New Jersey City University bringing campus to Fort Monmouth
New Jersey City University is making plans to open a campus at Fort Monmouth.
NJCU is one of Brookdale Community College’s university partners and it appears as if the partnership will continue even as NJCU opens its own location.
An agreement was reached Sept. 25 between the state agency redeveloping the Fort Monmouth property and developer KKF University Enterprises for a “state-of-the-art, satellite campus in the heart of Fort Monmouth’s main post” for NJCU.
NJCU President Sue Henderson spoke at a June meeting of the Monmouth County Board of Freeholders and indicated the Fort Monmouth campus would be for juniors and seniors who completed two years at Brookdale.
The fort campus would have 15 classrooms including nursing labs, which according to Henderson could increase the enrollment of Brookdale’s nursing program.
According to the purchase and sale agreement, KKF will buy historic Squier Hall for $2.5 million and invest a minimum of $10 million to renovate the 1935-era administrative building.
KKF’s proposal calls for leasing Squier Hall to NJCU, which will use the site for its undergraduate programming, which it currently offers at Brookdale’s Wall Higher Education Center.
“Those programs, primarily including nursing, national security studies and business, would be relocated to Squier Hall,” according to the agreement between KKF and the Fort Monmouth Economic Redevelopment Authority (FMERA).
Squier Hall is on 28 acres in the Oceanport Reuse area of the former U.S. Army fort, which was closed in 2011 and is being redevelopment as a hub for technology companies. Parts of the fort are located in Eatontown, Oceanport and Tinton Falls.
The two-story building is near established and planned businesses and amenities, including the Dance Hall, a planned microbrewery, eatery and event space, the McAfee Center, a planned mixed-use technology campus, Greeley Field, a planned open space and a planned Fort Monmouth Fitness Center.
KKF will demolish six other buildings on the Squier Hall property. In the future, the developer may build a residence hall and additional academic buildings on the property to accommodate a student body of up to 800 students, according to a FMERA news release.
NJCU would be the second educational institution to open at the fort, joining Trinity Hall, a private girls’ college preparatory school in the Tinton Falls Reuse area.