MIDDLESEX COUNTY — Middlesex County and Old Bridge will spend $10.6 million to preserve 58 acres, including an apple orchard that represents the last remnants of a more than 200-year-old family farm. The 36-acre orchard, the last parcel of the Cottrell family farm on Cottrell Road, will be purchased along with an adjacent 22-acre wooded area known as the...
The Cottrell Farm and farm house at Route 516 and Cottrell Road in Old Bridge. Middlesex County and Old Bridge have purchased the last remnants of the more than 200-year-old family farm for open space.MIDDLESEX COUNTY — Middlesex County and Old Bridge will spend $10.6 million to preserve 58 acres, including an apple orchard that represents the last remnants of a more than 200-year-old family farm.
The 36-acre orchard, the last parcel of the Cottrell family farm on Cottrell Road, will be purchased along with an adjacent 22-acre wooded area known as the Whitney Estates.
County freeholders, who are contributing $6.36 million to the purchase and hope to close the deal by the end of the year, are apparently benefiting from a depressed real estate market. The negotiated price is less than half the $25 million the developer was asking three years ago.
Cottrell family members began farming when New Jersey was still an English colony. Their farm once spread over 1,500 acres in Old Bridge.
One side line operation was the family’s production of a distilled Applejack, the forerunner of a product still on the market today, though no longer made in the township, according to local officials.
In 2002, Herbert Cottrell, the last of the family to run the farm, sold the last parcel to company planning to build stores and townhouses intended to anchor Old Bridge’s downtown development.
Although a developer received preliminary approvals for the project — including six commercial buildings, 129 apartment or condominiums, several small retail buildings and a three-story parking deck — plans bogged down, and by 2007, the company applied to the state to have the farm preserved.
"This project took Old Bridge in the wrong direction," Old Bridge Mayor James Phillips said. "This has been a long struggle for the township. I much prefer apples orchards to nail salons, apartments houses and pizza parlors," he said.
Old Bridge will also keep the 150-year-old Cottrell family farm house that still sits on the property, back from the bustling traffic along Route 516.
The apple orchards will be maintained and farmed, with residents one day possibly permitted to pick the fruit.
However the adjacent Whitney property will be a pristine preserve, a requirement of the NY/NJ Baykeeper, which contributed $200,000 to Old Bridge for the purchase.
"We have efforts to protect wetlands but we don’t have anything protecting woodlands," said Greg Remaud, deputy executive director of the NY/NJ Baykeeper.
Freeholders Thursday are expected to allot open space funds for the purchase. The county applied to the state, hoping to recoup as much as half the $6.36 million, said county Parks and Recreation Director Ralph Albanir, who oversees open space projects.
Old Bridge received $1.6 million in state Green Acres funds towards the purchase. The township will use $2.44 million from its own open space trust fund.
Last year the freeholders borrowed $40 million for open space preservation, hoping to benefit from the drop in real estate values.
This year, however, freeholders shaved one penny off the three-cent open space tax to reduce the budget. Freeholders insisted they will still cover all their costs for land preservation.