Freeholders get earful from Greystone faithful

MORRISTOWN –

Desperate for saviors as their cause is being bulldozed to the ground, several dozen people hoping to halt the demolition of Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital pleaded for help Wednesday night from the Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders.

Many of those in attendance at the freeholder meeting — ranging from a high school junior to the mayor of Harding — spoke during the public session, expounding on the history of the massive Kirkbride building, where a $34.5 million demolition project began on Monday.

The dialogue, however, was strictly one-way, as none of the five freeholders in attendance offered any comment or answers to specific questions regarding the Greystone demolition.

Their silence, perhaps due to the fact that Greystone is a state project largely out of county control, upset several people in the audience, who shouted requests for the freeholders to speak up.

"I'm 21, I work 55 hours a week, and there are very few things that could get me to a freeholder's meeting in a county I don't even live in," said Sean Condon, a West Orange resident and construction worker who was a trustee for the Verona Historical Society. "This issue got me here in a heartbeat. This doesn't need to happen, certainly not in the way it is happening. And the sheer lack of interest of the people involved here is a little disconcerting."

Opened in 1876, the 675,000-square-foot Kirkbride Building was erected as part of a national movement to improve the care of the mentally ill. At its peak, more than 5,000 patients were cared for on the self-sustaining campus in Parsippany, but the buildings there have fallen into dangerous disrepair over the last half-century.

Historic preservation groups across New Jersey and the United States have urged the state to preserve all or part of the Kirkbride, but the Treasury Department dismissed six formal expressions of interest it solicited and received from developers hoping to redevelop it for housing, community or mixed use, several saying they could fund the project through private money and tax credits.

When the demolition is complete, 165 remaining acres of the Greystone campus will be turned over to Morris County for open-space stewardship, and will be deeded to the county for $1 once the bonds used to pay for the demolition are paid.

With demolition underway, the best preservationists may hope for is a compromise that would spare the central portion of the building, which still casts an imposing shadow over Central Park, built on previous parcels of the old Greystone campus already in Morris County hands. The local nonprofit Preserve Greystone will stage a rally in front of the Kirkbride at noon on Sunday.

"I'm only 17 years old, I'm still a junior in high school but I already know that this is a huge on the part of New Jersey," said Nicole Spangenburg. "Again and again throughout my young life, all I've heard is 'never forget.' They use those words when talking about the Holocaust and 9/11. By destroying this building, we would be destroying a huge part of American history."

Harding Mayor Nicholas Platt, recalling his commute to New York City, said "Every night I went through Penn Station. And on the walls are pictures of the old Penn Station that was taken down in 1963. When the wrecking ball went through that building, everyone stopped. The light was cascading through the colonnades, which had been blocked off by soot over the years. Nobody understood what they were tearing down, but it was very emotional for the people who were involved in the destruction of Penn Station. And to this day, everyone regrets it."

He applied that memory to Greystone, another historic architectural structure of immense size that thousands of people would inhabit on a daily basis.

"I think this may be the situation with Greystone," he said. "It's so easy to tear something down. And I think that we will regret it later on. So if you do have the ability to reach out and get some compromise from Trenton, I would hope that you do so."

Staff Writer William Westhoven: 973-428-6627; wwesthoven@dailyrecord.com.