Home

Campbell's Soup Controversy:                                 

“New Economics of Downtowns.” Modern Downtowns are experiencing a metamorphosis from commercial centers to 24-hour mixed-use urban cores where people reside, work and play." Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy

Martin Luther King vs. Corporate America. 
 Integration vs. Disintegration. Will Camden Sell Out to Campbell's Soup? Can Corzines Office Be Bought?      

By Michael McAteer 

The  Campbell's Soup Project, is a component of the larger "Gateway Neighborhood" Planned Redevelopment *(Who in the world ever heard of a 110 acre Class A business park as part of a "neighborhood" plan? ) (Official City Plan, .pdf )  (Like most things the Plan looks good on paper,) but the Campbell's project as proposed has little chance of being a catalyst for area neighborhoods, as indicated by the only developed area in Camden, the Waterfront. Walt Whitman's House sits on the middle of Mickle Blvd., the main thoroughfare to the redeveloped waterfront. There is no neighborhood better positioned to receive the ancillary benefits of redevelopment. Whitman's House is exactly three blocks from the RAND Transportation Center and three blocks from the main attractions on the waterfront. Yet Whitman's neighborhood has continued to reach an unconscionable level of decay and blight, the nearby development having no effect whatsoever on residential area's at all. Here is the proof.  

The fight for the Sears Building overshadows the fact that Campbell Soup's project is a terribly designed suburban-style component of the Gateway Neighborhood Redevelopment, which ignores transportation assets. The PATCO Hi-Speedline and River LINE skirt the edge.
    The only way Campbell's development will have any effect on residential areas and small businesses in Camden, is to mix in and build residencies and small business shops within the new Campbell's complex simultaneously. If one thinks that office buildings, residences and shops cannot be mixed together successfully, then one has probably never been to downtown Philadelphia, Manhattan, Boston, Chicago, Baltimore, Washington D.C, San Fran.... The Camden Planning Board should take a look at Martin Luther Kings play book for integration, rather than Campbell's  book for segregation. Segregation of downtown Camden district's functions not only destroys urban form, but segregates people into "types." The "types" of people Campbell's wants is non-city resident commuters who will work in the complex Mon.-Fri, 9-5. 

So as Martin Luther King Jr. and an army of civil rights workers led the social transition from obvious forms of segregation, so too do modern urban designers, architects and city planning boards lead the transition from less obvious forms of segregation.

The Campbells Complex, hailed as the new "Gateway" to the city,  will be a lifeless "dead zone" from 5:00 PM until 9:00 AM the next day, completely dead on the weekends and holidays!  (Is that a welcoming first impression "Gateway" or " neighborhood?") The new Campbell Soup complex will have no effect beyond the edges of its own composition. It is a design and project turned totally inward, away from the city and its transportation assets. All and everything in the design is for Campbell's corporate functions, suburban employees and shareholder's. Camden has an urban form, not a suburban form. The urban form cannot reach its full potential when single use zoning triumphs over mixed use zoning. It boils down to a question of integration or dis-integration for the city.  ( See a real city neighborhood "Gateway", active 24/ 7, including holidays and weekends)

The outlying parking lots (hopefully near a new PATCO station) could service the complex by a people mover or jitney. On a nice day, it would be a pleasant five-minute walk from the rail stations parking lots if one were to choose. This would give employees and others the option of walking to work, rather than driving. Every car eliminated as a family expense saves, on average, $685 per month and reduces traffic congestion and environmental stress. A new PATCO station would serve the UMDNJ area also, uniting two vital downtown areas in seamless, pedestrian friendly, contiguous development.

 Environmental Building News rigorous research shows that the biggest factor in a building's environmental footprint usually isn't the building itself, but its location and how much driving users do to  reach it. Campbell's Soup's new development LEED certification for "green-ness" is more than cancelled out by the fact of its intentional disconnect from nearby commuter train stations. ( Rethinking Green: Blockbuster Report in Environmental Building News Measures Impact of "Driving to Green Buildings" )

In modern, present day Planning and Urban Design, citizen inclusive and equitable processes are recognized as the ideal.   A  3 - 7 day Charrette, a process of citizen-based participatory planning and design, with professional assistance in urban design workshops, are the favored tools for achieving this goal in todays development and redevelopment environment. Together, Campbell Soup and Gov. Corzine announced the final design as a surprise through the media with no chance for prior citizen input.

The City of Camden should value urban design and lead the way in showing what can be achieved and work together with Campbell Soup and the Office of Smart Growth to "ensure that these assets are used to promote urban renaissance as well as fulfilling their own operational requirements." Camden has suffered from poor quality development in the past. We need a new culture in City Hall, which values design and recognizes that any district in the city is part of the public realm, and effects the senses of anyone utilizing or passing through a district. The design should be an inviting one that provides a pleasant stroll for any person or family living or visiting the city, available and lively seven days per week into the night. Campbell's base's and defends its design purely on economic considerations, without any regard for users other than clients and employees. What goes on in those buildings is Campbell Soups business. But the landscaping, building exteriors, their placement and positioning seriously effect the realm owned by the public. If nothing else, the buildings should be pulled up to face the sidewalk, with pedestrian friendly facades and parking hidden out of sight.

The city of Camden is eager for the new complex, not for its aesthetic or quality of life benefits for its citizens, since there are none in this cold single use office setting, but strictly for the cash Campbell's has offered the city and local charities. This a groveling, beggarly attitude,  shows no pride and a less than flattering image for the city. The Campbell Soup project was presented to the city under threat and fait accompli - after all chances were past for criticism or design testing to a compliant planning board that failed to apply diligent and effective scrutiny, under a demanding deadline for approval set by Campbell Soup. The city planning board could regain a semblance of dignity by showing some backbone in the face of this corporate giant by making approval of the project conditional on an adjustment to the site plan that allows for the possibility of a mixed use community in the future. 

Whatever design results, the city will be stuck with it for 50 - 60 years, a great danger of single use design if the situation at Campbells should change. Any design should be adaptable, and take into account "social variability and the reality that the boundaries of situations, opportunities and problems change over time, viewpoints are flexible and people grow. Cultural, stylistic, ecological, sociological, psychological and built environment influenced behaviors  are just a few concerns addressed by design." Mixed use zoning takes this into account while still accommodating the needs of companies like Campbell Soup. 

At the moment, for a variety of reasons, very few areas of the city are in a position to be regenerated now. Every square inch that is developed represents a rare opportunity, and should be maximized with a high density variety of amenities that will attract people from inside and outside of the city to enjoy and utilize. 

In addition, the common law offers ample precedent for imposing procedural requirements  on private parties under certain circumstances. Historically, private parties performing “public functions” could not derogate from the public interest. The public function that Campbell’s Soup is implicitly performing by incorporating into it's private complex and assuming control of  70 public acres is the  Redevelopment of the City of Camden under the states Redevelopment laws, and the compliance and advancement of laws relating to Smart Growth policy, under the neighborhoods designation as an urban center in need of redevelopment. The issue is whether the design of it’s office campus is appropriate to the requirements of the Smart Growth and Redevelopment laws or needs modification, and whether Campbell’s received any direct or ancillary funding set aside for these policies, and whether Campbells, as Master Redeveloper for the area is carrying out it’s legal duties to act in the public interest as an implied designated policy agent in this area.  Public funds, under agreement between the State of New Jersey and Campbell’s have been set aside for this purpose. The state has so far insinuated itself into a position of interdependence with a private actor, (Campbell Soup) that it must be recognized as a joint participant in the challenged activity. Camden’s trend of viewing public policy through an economic lens rather than a public interest lens has proven increasingly deleterious over time. The profit motive ( PILOT payments, charity payments) is simply incompatible with the public interest and policy goals of Smart Growth and Redevelopment. A question and doctrinal test arises as to whether state and local funds were appropriated properly in the
public interest, and Campbell’s role as policy agent.

Since the Campbell's Soup complex will be the first new multi-building development in the city, and not in a "star" setting like the waterfront but an area analogous to other parts of Camden, and consume so much land, it is imperative that it's design either sets or relates to the organizing architectural principle that will guide and connect subsequent developments throughout the city, a principle yet to be articulated. 

If Campbell's Soup sticks to its plan, there could be a national consumer backlash amongst progressive minded individuals  against Campbell's Soup ( As indicated in a recent Sunday New York Times Editorial: NY TIMES, SUNDAY, JUNE 17: "We would urge Campbell's to think again before risking its reputation for good citizenship... ") Campbell's Soup stock may take a hit. 
( Campbell's Soup's "gun to the head of the city approach"  is already being discussed in the media hub of Los Angeles. ) It also boils down to whether the Camden Planning Board, City Council and Gov. Corzines office, can be bought by Campbell's meager $1.4 million annual ( in lieu of taxes ) offering in exchange for shredding the urban form, or if Corzine, his appointee's and the City of Camden can show some integrity, and insist on retaining both Campbell's and the integrity of Camden's priceless urban form. 

For the city to be great again, it must learn to avoid expedient development, that is, that any development is good development. The city has lived to regret this philosophy too many times. Corzine and Camden can retain their integrity, and shape up Campbell's Soup's plan, by asking that the Office of Smart Growth (OSG)  review the plan as it should have. The public has no idea if the plan conforms to the NJ State Smart Code until OSG does a review. The OSG has some great ideas for the Campbell Soup area plans, and is eager to comment through an official review. However, the OSG cannot do a review unless it is asked to by a government agency at the state, county or local level. So far, Corzine refuses to allow any agency to ask the OSG to review the plans, Camden County has not asked for a review and neither has the city. All these entities refuse to seek review, and one can only assume the reason is, on the face of it, at a glance, anyone can see the plan would fail to be approved in its current form by OSG, nor does it conform to the New Jersey State Development and Redevelopment Plan legislation. The OSG is not antagonistic to the plan, but stands by willing to help improve it for the sake of the city, the region and Campbell Soup.

Also, while mindful of Campbell's importance, Corzine should respectfully have the city and Campbell's sit down for a presentation of alternative approaches by the Office of Smart Growth. The Congress for the New Urbanism could be consulted also. ( CNU.org) Campbell's has a chance to create a  bit of architecturally  stunning urban design that when associated with its brand can only enhance it, and enhance the national reputation of the city, or stay the course with its anti-urban, cold shoulder to the city and lack of creativity.

To quote and paraphrase Edmund N. Bacon, "great city design expresses the concept, lines of progression from one place to another, interwoven into a total city fabric. To this, have added points of conjunction, nodes connecting one section of the city to the next, of flowering and enrichment and places of repose. These are important too, and they also call upon the highest expression of architecture, but they can only be understood only in relation to the movement to arrive there and the anticipation of the movement away.

Together these two elements, the architecture of movement and the architecture of repose, make up the city as a work of art, and this is the peoples art. The product of city - design can be experienced by anyone, without qualification, on an equal basis. It could be a great democratic statement of the life we share in common. 

The test of our achievement is whether we are able to break away from our fragmented approach to this problem and begin to see the city as a whole, dealing with it as a complete organism. Thus we must not only plan but, as suggested in the words of Lewis Mumford, we must design in such a way that the finest of our accumulated experience in city-building is brought to every neighborhood in every part of the city." To quote NAACP Interim president Dennis Courtland Hayes: "Some compromises are just too costly."
Send your protests or comments to:

Corzine's Contradiction:

Campbell's Soup  $100 Million Single Use Office Campus Plan Available Online (you will need to disable your Pop-Up Blocker temporarily)
Enlarge Vision plan a little. White "X," W/NW corner of map, is where PATCO High Speed Commuter rail from NJ to Philadelphia submerges from elevated train to subway. Just north of that spot you will find The Riverline, a brand new commuter line that runs from Trenton to Camden's waterfront attractions. This sweet spot marked "X" is less than a 5 minute walk from Campbell's proposed new world HQ campus, yet there are no plans to utilize this intersection of commuter rail. 

A station stop here would put a mixed use NU development in line with the 5 minute walk principle. The ride from here to Center City Philadelphia is a ten minute ride on ultra-modern, clean and efficient train, far superior to any train or subway in Philadelphia. The parking lots on the plan should be put outside the complex, and housing plans in outlying neighborhoods should be built where parking is designated. This would give Campbell's employees and other users of the complex the option of walking to work, rather than drive or commute. Every car eliminated as a family expense saves on average $685.00 per month in ownership, operating and maintenance costs. Every car trip not taken reduces stress of traffic congestion and stress on the environment. The outlying parking lots (hopefully near a new PATCO station) could service the complex by a people mover or Jitney. On a nice day, it would be a pleasant 5 minute walk from the parking lots if one were to choose. A PATCO station near "X" would serve UMDNJ area also, uniting two vital downtown areas in seamless, contiguous development, and could eliminate another thousand motor vehicle trips per day in the region.

Campbell's Soup            
Type: Public
On the web: http://www.campbellsoup.com       
Employees: 24,000
Controls 70% of worlds processed soups business. 

Soup means M'm! M'm! Money! for the Campbell Soup Company. The company is the world's biggest soup maker; its almost 70% share in the US is led by Campbell's chicken noodle, tomato, and cream of mushroom soups. The company also makes meal kits, Franco-American sauces and canned pasta, Godiva chocolates, Pace picante sauce, Pepperidge Farm baked goods (yes, the goldfish crackers you sneak at midnight), and V8 beverages. Its Australian division produces snack foods and its popular "down-under" Arnott's biscuit brand.

Key numbers for fiscal year ending July, 2006: Officers:
Chairman: Harvey Golub
President, CEO, and Director: Douglas R. Conant
SVP and CFO: Robert A. Schiffner      Sales: $7,343.0M One year growth: (2.7%) Net income: $766.0M
Income growth: 8.3% Competitors:
General Mills
Heinz
Kraft Foods

The Smart Growth Locator provides eligibility information for State loan and subsidy programs. This information can be used to determine whether an address is eligible for a number of State programs. Real Estate development in Smart Growth area entitled to subsidies. To use this tool, type in an address with the city or zip code.

FOR EXAMPLE, TYPE INTO LOCATOR:

1 Campbell Place
Camden, NJ
08103-1799
locator              (Address is Campbell's Soups World Headquarters, A Fortune 500 Company)

 The map will display the address you entered and the results will indicate whether it is in a smart growth area. For more information about Smart Growth, contact the Office of Smart Growth. 

Campbell's Soup World Headquarters' Controversy  Gov. Corzine 609-292-6000 Fax: 609-292-3454

Campbell Soup Company                                                            
1 Campbell Place
Camden, NJ 08103-1799
NJ Tel. 856-342-4800
Toll Free 800-257-8443
Fax 856-342-3878 CONTACT:
Anthony Sanzio (Campbell's Media)
(856) 968-4390

December 6, 2007  Latest Campbell Soup World Headquarters News

7/15/07 Camden Courier-Post Errors, suits put Campbell HQ plan on hold

Campbell's Soup $100 Million Single Use Campus Plan Available Online

6/09/07 Campbell's Soup Project is a component of Larger "Gateway Neighborhood" Planned Redevelopment (Official City Plan, .pdf)  (Like many things the Plan looks good on paper, but the Campbell's project has little chance of being a catalyst for area neighborhoods, as indicated by the only developed area in Camden, the Waterfront. Walt Whitman's House sits on the middle of Mickle Blvd., the main thoroughfare to the redeveloped waterfront. Whitman's House is exactly three blocks from the RAND Transportation Center and three blocks from the main attractions on the waterfront. Whitman's neighborhood has continued to reach an unconscionable level of decay and blight, the nearby development having no effect on residential area's at all. Here is the proof. The only way Campbell's development will have any effect on residential areas and small businesses in Camden, is to mix in and build residencies and small business shops within the new Campbell's complex simultaneously. If one thinks that office buildings, residences and shops cannot be mixed together successfully, then that person has probably never been to Philadelphia or Manhattan. 

6/26/07 Campbell Soup: Camden activist Frank Fulbrook won a legal procedure to stop knocking down of the Sears Building

6/23/07 Campbell's Soup : 5-1 HSC Council also noted applicants' failure to explore possible uses other than Class A office

June 21, 2007 Panel votes to save Sears Building from Campbell's Soup Plans

NY TIMES, SUNDAY, JUNE 17: We would urge Campbell's to think again before risking its reputation for good citizenship...

6/05/07 Campbell's Soup New World HQ Design Appears To Violate NJ State Smart Growth Plan 

May 17, 2007 Camden board OKs razing of Sears building

5/22/07Camden needs to take out an insurance policy against Campbells Soup -by Michael McAteer

Campbells Soup may leave Camden, N.J. after chaotic...
Something Even Worse Than a Cul-de-Sac Subdivision May 19 CNU Seminar Focus on Business Parks  
Current design fails to make a "place" Campbells Soup Can Do Better 

June 24, 2007"Waiting for Godot" Campbells Soup, City of Camden, NJ, Star in latest production.   

Space Wasting Suburban Campus design in heart of urban center ignores commuter rail assets. ( River Line and PATCO intersect here.)  PR from Campbell's Soup and NJ Economic Development Authority (if it is located by itself in a sea of parking on an arterial roadway not served by transit, and its employees and customers all must drive from a 30- or 40-mile radius to get there, is it truly green?) 

6/08/07 If Campbell's Soups New World HQ Became Mixed Use Residential and Retail, Look At These Low-Rate Loans For Investors and Consumers. Locate 10 minutes by high speed rail from all of Philadelphia's cultural and historic attractions, as well as Amtrak and airport connection. 

5/30/07 New Urbanism Designers Can Take What Campbell's Soup Wants To Build Anyway, And By Reconfiguring The Plans According To A Set of Existing Principles, Add Amenities to the Site and Increase Value To Campbell's Shareholders Without Increasing The Amount of Campbell's Soup Investment. Before Breaking Ground, Campbell's Should Visit the CNU Website, and Consultants Such As Strategiceconomics ,  Freedman, Tung and Bottomley, or Westrum. It is through the marriage of tradition and ecology that New Urbanists link past, present, and future generations. We believe in tradition as a living thing, beginning with what has worked well in the past and evolving it to confront and respond to the problems of the present day. "...but one of the first things we ought to learn is that the tools and techniques for creating sustainable communities may be cross-cultural, and the principles of walkable, mixed-use communities and legible beautiful places may be universal. Truly sustainable places are derived from a connection with local identity, building culture, climate, ecology, and materials, and from culture." -Ditmar
Camden is a gap in the maintained traditional architectural and cultural cohesion and continuum of the region, ( Along with Westmont) between Rittenhouse Square and Haddonfield, all connected by PATCO. South Jersey can be a major attraction for new businesses and residents if it fills in its architectural gaps with "Placemaking" along the PATCO line. The new Campbell's Soup World Headquarters complex could be a major step in this direction, and could become an attraction itself, promoting the Campbell's Soup brand while contributing to state of the art urban development. 
Janine Bauer, a transportation project attorney in Philadelphia, said transit-oriented development is the wave of the future 

Is the new Campbell's Soup World Headquarters Plan "Green?"
Little attention seems to be paid to the question of whether steel-and-glass-curtain-wall buildings can ever truly be sustainable no matter how many CHP [combined heat and power] plants or wind turbines are stuck on them.