Nokia Bell Labs dumps 'obsolete' suburban office for gleaming 10-story New Brunswick tower
Michael L. Diamond, Asbury Park Press
Updated 7 min read
Rendering of the Nokia Bell Labs research and development facility in New Brunswick.
NEW BRUNSWICK - Nokia Bell Labs will move its storied research facility from its sprawling suburban campus in Murray Hill to a gleaming 10-story office and laboratory being built for it as part of the Helix project here, company officials said Monday.
The 350,000-square-foot building, scheduled to be completed in 2028, is expected to house 1,000 employees. And it gives New Jersey a major coup. Nokia had looked at some 25 sites, mainly in the Northeast, before settling on the urban setting of New Brunswick.
The site, executives said, had everything they were looking for: the chance to occupy a lab built to their own specifications; the ability to attract employees from nearby universities; and easy access thanks to the New Brunswick train station across the street.
Executives were joined for the announcement by Gov. Phil Murphy, as well as federal, state and local officials at the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center, a short walk from the Helix project that's underway.
"The (Murray Hill) campus, while I think it served us really well for 80 years, is not really well fit to bring us into the next, I'm going to say 80 years," said Severine Siebert, vice president of strategy and technology operations for Nokia. "We want to have a space that's more collaborative because we truly believe that collaboration will bring our innovation forward."
It came as New Jersey's economy undergoes a transformation. Corporate giants that in the 20th century flocked to the Garden State suburbs, where their workers could toil away largely in isolation, need less space in the digital age — and closer ties to colleges and highly skilled workers.
"These were facilities built by corporate giants," Rutgers University economist James W. Hughes said. "They're just obsolete now."
Nokia Bell Labs at Murray Hill features the Nobel Circle in its courtyard.
Nokia Bell Labs in Murray Hill is the largest of eight research facilities operated by the Finland-based telecommunications company, conducting research in everything from how to expand on the limits of optical systems to new innovations such as artificial intelligence.
The company began looking to replace its Murray Hill campus five years ago. It considered renovating the building, but decided it would make more sense to search for a new location, Siebert said.
The project is being developed by SJP Properties, which will lease the building to Nokia. Helix's investors include Rutgers, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority and Middlesex County. And tenants of the first building, a 12-story, 573,400-square-foot facility, will include Rutgers' Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. That office is expected to open in late 2025.
Nokia's announcement answers a big question: Where will the developers find a big enough company for the second phase?
Murphy and officials from his administration viewed Nokia's announcement as if they had hit the jackpot. Not only will Nokia continue to operate the legendary Bell Labs division in New Jersey, but also it signed agreements with venture funds America’s Frontier Fund, Roadrunner Venture Studios, and Celesta Capital to invest and turn the ideas into businesses in their own right.
NJ Governor Phil Murphy speaks Tuesday, December 11, 2023, during an announcement at the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center where Nokia Bell Labs will move its headquarters from Murray Hill to the new Helix project in New Brunswick.
"It is one of those one-plus-one-equals-three results that is just magical when you see it," Murphy said.
"It's everything we could have hoped for, and more," said Tim Sullivan, chief executive officer of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, noting Nokia eventually could be eligible for tax credits from his agency.
For all of the laurels, Nokia's decision also spells the impending end for the Murray Hill campus. AT&T built the facility on farmland in New Providence and Berkeley Heights, moving Bell Labs from New York City to the rural property in Union County at the start of World War II in 1941.
An aerial photo of Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey in 1941, when the facility opened.
The campus eventually included seven buildings that included offices that they could be easily reconfigured and an anechoic chamber completely devoid of sound, wrote A. Michael Noll, a former Bell Labs employee and communications professor at the University of Southern California.
The company opened a satellite facility in Holmdel in 1962, which has since been redeveloped into Bell Works with offices, shops and restaurants.
"In the early 1960s, some scientists (in Murray Hill) made up excuses, such as the need for low humidity to make high-resistance measurement, to justify their need for window air conditioners," Noll said. "Management ultimately gave in, and in the mid 1960s, Building 1 was air-conditioned and then Building 2. Before air-conditioning, there were electric fans in offices and labs. Windows could be opened also, but dirt from outside would blow into the labs and offices. Once in a while, it would be so hot that many people would be allowed to leave early. Bermuda shorts were another solution."
At its peak, Bell Labs employed 15,000, attracting the best and the brightest scientists who garnered 10 Nobel Prizes, including one this year, with groundbreaking discoveries. Among them: the transistor, satellite communications and fiber optics. And they paved the way for cellphones and the internet.
Officials from Nokia are joined by those from New Brunswick and the state during a Tuesday, December 11, 2023, announcement at the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center. Nokia Bell Labs will move its headquarters from Murray Hill to the new Helix project in New Brunswick.
The company wouldn't last. AT&T's monopoly was broken up by the government in 1984, beginning a slow decline. Bell Labs was spun off into Lucent Technologies Inc. in 1996. Lucent merged with Alcatel a decade later, and the new company closed the Holmdel office. And Alcatel merged with Nokia in 2016.
Nokia becomes the latest corporate giant to relocate from their iconic homes. AT&T is moving from a 1-million-square-foot site in Bedminster, where it operated since 1977, to an office a quarter of the size, also in Bedminster. And Pfizer announced this year it would leave its 575,000-sqaure-foot complex in Peapack and Gladstone that it has occupied for 20 years as part of corporate cost-cutting, Hughes said.
Nokia's announcement leaves officials in New Providence and Berkeley Heights with a familiar predicament: how to redevelop an abandoned suburban office complex.
Still, Nokia on Monday generated a buzz among a New Jersey technology industry that long has touted the state's assets — a highly educated work force, a top-notch education system, proximity to the densely populated Northeast — in a bid to recapture the glory days, when Bell Labs was king.
"We've talked about Nokia as the mother of innovation," said Aaron Price, president and chief executive officer of TechUnited, a trade group. "To hear that they were considering a move out of the state, one, had that occurred it would have been devastating, and two, the fact that they're staying shows a recommitment and an updated realization about the assets that New Jersey has to offer."
Severine Siebert, Nokia's Vice President of Strategy & Technology Operations, is shown after an announcent by the company Tuesday, December 11, 2023, at the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center. Nokia Bell Labs will move its headquarters from Murray Hill to the new Helix project in New Brunswick.
Nokia's Siebert said the company told employees about the decision Monday morning, and the feedback sounded positive.
"When we came to New Brunswick and heard the vision for the first time, what they were trying to build here, we thought this is a perfect match for us because they have the same vision," Siebert said. "They are bringing academic partners, industrial partners into this ecosystem, and we fit right in."
Michael L. Diamond is a business reporter who has been writing about the New Jersey economy and health care industry for more than 20 years. He can be reached at mdiamond@gannettnj.com.
