A portion of the ETS campus in New Jersey is set to be rezoned and converted to housing. ETS has approached local authorities about redeveloping about 75 acres, mostly north of the “ring road” that goes through the property, to make way for 800 houses and commercial space featuring a walkable “town center” layout. Approximately 20% of the homes would be set aside as “affordable” as defined by the state of New Jersey’s Fourth Round Housing Plan. Per some reports, ETS asked for greater density on the property, but was negotiated down by state officials.
A standing-room-only crowd of local residents objected to the development at a March 16 meeting of the local planning board.
This comes as ETS continues to grapple with a tough financial condition that has necessitated layoffs and led it to consider the sale of flagship testing properties like the TOEFL and GRE to overseas private equity.
The 75-acre figure amounts to about 20% of ETS’s bucolic 355-acre campus, which is located just outside of Princeton. The campus currently houses the ten-ish buildings that make up ETS headquarters, the ETS hotel, and the ETS bed and breakfast. Formerly the site of a hunt club, the property was purchased at the recommendation of ETS president Henry Chauncey shortly after the organization’s founding in 1947. You can read about this in Norbert Elliot’s fine biography of Chauncey.
Regular readers might recall that the former ACT, Inc (now the altruistic but poorly-named IntermediaryEd) recently sold the entirety of its Iowa City campus to developers.