Housing and Neighborhood Development Services, Inc.
Harvard Printing Property
55
Central Avenue, Orange
The largest underdeveloped site in the
Valley is the Harvard Printing site on
Central Avenue that straddles the
Orange/West Orange border. The site is 3.4
acres with four industrial buildings and
is known by many as the old Monroe
Calculating Co. site, where mechanical
calculators were manufactured for many
years – until sometime in the early 1970s.
One hundred years ago the site housed five
hat factories. The east fork of the east
branch of the Rahway River crosses the
site at the municipal boundary and runs
mostly in an underground concrete culvert.
HANDS is leading the effort to identify
and remediate all the environmental issues
at the site. Industrial contamination from
former industrial uses is being cleaned-up
to residential standards before
construction can begin.
HANDS and its two development partners –
Applied Development and Alpert Group –
will develop the site with 200
condominiums including 20 affordable,
artist live/work lofts, neighborhood
retail stores and a public park along the
river which will be opened and landscaped
creating a pedestrian entrance into the
Valley neighborhood from Central Avenue.
Photo by EJ Carr
The four story, 1940s art deco
style Monroe Calculating Co. building will
be adaptively reused with additional
floors constructed on top. The other three
factory buildings will be demolished to
make way for new buildings housing
condominiums and some neighborhood retail
stores or other commercial space.
At the
Harvard Printing/Monroe Calculating
company site, the HANDS partnership will
open the east branch of the Rahway River
and
create a pedestrian walkway into the
Valley from Central Avenue.
