HOLMDEL – There was excitement and optimism in the soaring sun-filled atrium of the iconic Bell Works building Wednesday morning, as the news was celebrated that iCIMS, the rapidly growing local start-up company specializing in job applicant software services for human resource professionals, will be taking space in the mostly vacant commercial building next summer.
The homegrown company, headed by Middletown Township’s Colin Day, is currently headquartered 10 miles away in Matawan in several glass office buildings near the Garden State Parkway exit. It employs 600 people with plans to hire more; the 350,000-square-foot space they are taking in the Bell Works building on Crawfords Corner Road, spanning four floors, can accommodate 2,000.
Help from the New Jersey Economic Development Authority also made it easier. iCIMS will receive $38 million in tax credits over 10 years from the Grow NJ program, which aims to create and keep jobs in the state.
The airy 2 million-square-foot building was once a famous center of innovation recognized internationally when it was occupied by Bell Labs, where bright minds earned seven Nobel Prizes in physics, one in chemistry, and other important awards in technology. As many as 6,000 people worked there at one time, but after its last owner, Alcatel-Lucent, departed, it had sat vacant for years until about six years ago, when Somerset Development’s Ralph Zucker started eyeing it with a plan to redevelop it as a dynamic work, place, retail mixed-use site. With tax credit incentives from the EDA, several tech companies have since signed on, such as MetTel (formerly known as Manhattan Telecommunication Corporation) and Workwave – but iCIMS is by far the largest.
At the beginning of his career, Day was a 23-year old tech recruiter working out of Comrise in Hazlet, which placed professionals at local tech companies like AT&T, Lucent and Telcordia. His own boss at the time, George Liou, had worked at Bell Labs.
When he visited the site two years ago on the hunt for a bigger space for his booming company, he knew he’d eventually have to find a way to set up shop there, he said at the press conference. He was also sold by Somerset Development’s Ralph Zucker’s optimism of what Bell Works could be. Signing the 15- year lease had major significance for him, Day said. “It feels like being part of the rebirth of a technology hub,” he said.
He was optimistic that the demands and needs of the workforce at Bell Works would create a secondary market for restaurants, services, and real estate. “The millennials who work here will want to buy homes, and they will want to be where the good school systems are, which are all around us.”
Freeholder Serena DiMaso of Holmdel, who also worked directly on the Somerset Development redevelopment plan in her former role as Holmdel mayor and deputy mayor, said the lease with iCIMS will fortify the future of Bell Works, which will eventually provide Holmdel with much needed commercial ratables. It also is a point of pride. “This puts Holmdel on the map,” she said.
