Needing Room to Grow, Jets Build Dream Home By GREG BISHOP Published: April 4, 2008 FLORHAM PARK, N.J. ? From a terrace at the Jets? under-construction palace of a practice facility and headquarters, Woody Johnson fixed his gaze on an old tree between two fields. The tree has a split trunk, forcing its branches upward into a shape Johnson hopes will signal a new era for the football team he owns. e a V for victory.? Since 1974, the Jets have called Hofstra University home. The team will keep it that way through the end of training camp this summer before planting roots here, near Fairleigh Dickinson University, at the address 1 Jets Drive. And although more than 30 years of memories have strengthened the team?s ties to Long Island, the move represents an upgrade to a swanky facility from a serviceable one. Johnson, wearing a blue suit and a construction hat emblazoned with a Jets logo, spoke of this place on a recent tour the way a proud father would describe his children. He pointed with purpose. Over there, the new auditorium, with its theater lighting and sound, and its extra-large seats tested to hold 600 pounds. Over here, the fields, aligned the same direction as the one in the new stadium that the Jets and the Giants are building down the road. ?This is absolutely flat,? Johnson said. ?You can set a laser on this thing.? As he watched blueprints transform into a maze of wiring and concrete, he said he thought often about his grandfather Robert Wood Johnson II. And then one day, he stumbled across an old NBC interview with the man known as the General. It was if the grandfather was speaking directly about the grandson?s current project. The General is often credited with building the family business, Johnson & Johnson, into the world?s largest health-care company. He believed in the quality of a workplace and in the notion that design affected job performance. ?A lot of what he believed in, I believed in,? Johnson said. ?He?d feel right at home here. He would understand why this is important. Just like when he was building factories in the ?40s and ?50s, same thing.? During the old interview, the General argued for a minimum wage. Woody Johnson compared that concern for workers to the way the Jets have designed identical entrances ? same view, same grass, same door, same atrium ? for the football and the business sides of the organization. The team?s corporate headquarters, now in Manhattan, will be part of this new campus. The General talked of open communication. His grandson is building open pods of offices with glass walls. ?Function follows form,? Johnson said. ?If you have great architecture, and the architecture is designed specifically for football, you?re going to have a better product on the field.? The Jets spared no expense. They hired the noted architect David Childs, a longtime Jets fan, to translate their vision into a design. The team has said it was spending more than $75 million to build the place, and it had sold naming rights to Atlantic Health for 12 years for an unspecified amount. There will be a Marriott hotel on site. Johnson turned the search for a property into a competition. His employees studied more than 40 locations before settling on five finalists. Johnson toured each site, and when he arrived in Florham Park, the whole place was decked out in green. Even the police cars. It shocked him that land like this ? 27 acres surrounded by wetlands and 20 minutes from the stadium and Newark Liberty International Airport ? was available. Johnson?s high level of involvement has struck Childs as unusual. He instructed his architect to build an educational facility, one that bridged the business side and the football side. ?No other facility of its kind has this kind of quality to it,? said Childs, a Jets fan dating to the days of Joe Namath. ?And equality between business and sports itself. We?ve done airports and stadiums, large projects all over the world. But this is on a different scale. It has a personal aspect to it.? The easiest way to picture the building, according to Bill Senn, the Jets? vice president for design and construction, is to imagine an extended H. The offices take the shape of the letter, with two fields ? one artificial outdoor, one artificial indoor ? on either side of the center bar. This is Childs?s favorite part. ?Talk about a cathedral,? he said. ?A cathedral of sweat. It?s the heart of the project.? At about 130,000 square feet, the offices cover more than twice the space as they do at Hofstra. The field house has a 100-foot ceiling so punters will not bounce footballs off them the way they do now inside their practice bubble. Flooring with hash marks will run throughout the building. Murals of fans ? ?almost like modern art,? Johnson gushed ? line the fields and corridors. There are bigger meeting rooms and auditoriums for offense, defense and special teams. The meeting rooms are right next to practice fields, allowing coaches to immediately put theory into practice. Practice film will be sent through wires from the fields to the video center. At Hofstra, the Jets used what Senn jokingly called the Sneakernet, as opposed to the Internet, with employees running tape to the video room from the field. The training area, double the current size, has a 12,000-square-foot weight room and a therapy pool in which injured players can run in water. Outside this area, a wall will showcase the team?s most valuable player from each season. The locker room features a ventilation system to remove stale air. There will be 86 security cameras in the complex. General Manager Mike Tannenbaum and Coach Eric Mangini took one look at all these plans and told Johnson the facility would be a competitive advantage. So much so that the Jets decided to move after training camp, instead of after the next season, as originally planned. In fact, the team brought the free-agent linebacker Calvin Pace here during their recent courtship. Already comfortable in green, the Jets have been attempting to build that way, too. They are working to protect the wetlands and have purchased furniture made with environmentally friendly materials. They hope to move in by September. One challenge will be leaving the fan base in Long Island without losing it. Johnson said he envisioned occasional practices at Hofstra. ?It?s been an amazing journey from Day 1,? he said. ?We?re almost there.?
We are building a leading edge facility which will change the culture of the NYJ players and employees. This has to be a great thing, they are all now going to live where they work and not feel like a road team going to a home game. No more bridge or tunnels. They live, practive and play in NJ.
Jet fans deserve a place like this. A destination where we can bring our kids(or buddies) and NFL PLAYERS will want to be.
He is still cheap. The difference here is that it involves real estate. That's an investment. Before this off season he treated players like cannon fodder.
I have a pic from a few days ago, I'll upload it this weekend if you all would like. It is a pretty impressive building, although its still just a steel frame as of now.
Sounds like a good deal for the players and the rest of the organization. Sucks that they'll no longer be in NY but it's progress for the franchise on the whole.
so much for loyalty 34 years at hofstra and long island down the tubes sounds like the jets will be called the new jersey jets as their corporate headquarters will be in jersey also
If there was loyalty among our ancestors, we'd all be living in Europe or Africa or someplace other than here. So times change. And this is coming from a guy who grew up on Long Island, and is a lifelong Jet fan.
Bottomline is this is great for the team and looks to be a great facility and a place players will want to come to. That is all that matters here.
So they are supposed to be a second rate organization because they have been in hofstra for 34 years? I know you guys living in Long Island are dissappointed but look at the big picture. They will have a state-of-the art training facility and headquarters. Everything being under one roof will help with the company dynamic and fluidity. It will make for a more attractive destination for free agents, coaches and personnel. They are only going to be 20 minutes from the stadium, so that will only help the players on game day. The new rehab and training facilities and fields will help with injuries and conditioning. Not to mention better preparation. Look at the bigger picture. This is a major step forward. Away from training in another person's facilities, living in another person's dorms, and playing on another person's field. This is great for the Jets. And I live in upstate NY, neither facility is close to me, so I am unbiased in that regard.
I'm happy for the team and everyone involved- even you mopes who will have it nice and close to home in NJ. It just sucks for those of us on the Island as the facility was all we had left. It's bad enough humping over and back to NJ, sitting in 3 hours of traffic. Training camp was our little oasis, a way to see the team up close and personal, under great conditions and usually within a half hour of one's home. Losing that, and the Jetsfest which you could bring the kids to is just a bummer.
Hey I'll probably go watch a practice when they go to the new site even though I'm just 10 minutes from Hofstra but hey,,I can fill up on that cheap NJ gas while I am there!!
NY only has itself to blame. How come no one offerrred the Jets a deal like NJ did.? Did you ever go to Hofstra?. Its a 2nd rate facility. You guys have had plenty of time to get them to stay but unless you are a baseball team with Rudy the Thug as your mayor, you get nada from the city. The Jets are now a NJ team, true and true and it ain't the owners fault, its NYC politicians.
