"In order to succeed in the competitive business of technology creation, we have to use all of the weapons at our disposal," Sarnoff president James Carnes said at an information session last week. "One of those weapons, clearly, is our property."

Sarnoff was founded in the early 40s as RCA Labs and later renamed for former RCA chairman David Sarnoff. The company does technology research, primarily for the electronic, biomedical and information technology fields. Company officials clearly see some synergies at work.

"This project will not only replace our own aging building, but we hope it will create a technology community with an environment that speeds discovery," according to Carnes. He expects much of the new office and lab space to be taken up by companies that Sarnoff has spun off and continues to spin off, and by companies utilizing Sarnoff's technology development.

The plan calls for as many as a dozen new buildings of between three and six stories. The uses are already within current zoning for the most part. The only variance that would be needed would be to raise the current building height limit from 75 to 82 feet. According to project architect Ronald Ostberg, the floor space is actually slightly less than what zoning would permit, and multilevel parking decks would make the proposed permeable surface area coverage less than what is permitted.

The first phase would be a complete overhaul of just under half of the company's existing facility. The rest of the building would be torn down and replaced by 500,000 sf of new space. Total size of the revamped facility would be about 750,000 sf.

Sarnoff officials hope to begin work by 2003. Build-out of the larger tech park is expected to be a number of years down the road.