FIELD OF DREAMS

 

LOCATION: MILLVILLE, NJ

CLIENT: FIELD OF DREAMS, LLC

MARKET SECTOR: HOSPITALITY

SIZE: 84 ACRES

THE OPPORTUNITY

Field of Dreams, LLC planned to build a motorsports facility featuring a network of cartways crisscrossing an 84-acre tract of pine forest near the Millville Municipal Airport in rural Cumberland County. Due to the property’s unusual history, an archaeological survey was essential to gaining State approval of the project.

 

THE CHALLENGE

The property was once part of the Millville Army Airfield, the country’s first civil defense air base. During World War II, the airfield played a valuable role in the training of American military flyers, and it is now listed on the New Jersey Register of Historic Places. Historically significant elements of the airfield’s training facilities including aircraft gunnery and small arms practice ranges were known to exist on or near the property, as well as another historic site that pre-dated the property’s use by the U.S. Army Air Corps.

 

THE PS&S SOLUTION

Through a combination of documentary research, informant interviews, surface reconnaissance, and subsurface archaeological testing, PS&S established the locations of the various target ranges and of the earlier site, the former location of a 1830s farmhouse.  Based on these findings, the developer was able to avoid any impacts to these resources through minor design changes. The New Jersey State Historic Preservation Office concurred that the revised design would have no adverse effects and promptly approved the project.