It’s easy to talk about the HELIX Innovation District in New Brunswick by describing each of its three uniquely creative buildings, each of which could stand on their own as transformative properties.
- H1, which will include Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, also will have translational research space and the New Jersey Innovation Hub, run by Portal Innovations. It is progressing nicely and aims to open next spring.
- H2, which will be the new headquarters for Nokia Bell Labs, will be a global leader in research for decades to come. It recently held its groundbreaking — and is on track to be ready by the second quarter of 2028.
- H3 will be a yet-to-be-completely-defined 42-story, 500-foot tall building with 565,000 square feet of office, lab, retail and housing that will be unlike any other building in the state.
Viewed together, they show why the HELIX may be the most important commercial real estate project in state history.
Here’s how Chris Paladino, the president of New Brunswick Development Corp. and master developer, described it.
“I think extraordinary things have happened here beyond our realistic or even wildest expectations,” he told BINJE. “By the end of 2028, we’ll have a 1.5-million square feet, an investment of approximately $2 billion and more than 4,000 people researching, working, living and learning on four acres across from the New Brunswick train station.”
As Gov. Phil Murphy prepares to leave office, the HELIX stands as a symbol of his desire to reinvigorate New Jersey as “the Innovation State.”
“In the earliest days of the Murphy administration, when we sat in the transition office and we said, ‘What’s the big idea?’ we could not have envisioned this is what we will have accomplished,” Paladino said.
Each of the buildings presented unique challenges, from the wet labs and research space in H1 to the space planned for Rutgers University’s WINLAB, or Wireless Information Network Laboratory, in H3.
In between is the new Nokia Bell Labs headquarters — being built by SJP Properties — where seemingly every inch brings a unique challenge.
But that’s the beauty — and the benefit — of the HELIX. The ability of all three buildings to work together is what sets it apart from anywhere else in the state.
Paladino breaks it down this way.
“H1 may be the only building in the country where you have a large investment in translational academic research, a medical school, an incubator project run by a real operator in Portal Innovations and space for established biotech and pharma companies to take laboratory space,” he said.
That, Paladino said, was attractive to Nokia Bell Labs.
“I say sometimes that we’d rather be lucky than good, but maybe it’s proof of concept,” he said. “Nokia Bell Labs saw that we were building an ecosystem and wanted to be a part of it.
“They could have gone anywhere in the country, and they chose to stay in New Jersey, because they believe in the ecosystem which we’re building.”
Thierry Klein, the president of Bell Labs Solutions Research, confirmed this.
Speaking to a “who’s who” crowd of business leaders and elected officials at the groundbreaking ceremony in July, Klein set the expectations.
Greatness is the goal, he said.
“Some might say, ‘Oh, it’s just a move of a building,’” he said. “But this is much more than just moving into a building. This is really us recommitting to innovation and recommitting to innovation in New Jersey.”
The same holds true for H3, which is still awaiting an ASPIRE grant approval by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, which is expected next month, Paladino said.
“It will house the Rutgers WINLABs and battery storage research — and we’re building another 30,000 square feet of spec lab space, both wet and dry,” he said.
H3 also will include 265 affordable and market-rate housing units for Rutgers medical students and researchers.
Paladino is hoping some of those researchers will be from Indian Institute of Technology Madras, which he calls the Massachusetts Institute of Technology of India.
Paladino said officials from the state and Rutgers already have made the pitch. He’s hopeful that the entirety of the HELIX project will spur them to set up space here.
“Bringing in Nokia Bell Labs helped us make the leap from being a life science hub to a science hub,” he said. “And it makes sense. There is just such crossover between quantum computing, artificial intelligence and life science today.”
In fact, Paladino said there already are Bell Labs researchers who specialize in AI working with Rutgers medical school faculty on AI programs.
“That just happened in the last six months,” he said.
Paladino said there also is a desire to create a venture studio for AI companies in H3, because of the incredible crossover research possibilities.
“Research silos are a thing of the past,” he said. “That’s what we saw in places like Kendall Square in Cambridge, Torrey Pines in San Diego and University City in Philadelphia.
“That’s why we did this.”
John Flavin, the founder and CEO of Portal Innovations, said the HELIX matches the current market.
“The future of biotech is going to be a little blurrier than just the straight-down-the-middle path it has been,” he said. “It is going to combine different kinds of technology.
“We think there’s going to be a lot of unique business models that get started at HELIX that you’ve never seen before.”
The fact that the HELIX is centrally located — it will be easy to work with researchers at Princeton University and New Jersey Institute of Technology, too — is another bonus. This also will lead to a greater ability to attract new researchers, Paladino said.
“You need to create a place for people to collaborate,” he said. “I think we’re getting that here.”
All in one incredible complex.
How incredible? We’ll give Paladino the final word.
“Is it the most impactful project in New Jersey history?” he asked, and then answered. “I think it certainly has all of the components. It certainly is the most impactful project in New Jersey under construction today.”
For information about the HELIX, go to helixnj.com
