By Stephen Appezzato
MARLBORO – Monmouth County has taken over management of the 411-acre former Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital property, which will be used for passive recreation, such as walking and hiking trails.
The county recently entered into a land management transfer with the state. Under the agreement, the county will manage the site as part of Big Brook Park. Although the state retains ownership for now, the deal allows for a possible full title transfer in 2033, when state bonds tied to the land mature.
In the meantime, Monmouth County will take on the costs related to maintaining and developing the property into parkland, providing labor, materials,
personnel and administrative support. Plans from the Monmouth County Park System focus on passive recreation, with the goal of opening the trails to the public by the end of the year.
“Whether we are purchasing the land at Mater Dei to preserve that land, whether we’re building bridges in Sea Bright (and) Rumson, now we’re culminating it here at this great, great site that needs to be preserved,” County Commissioner Director Thomas A. Arnone said at a ceremony last week. “This is what government is supposed to be doing.”
According to Monmouth County Board of Recreation Commissioner Michael G. Harmon, the transfer will bring the county’s preserved land total to more than 75,000 acres – nearly a third of the land in the county. “That is quite an accomplishment,” Harmon said.
“We have the best park system in the state of New Jersey by far,” Arnone said.
“Unlike other taxes that are put in place, this is something that the voters support. And we are doing our due diligence with those funds to make sure that we are doing what the voters are asking us to do and preserve,” Arnone said.
Although the county will manage the site immediately, ownership remains with the state until the bonds mature in 2033. That arrangement means the county will not draw from its open space account to purchase the land now, instead using those funds for maintenance and upkeep.
“When we preserve open space, it attracts people here to Monmouth County. They’re here to vacation, they’re here to enjoy the parks, and they visit our local stores, our local vendors and they bring back to our community without having overdevelopment,” said commissioner Ross Licitra, liaison to the county park system.
The Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital, once home to thousands of patients and staff, was opened in 1931, originally as the Hillsdale Asylum at Wickatunk. It featured 17 large Tudor-style cottages that housed between 500 and 800 patients at any given time, and was largely self-sufficient, with a farm, powerplant and a series of underground tunnels used to move supplies and personnel. Over the decades, reports of patient abuse, employee malpractices, suicides and overcrowding emerged. The decision to close the then-infamous hospital followed multiple investigations into the facility. In the 1980s, during an undercover operation, then-state Sen. Richard Codey posed as an orderly working at the hospital to examine patient care practices. At that time, Codey reported a range of serious abuses and inhumane practices. In the 1990s, state officials visited the facility and noticed excessive stockpiling of chemicals and other materials. A 15-month formal investigation was subsequently launched, revealing “a tableau of waste, fraud, thievery and corruption in which the squandering of taxpayer dollars virtually has become business as usual at thisinstitution,” according to an executive summary. The hospital was shuttered in 1998 and fully demolished by 2015, leaving behind a sprawling graveyard of aging headstones marked with numbers, instead of patients’ names.
In 1997, the Monmouth County Park System acquired a 380-acre farmland tract that was previously operated by the hospital, converting the land into Big Brook Park.
Since the hospital’s closure, state and local officials have debated its fate. At the announcement last week, Marlboro Mayor Jonathan Hornik called the transfer “a great day for the residents of Marlboro, Monmouth County and even the state of New Jersey.”
Hornik’s connection to the site stretches back decades. As a child in the 1980s, his father, the late Mayor Saul Hornik, and local police often received calls of patients and inmates escaping the facility and “freely walking out (onto) Route 520 and walking down to what was the A&P and Marlboro Pizza.” It was a “huge problem” before the hospital’s closure, Hornik said.
When Hornik became mayor in 2007, he said one of his first priorities was to determine the site’s future. He met with then-Gov. Jon Corzine to discuss acquiring the property.
“Gov. Corzine said to me, ‘$40 million to buy this property, and you guys have to take responsibility of the clean-up,’ ” Hornik recalled.
Navigating state laws, Marlboro rezoned the property as open space, which lowered its appraised value from $40 million to about $1 million.
“When I went back to Gov. Corzine and showed him our appraisal, he politely threw me out of his office,” Hornik joked.
Over the years, the sprawling hospital grounds became a source of intrigue for urban explorers and paranormal investigators, drawn to the land’s traumatic past.
Once the passive park redevelopment is complete, it will be one of the largest single parcels of open space in the county park system. The focus will remain on nature trails, wildlife habitat, and scenic open space for public use.
“This is pristine land,” Hornik said, “and it will be forever preserved as open space.”
The article originally appeared in the August 14 – 20, 2025 print edition of The Two River Times.
