel Hill Park in Secaucus have been discussed for years. It now appears those plans have moved beyond the discussion phase.
High Tech High School, currently located at 2000 85th Street, at the corner of Tonnelle Avenue, is part of the Hudson County Schools of Technology, which also operates another school, County Prep in Jersey City.
‘No place for a school’
According to Frank Gargiulo, superintendent of the Hudson County School of Technology, “plans are on track” for High Tech and County Prep to move to Secaucus.
Gargiulo was among the first people to sound the alarm for the need for a new campus and to get the discussion on track for a new facility elsewhere. In a recent interview he pointed out that High Tech’s current building needs so much work and so many renovations that it would cost more money to repair its current facility than to construct a new building.
“The school is currently located in a building that was built to be a factory. There used to be an old lithograph company there. The building is almost 100 years old. And even though we’ve done extensive modifications to it, there are still some significant problems with the building we’re in,” said Gargiulo.
Also, Tonnelle Avenue, which borders High Tech High School, is increasingly becoming a dense commercial area and, he argued, the school does not fit in with the type of development taking place around it.
“This area was no place for a school when this building was first picked for High Tech, and it’s still no place for a school,” he added.
Secaucus has long been considered ideal for a new location because Hudson County, which operates the School of Technology, already owns the land adjacent to Laurel Hill Park and therefore would not have to purchase the land to build a new facility. Advocates of the move note that situating the school close to a major transportation hub – the Frank R. Lautenberg Rail Station is nearby Laurel Hill Park – also makes sense.
The county is still considering other sites for the school, but Secaucus appears to be the frontrunner location for a new 400,000 square foot facility.
In fact, the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission (NJMC) confirmed through a spokesman that the state agency has “received an application from the Hudson County Board of Ed to subdivide a lot in Laurel Hill Park into three pieces.” He added that the application does not specify how each of the three parcels might be used.
A spokesman for the county denied that there’s an effort to keep the public in the dark.
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In addition to the pending zoning applications, the Hudson County Board of Chosen Feeholders has also approved a measure allowing the county to move forward with preparations for a High Tech move to Laurel Hill.
Sheehan: Bad idea
Hackensack Riverkeeper Bill Sheehan said he knows how he’d like for those three parcels of land to be used.
“They should be used for open space, open space, and open space,” he said.
Long a critic of moving High Tech to Laurel Hill, Sheehan believes there is an effort underway to get approvals for the school passed without public input. More than two years ago, he recalled, the county held a series of public hearings about open space and he believed “the county was trying to manipulate the public process to get the schools relocated to Laurel Hill. I spoke at those public hearings and essentially said Laurel Hill is a park, and there should not be a school campus in the park.”
Sheehan believes similar efforts are afoot again two years later.
Technically speaking, the new school facility would be built on an area adjacent to Laurel Hill, not in the park itself. But the distinction is meaningless, as far as Sheehan is concerned.
He believes Laurel Hill would end up becoming a de facto extension of the school campus. “Parks are for recreation, and schools are for education. Period,” he said. “From what I understand, [representatives from the county and advocates of the move] have been to Trenton, they’ve been talking to folks at the state Department of Environmental Protection, they’ve been making all the stops along the way to get the school approved for Laurel Hill. And then by the time the community finds out about the project, it will be a done deal and it’ll be too late to do anything about it.”
Sheehan said he is not opposed to High Tech moving to Secaucus, but believes “there are other pieces of land that are better suited for the school, which would not interfere with open space.”
He said, for example, the Mori tract on Paterson Plank Road would be better suited for a school.
Denied
A spokesman for the county denied that there’s an effort to keep the public in the dark about the schools plan.
“It’s very premature to even discuss where the school might ultimately end up,” he said. “Although the site near Laurel Hill is under consideration the county is looking at a number of other sites as well.”
. E-mail E. Assata Wright at awright@hudsonreporter.com.