VILLAS — Whatever happened to Stockton College’s lease of Ponderlodge and the creation of an educational center on the property?
According to Tim Kelly, spokesman for Richard M. Stockton College, the project is alive and well.
Last August, the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which owns Villas Wildlife Management Area on which the former Ponderlodge is located, and Stockton College signed an memorandum of agreement to permit the college the use of the buildings as an educational center.
With a new governor and new head of DEP, the process has slowed a bit but the project is progressing.
Stockton is negotiating the terms of the lease with DEP. Kelly said he anticipates that being completed very shortly.
“We’re still progressing well,” he said.
In addition to lease negotiations, Stockton has applied for several grants and congressional funding. The college is aiming for a New Jersey Sustainability Energy Institute at Ponderlodge, said Kelly.
The institute would study ways to find sustainable energy sources. Until the lease is completed there are no clear-cut timeframes for opening the facilities, he said.
Kelly said Stockton was still very optimistic about the project and hasn’t backed off from any of its visions for the facility.
In the memorandum of agreement signed last year, Stockton requested to lease a 12.2 acre portion of the Ponderlodge property containing many of the existing structures for “use as an educational center to hold classes, seminars, adult education programs, talks, and conferences open to the public with the possibility of creating an educational campus and using an appropriate portion of the developed property as an interpretive education center…”
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