March 29, 2008 Forum

Present: Phyllis Teitelbaum; Andrea Stine; Barrie Royce (Chair of the Borough Zoning Board); Pam Wakefield; Bill Wakefield (Member of the Regional Planning Board of Princeton [RPB]); Candace Preston; Jennifer Widner; Hans de Ruyter; Chip Crider; Gail Ullman (RPB); Barbara Prince; Scott Sillars; Roger Martindell (Boro Council); Bill Moran; Dennis Conte; Mark Censits; Dora de George; Wendy Ludlum; Joan de Staebler; Simon Marchand; Barbara Highton Williams; Francesca Benson; George Cody; Sybil Parnes; Orlando Fuquen; Stephanie Charney; Kim Pimley; Dorothy Bedford (School Board); Dawn Day; Marty Schneiderman; Joan Widner; Pat Ramirez; Tobin Levy (HABOP); Dina Rozin; Pam Hersh; Matthew Hersh; Phyllis Marchand (Mayor of the Township/RPB); Mildred Trotman (Mayor of the Borough/RPB); Peter Kann (PF); Harriette Rubinstein; Sue Nemeth; Ruth Fiuczynski; Tom Pinneo; Casey Lambert; Shirley Satterfield (PF); Robert Geddes (PF); Susan Hockaday (PF); Katherine Kish (PF); Kevin Wilkes (PF); Marvin Reed (Chair of the Master Plan Subcommittee/RPB & former Mayor of the Borough); Harriet Bogdonoff; Katherine Benesch (PF); Kristin Appelget; Robert Harris; Marcia Cooper; Sheldon Sturges (PF); Robert Durkee (Secretary, Princeton University); Helmut Weymar; Roz Denard; Wanda Gunning (RPB); Michael Floyd; Michael Suber; Phyllis Suber; Bernie Miller (Deputy Mayor, Township); Mike Littwin; David Schure; Travis Linderman; Ruby Newton; Len Newton; Minnie Craig; Carlos Rodriques (Chair of the Township Zoning Board); Robert Schwartz; Maggie Hill; Colin Hill; Chris Dorey; Audrey Chen; Roger Hoeh; Betsy Hoover; Kristen Suozzo; Kerry Kay; Julia Poulos; David August; Susan Scodery; Lynne Durkee

Kevin Wilkes: Welcome, please have some coffee and a seat and we’ll begin. As you see, we have pinned up some items around the room. The University has pinned up some of its campus planning efforts on these easels. And on my right, on the bottom, is a synopsis of that plan, and on top of it is the 2007 Re-examination Report of the Community Master Plan. I’d like to introduce to you the Co-Founder of Princeton Future, Robert Geddes, Dean Emeritus of the School of Architecture at Princeton University.

Robert Geddes: Thank you, Kevin. Thank you all for coming this morning. On behalf of all of the Directors of Princeton Future, many of whom are here, many of whom Peter Kann, a Director of Princeton Future, moderates the March 29th panel of Bob Geddes, Kevin Wilkes, Bob Durkee and Marvin Reed in conversation with approximately 100 citizens in the Community Room at the Princeton Public Library. have participated in this process over the years, but also thanks to all of the citizens who have come! We have been doing this for 8 years. As a result of that, we have this room, this plaza, this kind of an event. So it is really an achievement of all of you, of all the community. Thank you particularly for coming today. This is an historic moment. It is hard to say that you are going to participate in an historic moment before it happens, but if there is any logic, this will be historic. Because, never before, in the history of Princeton, have there been 2 plans on the table at the same time. Never before has the community’s Master Plan and the University’s plan been sideby- side. That is why we have them in parallel on the side wall. I think that it is fair to say that the civic conversation depends upon the ability that we have, as a civic group, to engage with the governments, and to engage with the University in this ‘trialogue’, I suppose. Thank you, members of the panel, for being with us today. Marvin Reed, as you know, is famous for being our former Mayor, no, that’s not right. He is famous for being Mayor of Princeton Boro. He is now the Chair of the Master Plan Subcommittee of the Regional Planning Board. So, he is, in fact the person who can answer, deal with and discuss..And, Robert Durkee, the Secretary of Princeton University and long-time Director of Princeton Future. Central casting has done its job. We have Kevin, our future Thomas Jefferson, and Bob and Marvin, and Peter Kann who will be the moderator and lead the discussion. It is really a 3-act play. First, I will introduce the stuff in the 2 plans on the wall, and Kevin will lead you through what we believe has been said over the years, leading up to the creation of 7 issues for discussion today. And, then, Peter will lead the group in a discussion of those issues with you leading to some recommendations. Now, may I just put my former hat on from across the street? Background What is happening in cities and what is happening on campuses today is also historic. It is a time of great effort on the part of universities to create plans for their future. It is a great effort to create plans for their own growth and for the public. The combination of the public and private, the institutional and the public, that really is being led by universities. The architectural critic of the Boston Globe said some of the most important planning going on in any of the towns is being led by university plans. It is being done in a number of ways. Each university is really quite special. I have to admit, I love them all. Harvard, Penn, NYU, Brown, Princeton…and we can’t extrapolate from one to another. But it is the case now, very interestingly, that Penn, for example, has a 30-year campus plan that they call Penn Connects. This means it connects with the community…to the city…to the center. They also see themselves as connecting to the region. Penn has enormous economic impact on the region. Amy Gutman, its president, is so committed to democracy, in its best sense, that she sees universities leading democracy in the community and in the world. And that is one of the goals of that university. That is why it is called Penn Connects. Now, the other extreme is NYU. NYU is famous for its campus-community relations in that it was the place that Jane Jacobs led the assault on NYU. It was there that she led the pickets against NYU expansion. Fast forward to today, the Borough of Manhattan and NYU and the Greenwich Village Preservation Council and so forth have created a joint community task force to plan the future of NYU together. The Borough President’s Office actually published the guidelines that NYU is going to be following. And the two are working together in this extraordinarily open university from Union Sq down to the Woolworth Building, and probably to Governor’s Island. This brings us to last month when Princeton published its Campus Plan, there was an event to celebrate its publication. It did so with a panel discussion that was called The Open Campus. That is an interesting comment by Princeton on the way it sees its future because it started that way. The first campus in this country was the Princeton campus. Until then, it had been a monastic model, like Oxford. Nassau Hall with the green in front was a new American model. It was known internationally, that means it was known in England, as a new idea of how a college relates to its community. The second phase of Princeton’s life was a monastic phase by Thomas Cram and Woodrow Wilson to create a sense of inwardness…to look inward. And I believe that Holder Tower, the dining room and the quadrangles are among the most beautiful buildings in the country. They also came about because they had a social idea and they had a moral idea. You may not agree with what the 19th and 20th centuries were about, but it was embodied in that monastic form. Now Princeton is proposing a new model: the Open Campus. I went back and read what our Co-Founder, Bob Goheen, said about universities in the ‘60’s. And, I think it is wonderful…Kevin, thank you for doing this…this photograph of the open Fitzrandolph gate in the Campus Plan book is used as the metaphor of the campus and the community. When they opened that gate in the Vietnam era, it symbolically changed the relationship. The notion of there being an open campus may not be the whole story. Bob wrote a beautiful essay called Detachment & Involvement in which he argued for the necessity of a university to be detached as well as involved. Detached in that it is a place of contemplation, a place of reflection, a place of repose. There is a wonderful Latin phrase on the back of Alexander Hall. You walk up to the arch, as you are leaving, and you see that ‘it is the highest achievement to sit here on the heights in calm repose’. The notion of detachment is valid. It is something the community ought to take into account. This is a very great center of thought and reflection. That is its essence. Now, at the same time: involvement. Now, more than ever, students and faculty want to be engaged and are engaged. You only have to read the papers. The other day in the Trenton Times, Mike Moore, the captain of the hockey team, was profiled because he spends his weekends as a volunteer fireman. The Community-based Learning Initiative has thousands of hours of investment. Well, that is the background. THE TWO PLANS Now, if Nature had been really right, it would have had our heads on a swivel to look at these two plans. It is the first time these two plans have been put up this way. The community plan looks different. No pictures. Pretty dry stuff. But when you read it, it is brilliant. There is a long history to it. It is mandated by the Municipal Land Use Law. We had a friend here, Jack Chancellor…everytime we talked about planning, he said that is MEGO…[my eyes glaze over]. This is really one of the most advanced efforts to create a community plan. 1938 was the creation of the Boro Planning Board. 1948 was the creation of the Township Planning Board. Since 1980, this process has been going on. The current plan was written in 1996. And it is mandated that it be reviewed every 6 years. So what we have here is an ongoing cyclical process. Structure: there are 8 parts. They are all important and they all make your eyes glaze over. Land Uses, Housing, Circulation, Utilities and Infrastructure, Environment, Historic Preservation, Recreation & Open Space, Community Facilities, Relationship to Other parts of the Region. These are all essential elements that can be expanded as we go along. The two plans have a lot in common even though they look different. They are both PHYSICAL, SPATIAL, ENVIRONMENTAL PLANS. That is they deal with the physical…the natural and the built environment. The Campus Plan has 5 guiding principles: 1. That there be a PEDESTRIAN-ORIENTED campus. 2. That is be PARK-LIKE. [I believe, in fact, that if the Garden City Movement had a university in mind, they would have thought of Princeton] 3. That it will be a campus of NEIGHBORHOODS. Now that is an interesting thing. It takes the idea from the community and applies it to a university. 4. That it be ENVIRONMENTALLY SUSTAINABLE, exactly the same thing the community plan says. It has a brilliant analysis, the most brilliant I have ever seen, how the natural environment can be recreated, sustained and brought forward and become a major part of the future experience for the community and for the university. And, #5. That there be strong COMMUNITY RELATIONS…part of the 5 goals. With that I would like to turn it over to Kevin who will lead us through what Princeton Future’s forums have brought forth…[Pointing to 7 posters on the wall] This is what we believe you have been saying this town should be. It seems to me that we were successful 5-6 years ago when we had a series of WHAT IF meetings. We put things up on the wall…people would talk and we would sketch…these are ‘what ifs’. I think we need to do the same with respect to the community and campus plans. We need imagination. We need imagination on the PHYSICAL and the spatial. Secondly, I think WE NEED IMAGINATION ON THE SOCIAL. What should the community be in the future? What can be done with respect to understanding the social dimensions, the social factors? Third, we need to have imagination about the ECONOMICS and FINANCIAL aspects of the community. Fourth, WE NEED TO HAVE MORAL IMAGINATION. We need to think not just about the way things are but the way they should be. In particular, we should think about the physical, social and economic dimensions of the moral imagination. That is the challenge we face today. Kevin Wilkes Thank you, Bob. If you will indulge me with 3 minutes of tedium, I want to read to you 3 excerpts from the Community Master Plan Re-Examination Report, issued this past fall by the Regional Planning Board. This must be done every 5 years. To look across our community to estimate… What progress we have made? What things have we not accomplished? What are our goals for the future? The two issues that spring to mind are issues of Land Use and Circulation. They relate to both the Community [CMP] and the Campus plans [CP]. The CMP recognizes that major educational institutions in Princeton will need to expand and/or improve their facilities. Ensuring that these improvements are at an appropriate scale will continue to be a major objective of the community. Protecting the area around the many small-scale neighborhoods that border these institutions is an important community objective. The 2001 Re- Examination Report requested that all educational institutions update their long range plans and ensure that any development be compatible with the surrounding neighborhood. I would submit that that is what Princeton University has done. They have done what is requested by the Master Plan. They have updated their Campus Plan and that is what we are looking at today. An additional objective for the educational institutions was to limit expansion outside the educational zones, as this can limit lands for taxable uses and erode our tax base. On circulation, page 5 of that top string on the wall says that residential and non-residential growth has resulted in increased traffic on local streets. Our two-lane tree-lined streets continue to be jammed by traffic beyond capacity at times. This threatens the residential character of may of our roadways. The link between regional land use patterns and overcrowding on our local transportation system, especially East-West regional connections continues to be a difficult transportation problem that the community wrestles with. Providing frequent & reliable transit service as well as increasing opportunities for pedestrians and bicyclists was also a problem identified in the 1996 Master Plan and the 2001 Re-Exam. In 2001, we valued a southern extension of University Place as away to provide for safety and circulation improvements at the intersection of University Place and Alexander Road. The University has undertaken this. You will see in their plans strategies for the development of these circulation systems. Finally, the Re-Exam of 2007 acknowledges the beginnings of the Campus Plan. The University made presentations to the Planning Board of their initial ideas. Princeton University is undertaking a new master plan effort and will be focusing future growth on the Princeton side of Lake Carnegie. This is a change from past planning assumptions for long term growth of the University which included plans for a mirror campus across Lake Carnegie in West Windsor. The University’s planning principles of maintaining an auto-free, pedestrianoriented campus, preserving a park-like campus, maintaining existing campus neighborhoods, developing in a sustainable manner, and sustaining strong community relations for all principles the community endorses. The consequences of these decisions must be clearly understood and reviewed in terms of long-standing goals and objectives of the community regarding parking, circulation, green space and building scale. I think that that is our objective today and in the coming months: for us in the community to analyze, discuss, and to debate the issues raised in the Campus Plan and to debate how they relate to our collective goals in our towns. While most of what Princeton University proposes is permitted under existing zoning, the area being proposed to house the University’s new Arts Corridor will require new zoning changes along University Place and Alexander Road. The impact from any proposed Land Use change in this area must include an evaluation of the impacts to our circulation system. Similarly, the University’s request to relocate the Dinky Station approximately 480 feet south of its existing location will need to be evaluated. Indeed, I think that is what gives us standing in our community to undertake what we are trying to do. What we are trying to do at Princeton Future is to help organize and focus the discussion on these topics. It is clearly more than we can handle in one day. So we have decided to try to extract some important community issues and use those as the filter through which we can look at both of these documents. I put up this image of Princeton from 130 years ago to show how far behind we have left our nostalgic past. The University was happily ensconced in the center of its little green campus. The railroad came up all the way to Nassau St. before Blair Arch was ever considered. The Seminary was happy in their green. The town was happily located along Nassau St. We had a thriving residential community in the Jackson- Witherspoon Neighborhood. 206 was in place but it was called Bayard Lane. Before the Battle Monument. Before the shepherd’s pie there now, there was the original roundabout of Princeton. There was a lake at Spring St. underneath where we are sitting. We have come a long way in 130 years. Despite our desire for nostalgia, I would submit that we can’t have this any more. Growth has made this impossible. Now, our town, as Nassau St, our commercial district, and our residential neighborhoods have filled out our environs, the University, we are all pushing against each other. So how can we mediate this development? HOUSING We want a town with neighborhoods for many different types of people. All of us, of every economic level, want to be able to afford to continue to live here, and not be taxed and priced away.

OPTIONS:
1. STATUS QUO.
2. CHANGE:
A. FOLLOW EXISTING MODELS [PCH/HABOP] – GREATLY EXPAND SUBSIDIES FOR HOUSING CONSTRUCTION WITH LOCAL PREFERENCE.
B. FOLLOW DEVELOPER MODEL – ALLOW DEVELOPER BONUSES IN ORDER TO CONSTRUCT AFFORDABLE COAH UNITS AND/OR SET UP TOWN-WIDE GUIDELINES FOR LOCAL PREFERENCE HOUSING.
C. ENCOURAGE INSTITUTIONS TO BUILD MIXED USE PROJECTS COMBINING RESIDENTIAL FOR TOWN CITIZENS AS WELL AS FOR THEIR OWN USES.
D. ENCOURAGE SPECIAL PURPOSE HOUSING FOR IMMIGRANTS, ELDERLY, RETIRED FACULTY, LIVE-WORK LOFTS AND OTHER NEW HOUSING TYPES.
3. OTHER --------------------------------------- The first topic we’d like to talk about is HOUSING in our community. The University proposes new housing in their plan for their undergraduates, for their faculty and staff. They propose in the near term to develop some residential housing for their students, in the long term they propose to develop the Harrison St Butler Housing Tract and the Merwick property. They haven’t developed plans for Merwick or Harrison St, but they have said that those sites will be for some amount of graduate students and a larger amount of faculty and staff housing. What we have listened to, and Bob referred to them, is a series of documents that we have put together at Princeton Future that reflect the things that you have said to us in our meetings over the past 3 years. We have tape-recorded, thanks to Sheldon and Mike Littwin, everything you have said. We have written them down. We have put them on our website where you can find all of this information. We have extracted some concepts from what you have said. For housing, we believe that we want neighborhoods with homes for many different types of people. All of us of every economic level want to be able to afford to continue to live here and not be priced or taxed away. [applause] We accept this as a baseline assumption. So, what are our options? How can we achieve this? Let’s have a brief discussion about this. Always an option is the status quo. Some people believe that everything is fine. It is working itself out. Developers build housing. Developers are required to build a 20% set-aside for affordable COAH-regulated housing. We can make contributions into a fund to build affordable units. We all understand what the current strategy is. Clearly the present strategy isn’t keeping up with the housing needs of the community. So what are some other ideas to pursue? One example could be that we follow some existing models that are already set up. PCH is a very successful group that has created affordable housing the community for seniors and others. The Housing Authority of the Borough of Princeton has created low-income housing for Princeton residents. The two of them pursue their strategies independently but with, collective, very positive results. Maybe we should greatly expand the subsidies for construction through these groups. And, we have heard a lot of people say that they would like local preference for this housing that we create. Maybe we should follow the free market developer model? Maybe we should allow developer bonuses? We could allow developers to build more housing than our zoning presently permits in order to construct affordable COAH and localpreference units. And maybe we should set up town-wide guidelines for local preference? Now, without getting into the details, my understanding of the latest COAH rulings and Supreme Court decisions is that developers will be allowed bonuses when they create affordable housing. So this might be coming regardless of whether we think it is a great idea. It is on the table and it has worked in communities. In Princeton Township at Washington Oaks, despite its early legal history, in the end Calton Homes built 300 homes where 60 were zoned. I believe that 30-40 are qualified as Mt Laurel set-aside affordable units. That is the way that worked. Another strategy might be to encourage institutions to build mixed-use projects that would combine residential for town citizens as well as spaces for their own needs. We became obsessed in the 20th century with single use, exclusionary zoning. This says that we want housing to be in one place, we want business to be another place. We want slaughterhouses to be another place. We want racecar tracks to be another place. We want shopping centers to be another place. We want malls to out on the highway. You understand the congestion that this has led to. You understand the requirement to get into your car every morning to go from your home to go to shop, to go to work, or to go to visit grandma. To make a car trip for each case. Maybe we should re-think these strategies? Finally, maybe we need to encourage special purpose housing for immigrants, the elderly, retired faculty, live-work lofts and other new housing types? Is the singlefamilly residence all that we think it is? There are other types of housing we have excluded that I personally think we should reconsider. But there are other solutions. We’d like to hear from you what those might be. Peter Kann, a director of Princeton Future, a colleague of ours, is going to lead us in a little discussion. Our idea is to have a fifteen-minute exchange about these and other ideas you believe the town and/or the university could pursue to address our housing needs. Peter Kann Thank you, Kevin. Just a brief word on structure of the meeting today. Kevin will continue to introduce each of the 7 issues as he has on housing. We will then ask the rest of the panel to comment on the issue and the alternatives presented. I may or may not ask a few questions of the panel. All of that should take about 10 minutes per issue. The we are going to invite the audience to ask questions or make comments for another 10 minutes on each issue. When you do so, we’d ask you to identify yourselves and to keep comments brief. If new additional options emerge with strong support, we will add those to our list of alternatives. We will then ask on each issue for the audience to indicate preference among the options by a show of hands. This is not a scientific poll but rather an indication of support. So, we’d ask to raise your hand for the option you think is best or most important to you. If two are equally important, raise your hand for both. We have seven issues to cover and multiple options on each in less than 3 hours, so we are going to ask your indulgence, if we try to hurry this process along at times, or even cut off discussion. So, with that, would the rest of the panelists like to comment on housing? Bob Geddes? Bob Geddes I think the Princeton of the future is different from the Princeton of the past in terms of housing types. Increasingly people want to be able to live and work in different kinds of environments than the kind that were built for families & businesses in the past. Hybrid buildings are the future. This is a hybrid idea, this square. This couldn’t happen unless we built a single building which is a garage, an apartment house and a set of retail stores and a restaurant. You don’t know that when you look at it because you see an apartment house and you see a garage. But it is one building. There are hybrid buildings that are horizontally hybrid. That is where the ground floor is different from the second floor, which is different from the next, and so on. And I think in terms of its plan and its section, in this case, that hybrid buildings are our future. I think we should explore that. As I understand it, Kristin, isn’t it true that live-work lofts are being built in Robbinsville Township, formerly Washington Township? The future of living is not single purpose. Housing should be seen in a very mixed way. And in that sense, housing could be built anywhere. You could, for example…I love what goes on inside McCarter Theater, but perhaps the outside could be tremendously improved if there were a layer of housing for people to live there? There could be a layer on housing on anything. Peter Kann Marvin, and then I’d ask this of both you and

Bob Durkee: To the extent you choose to discuss some of the models that include subsidized housing, I think the audience would be interested in where the funding will come from. Marvin Reed In the Re-Examination Report that Bob referred to, one of the areas we have identified for re-examination is the element of housing. But it is probably the element we paid the least attention to and said the least about in that report last fall. We anticipated that it would be a major area for discussion in this current year. In that vein, let me start some things going that are important to that discussion. I think, in Princeton, we have to recognize that the problem is not low-income housing alone, as important as that is. The real problem in Princeton today is that there is no more modest, middle market. There is only the extremes. We are either building McMansions out in the woods, or, we are making plans for some low-income housing. What used to be the workforce housing in this town is disappearing. The houses are being bought at extremely high prices and then the people buying them are spending inordinate amounts of money to fix them up. Where we do have new infill housing, we have people buying houses for $400,000, tearing them down and building completely new houses and then putting them on the market at $900,000+. Even the houses that used to sell for $1.5 million are today selling for $3 million. Since the subprime crisis maybe they are a little bit less. They are not being sold at the modest middle market. The significance of the newspaper article about the student firefighter is that we no longer have people living in town who fight our fires. The population that used to work here, the people that were engaged in the construction trades, that drove pick-up trucks, that met every afternoon at the Ivy Inn, don’t exist here anymore. With the 3 fire companies we have, the majority of people in those companies live in other towns. They happen to like being in those fire companies. That is a big change in this town. The police. There used to be a part of the Boro called “Cop City” over by Stanley Avenue. There are no more policemen living there. Policemen in this town live in Hamilton or Ewing or other towns. So, what we find is that there is no way of getting that middle market. And, if you try to build something, all you find is people coming in and bidding up the price because they want to live here in Princeton. It is very easy to reduce a housing unit. Where we have 2-family houses, it is relatively easy to buy them and convert them back to single family homes. We used to have a number of those. But, try to take a single family house and convert it into a 2-family house: it is almost impossible. That is what used to be done in this town. But, unless we do that, we are not going to be able to provide housing for what I call the middle market. Now COAH has come into the picture, and we have done relatively well in the past by it. But, as you have seen in the newspapers, there is serious discussion in the Boro, in the Township, in Montgomery as to whether the COAH will work. We may have to address ourselves to the recent plan COAH put forth which came up with a minus need for the Boro! This is because of the absence of vacant land. It exempted most of the University construction as being counted as the type of construction that would add jobs and therefore create COAH obligation. But in the Township it has created an enormous future residential need because of the way it approaches vacant land there. It may be tht what we have to do here, and I know Boro Council has already considered it…it may be that Boro Council adopts its own regulations. Its own ordinances. I think the only thing that is keeping them from jumping in that direction is the fact that unless it complies with COAH, the state doesn’t back them up in being able to apply and enforce a COAH-like housing charge on future development. Please recognize that if we start adding housing fees, as was done in the Boro, where it charges $56,000, offthe- top in order to get a permit, to a wouldbe homeowner who wants to infill housing in the Boro, you have already priced that home out of the middle market. We have had several instances in the Boro where young couples have come, have bought an existing house, and have wanted to convert and put a secondary apartment, either for an in-law or to create an income-producing property…Basically, they have run up against this charge. In that respect, it is not working. The Supreme Court said you can’t use Land Use as an excuse to exclude people from towns, particularly suburban towns. What I think that means in the Boro and the Township, both, because the Township is getting close to build-out as well, have got to start looking at alternative ways of producing housing that actually recognizes what the Supreme Court is talking about is density bonuses. That is what they told builders in this latest plan, a town has to be able to provide a bonus in terms of density to make it financially feasible for a developer to build enough units in order to provide the 20% set-aside share, certainly enough units in a compact configuration in order to make the sales prices low enough for people in the middle market. That is a really big challenge. Peter Kann Bob Durkee, maybe in your brief comments, you could address whether change item ‘C’ might possibly apply to the new Arts Neighborhood? C. ENCOURAGE INSTITUTIONS TO BUILD MIXED USE PROJECTS COMBINING RESIDENTIAL FOR TOWN CITIZENS AS WELL AS FOR THEIR OWN USES. I actually think it was significant how the student served as a fire volunteer. It shows another one of the ways the university helps the community. One of the things I want to say first. I thought Kevin did a good job describing the nature of the Campus Plan, and so did Bob…It is important to note that the plan is the full 180-page version. I hope you will have a chance, if you are interested, to look at the whole plan. They are on reserve here in the Public Library. We have a couple here with us today which you can look at. And, I think they are on sale at Labyrinth as well. One of the sections in that plan talks about what we heard from the community, particularly issues that we took from the Community Master Plan. If you go to the Campus Plan, on pages 28 & 29, we go through in some detail what happens at the edges and what happens with traffic and circulation and parking and housing. So, we have identified this as one of the areas we really need to be thinking about. Let me just say three or four things about the University and housing. One is that historically, one of the ways we have sought to be helpful to the community, particularly given the circumstances that Marvin described about the availability of middle range housing is by housing essentially all of our undergraduates. This is not like many other college towns. There are very few undergraduates looking for housing. And, we house well over 70% of our graduate students. I don’t know of any other university that houses that high a percentage of its graduate students. And that is for the same reason. It actually has a number of benefits. It allows us to get them to campus by shuttle instead of by car. It also reduces the impact on those middle level housing units by graduate students. And, as I think many know, one of the decisions we made many years ago, in fact we can thank Bob Goheen for this, among many other things, was that all of that graduate student housing, non-dormitory housing, stays on the tax rolls, even though under State law they could be taken off the tax rolls, we have not taken them off, in part because there is the possibility that they do produce school children. We also provide a substantial amount of housing for our faculty and staff. And, in fact, much of that housing is for town citizens. They may work for the University, but they are citizens of the town who otherwise would be looking for those same sort of middle level homes. The last time we looked at this, of the just over 500 rental units we provide, almost 40% of those who occupy them earn less than $50,000/yr. Or below. So there is a range of people living in those rental units. We also have some purchase units in our plan. And, as was said, as we go forward, we are really talking about two things. One is a flip. We realize it would work better long term if Hibben-McGee were graduate student housing, rather than faculty-staff housing. Hibben-McGee are close to the other graduate student housing. They are on a more regular shuttle system. We have known all along that we are going to have to do something about the deteriorating WWII barracks over at the Butler Project. And, the day is now coming when they will come down. As those graduate students move elsewhere, those will become faculty-staff housing units over there. Some of the graduate students will move to Stanworth. And, as part of our longer term planning, we do expect that there will be some additional housing at Stanworth. There is additional capacity there. And, over time, if things work out as we expect, there will also be additional housing at Merwick. In all of this discussion, we have recognized, appreciated and embraced an obligation to contribute to affordable housing units in the community. Again, many of you will know that we are working on a project right now to build some affordable units in the Boro on Leigh Avenue. We have been talking with the Township and PCH about more affordable housing in the Township. And, even if the new COAH regulations are adopted, which does have the effect of reducing the burden on both communities as a result of university construction. It also gives the community an opportunity to collect fees from the university that it can then use to support additional affordable housing. Finally, as we think about the Alexander Street area, if you get to the book, and go to the very back of the book. This isn’t in the summary. When we look a little beyond the next 10 years, one of the things we do imagine for the Alexander St area, south of the proposed Arts & Transit Area, is mixed use that would include residential properties and presumably some residential properties for citizens not associated with the university. So, we do see that as a very attractive mixed use area which will be very close to a vibrant attractive transit hub, not only for people getting to the new Dinky Station but getting to the new Boro Jitney which is about to be introduced. So it wil be easier to get around town from those locations without a car than from lots of other places in the community. So, all of those are part of the plan as we go forward. Peter Kann Thank you, Bob. Now we will open it to some audience questions and comments. [50 mins]

Dawn Day: I am very concerned about global warming. I think one of the things that may be implicit in these points you’ve been raising on housing is global warming. The adjustments that have to be made in construction, as well as adjustments that need to be made in existing buildings, need to be made very explicit. All of us, and I include myself, do not understand the magnitude of the changes we are facing. And the magnitude of the changes we must make in our own lives.

Peter Kann: Thank you. We are going to get to sustainability later.

Dawn Day: Sustainability is not a separate topic!

Peter Kann: OK, thank you. Are there any other comments about housing?

Wendy Ludlum: I am not sure how many of the land use decisions are made, particularly with private lots. This has to do with planning decisions and missed opportunities for affordable and senior housing in the Boro and Township. I would think that good planning and vision would say that we are interested in this kind of urbanism. I am not saying that we have 5-6 story buildings everywhere in town. But if you are talking about affordable housing, the sites I am thinking about are where Barsky developed across from the Harrison St firehouse, adjacent to existing senior housing…which is sensitive and well-designed. It is adjacent to some woodlands. It is in the city. It is in the fabric of the town. People would have access to services and enjoying walks into the beautiful town. Especially that. Thatis a question of missed opportunities which…I just question why that…it seems to me that it is possible with planning and the relationship with developers, properties changing hands and this and that planning and municipal committees could nurture different developments and development choices. So, I really feel like there are so many missed opportunities. I just don’t understand it.

Peter Kann: Thank you.

Sheldon Sturges: One thing, I’d like to add. If you have a specific alternative, we will write it up on that chart. Be specific if you wish.

Roger Martindell: This is a question for any of you. It seems to me in our community, we don’t do enough to promote housing for the elderly who can walk to town. Most of the elderly go to Windrows, Stonebridge or Elm Court. Some of what I am saying is addressed implicitly in the options listed on the charts. Can we do more? One specific place that comes to mind is the Merwick area. That is the next big tract that is available for such things.

Peter Kann: Anyone on the panel? Kevin, would you like to respond?

Kevin Wilkes: I think Merwick and the hospital site offer great opportunities to develop housing for seniors. That was an option some members of the Planning Board discussed two years back when the hospital was rezoned. They did not push in that direction. I think, if we could make the case to the potential future developer, Lubert Adler, that there is a great market here for that. I think we should go down to Philadelphia, to their office, to meet with them. Especially now that the market has softened a bit, they are going to be looking at this 270 unit project, scratching their head, going ‘h-m-m-m, I wonder what we should do now?’. So, if we can make a compelling argument that the market exists, we might be able to convince the private developers.

Peter Kann: A couple of more questions on this?

Candace Preston: I think that these are really admirable goals when you talk about keeping middle income people in Princeton. I think that the only possible way to do that is to restrict the size of the building. As long as ou can build a 5000 SF structure on a small lot, it is going to cost a lot. And the fact is that when my husband and I got married we lived in 1300 SF. It had 3 bedrooms. It had a family room. It was the kind of home someone could raise a family in. We live in a lot more SF now. It costs a lot more. Until people change what they want, people will choose SF when they can find it in West Windsor or in Hamilton, as opposed to Princeton.

Peter Kann: Bob Geddes?

Bob Geddes: That’s an idea. Restrict size and restrict agglomeration of sites. So that we don’t let things get bigger. ___I am still concerned about the tension between what we build, obviously whether it is affordable, but also whether there is parking with it. For instance, the parking lot across the street is going to be housing. Where is the parking for that? It doesn’t seem to exist the plan as far as I can see. And, this whole Arts thing and the Dinky...again, you are asking people to move here. You are asking seniors to move here. Which is great because I am a senior who is getting priced out of living here. You are not including parking…and in the case of the Arts Center, you are eliminating a tremendous amount of it that is used by town people. Again, we need to be sensitive and use mass transit to NY or Philadelphia. When one thinks about building housing that’s on a bigger scale, and multiple units, that parking has to be a component. On another thing, I think quality, the quality of the buildings being built: for instance, Witherspoon House. If you ever go into these apartments, you will see that the quality of how they are built…I just mean the basics of cooling systems, heating. When we ask people to move from a big house to a small apt, the basic amenities..there has to be some element of storage, some element of quality without being fancy.

Bob Durkee: Let me say one thing about parking. That plan has as much or more parking as is there now. ___: But not convenient to the citizen who might be using McCarter, or the Dinky as a mode of transportation on a daily basis.

Bob Durkee: That is not a correct analysis of where the parking is. One thing it provides for is ready access into the parking garage there, and then a walk through the plaza to McCarter. So there is more parking in that plan and it is designed to be very accessible.

Peter Kann: We have 7 issues, so we are going to have to cut off housing at this point. I know there are others with questions. So what we would like you to do by a show of hands is indicate a preference… Who would favor the status quo? …Nobody?

Kevin Wilkes: That in and of itself is a remarkable political statement.

Peter Kann: Option ‘A’, as described by Kevin. Follow existing models. Greatly expand subsidies for housing construction with local preference. – 10

Barrie Royce: Can amplify on that? I don’t local preference is a legal thing to do.

Peter Kann: Mr. Reed talked about that. Option ‘B’: ‘Follow developer modelallow developer bonuses in order to construct affordable COAH units and/or set town-wide guidelines for local preference housing. – 7 Option ‘C’: ‘Encourage institutions to build mixed-use projects combining residential for town citizens as well as for their own uses’. Widespread support for that- OK! – 30 Option ‘D’: ‘Encourage special purpose housing for immigrants, elderly, retired faculty, live-work lofts and other new housing types.’- 35 ----: While you’re counting, I wonder if anyone can clarify for me what ‘special purpose’ means?

Kevin Wilkes: For example, we have a problem of overcrowding in rental units. A rental unit has 3 or 4 bedrooms and they put, in order to afford $2000 rents, for a man who afford to pay $300/month, they 7-8 people in there. What if we built a boarding house with single room occupancy? We don’t allow that in our present zoning ordinances. What if we did allow development that had one small studio per occupant.

Peter Kann: I guess there was one option added that had to do with the restrictions on the size.

Kevin Wilkes: This would mean that we would lower the FAR [the floor to area ratio] so you could build less on your lot. Option ‘E’: ‘Restrict & reduce the size of available and new housing’ - 39

Scott Sillars: I have a question on Option D, the converse of that is you are talking about discriminatory housing. You are talking about discriminating against everybody but the elderly. Discriminating against everybody but immigrants.

Kevin Wilkes: No, I could live in a single room occupancy complex.

Scott Sillars: Well, that is unclear from Option D. The way I read that it is only for elderly. The converse of that is that it discourages everybody but the elderly. I would vote for it if you say it is a loft-type development, but I wouldn’t vote for it if it says it has to be for seniors only.

Kevin Wilkes: We would not advocate discriminatory housing at all. Period. We certainly don’t mean that if that s how are reading it. The goal would be to provide different options than either single-family residence or an apartment downtown. ___So, in other words, housing that would be attractive FOR the elderly etc.

Kevin Wilkes: Correct.

Peter Kann: Let’s move to the next subject. ---: Can I just ask a question, please? What is the difference between affordable housing and low-income housing?

Marvin Reed: I am glad that you asked that question because everybody wants affordable housing. The Council on Affordable Housing gives two classifications: low-income housing is defined by households who earn less than 50% of the median income in the county. Moderate income housing is for those who earn between 50% & 85%. When I talked about the middle market, I am talking about a range above that. In this town people say “Where can I buy something that I can afford?”. This is above what the state classifies as low & moderate income housing.

Sheldon Sturges: There is another category: Low-low income housing. DOWNTOWN We want a town that remains a thriving town, not a quaint curiosity, not a suburban sprawl. 1. STATUS QUO – NO GROWTH. 2. CHANGE: A. GROW “UP”. ENCOURAGE GREATER DENSITY BY BUILDING UP TO THE PRESENT HEIGHT LIMIT OF 65 FEET AND MOVE ON-SITE PARKING REQUIREMENT OFF-SITE. B. GROW “OUT”. ENCOURAGE ADDITIONAL DENSITY BY ALLOWING DOWNTOWN TO GROW OUTSIDE OF THE PRESENT BOUNDARIES OF THE CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT INTO SURROUNDING NEIGHBORHOODS. C. CREATE MIXED-USE SATELLITE CENTERS, SUCH AS DINKY STATION PLAZA, EAST NASSAU ST, SHOPPING CENTER, CLIFFTOWN/VALLEY ROAD, JOHN/LEIGH AVENUE, NORTHERN WITHERSPOON/HOSPITAL. 3. OTHER ----------------------------------

Peter Kann: Let’s move on to ‘Downtown’. Kevin, can you briefly frame the issue..

Kevin Wilkes: We believe that from listening to you, that you want a thriving town not a quaint curiosity of a town. Not that map from 1874. And not suburban sprawl. How can we achieve this? What are our options? Once again: the status quo…Not exactly, no growth. It is difficult to grow in the downtown because you have to comply with the parking requirements on your lot. What you will get if you follow today’s existing zoning, is projects like the one across from the Blue Point Grill. You would have a downtown filled with buildings with a first & second floor parking decks, and then retail and housing on floors three, four, five and six. Not exactly creating a vibrant and beautiful downtown, I would submit. What are some other strategies? Within present zoning we are allowed to grow in the downtown central business district to 65 feet. We can encourage greater density by building but we will have to find a different strategy for parking. We should allow parking, possibly, off site, down the block. The question that was asked about where is the parking going to be for the new apartment building across Spring St from here: It is to be in the new 500 car garage. That parking need was calculated in and we believe that those new people will and can park there. On new projects, where will new residents park? That is the question for the community. If we don’t want to grow up to the height of the series of buildings that lead up to the corner of Nassau and Witherspoon Streets, the bank building, then another option would be to push horizontally outside the business district into outlying adjacent districts. We could encourage additional density by moving the business district into outlying, adjacent districts. Clearly the problem becomes displaced residential. What happens to those people? Is that good for them? Clearly, their properties will become more valuable if it is zoned as a business for 6- story use. But that may not be a meaningful distinction for someone who loves their house on Vandeventer. Maybe, we should pursue a strategy that has mixed use satellite centers. Maybe we should develop other ‘downtowns’. Remember downtown for one community is uptown for another. It is all a sense of perspective. Historically-speaking in the Jackson- Witherspoon Neighborhood, because of segregation, the developed a local African American business district. That has now largely been eviscerated except for a barber shop and a grocery store because of our zoning regulations of single use. Potential sites for additional downtowns: [which mean combined mixed use, residential, shopping, retail and office] could be the new proposed Arts & Transit Neighborhood; East Nassau St; the Shopping Center; Clifftown/Valley Rd, just past the Princeton Township Municipal Building; John-Leigh Avenue intersection, where the restaurant and the Mexican grocery store are located; possibly Northern Witherspoon St. That is another strategy that takes some pressure off of the Downtown. There are other ideas.

Peter Kann: Now, the rest of the panel…Bob? Basically: Up? Out? or, Multiple Centers?

Bob Geddes: Other? Other is to create what has been mandated in the Community Master Plan: a District Plan for the Downtown. It is there and it should be done! After many, many meetings with citizens, [led by a paid professional planner], Princeton Future made Recommendations for a Downtown Plan in 2003. [See www.princetonfuture.org]. The District Plan should be more than a physical plan. If I may say, the one thing that is NOT in the Community Master Plan or in the Campus Plan is a SOCIAL PLAN and an ECONOMIC PLAN. Both of those should provide the fundamentals of the District Plan. The downtown is an economic engine. Just the way the University is an economic engine, and its impact on the community as a whole is extraordinary. It is also the most important social matrix. I would argue for a district plan that includes an economic dimension, a social dimension, a physical dimension, and with respect to the questions raised from the floor, the environmental issues are part and parcel of all 3.

Marvin Reed: If you are addressing the downtown…if you take a walk down Nassau St now, I think you will agree with me that there are too many vacant stores. The windows are papered over. And, if you start talking to the people, you begin to wonder “Why is that the case?” Particularly, in a couple of cases, those very buildings with the vacancies, were just sold within the last year or so at exorbitant prices. So somebody paid an enormous amount of money for that property, thinking that at some point they would turn it into an income-producing property. [1h12] Right now, it is not producing income. I think that is a potential problem for the downtown. They will tell you it comes from the change in retailing and the shift of people to BIG BOX retail going out to Nassau Park. It also comes from apprehension as to what is going to happen to the downtown when Nieman Marcus and Nordstrom come to Quaker Bridge Mall. What is the impact of excessive regulations? The merchants had a meeting the other day and talked with the Boro about how difficult it is to change your property. If you change the use slightly, from one thing to another, ou have to go all the way back through the zoning approvals and building regulations to bring it up to code. I think the town has to ask itself, and I see Phyllis Marchand shaking her head...I think the Township and the Borough both have to look at that….in terms of “Are you really regulating for the right things and the things you want?” At some point I think you will hear people talking more about whether the downtown plan should start to look more at what we call form-based code, rather than a usedbase code. That would mean we are concerned with “What does it look like?” One of the problems we have now in the downtown is that we regulate the look of things by regulating the parking requirements. By saying “You are allowed to go to five stories as long as you provide for the parking. But there is no way to do that. I think one of the things the Boro has learned, is in its experience from building this garage: You can really make a difference when you provide effectively for the parking. And, I know in the future, the Boro may have to ask itself that again as we begin to look at the capacity of Nassau St and the downtown area. It is projected in the re-examination report that the town ought to do that. Do we then find other opportunities in other locations where similar off-site parking can be made for people? The merchants said the other day that their customers are coming here and finding a way to park and walk to the stores. I think the situation has been improved. But where do the employees park? And it is in the next round of all of this downtown planning we may have to deal with the question: “Where do the employees go?”

Bob Durkee: I don’t have too much to add on this one. I just want to say that from the University’s perspective, the kinds of things we have tried to do over the years to be helpful with the downtown, are things like the investment in the Garden Theater and in making sure an independent book store remains in town, so we invested in bringing in the Labyrinth Book Store, so that some of that retail space does get filled. We have made contributions to this building, and to this square, and the Arts Council. And we do make our parking available on evenings and weekends as modest way to help with the downtown. The one other thing I would say is that we do hope in the proposed Arts & Transit Neighborhood, there will be a lively plaza, with retail, that will be very appealing to folks who using the Dinky, folks who are attending the performances at McCarter, as well as our own students. We are very conscious of the importance of providing easy and ready access to the WaWa which is already there, but adding some additional retail and restaurant space. Including space that should be a very nice station building. I think that will become an attractive satellite. We have thought long and hard about ho w to do this in a way that adds to the vitality of the community and doesn’t take people away from the downtown. I think as we have talked to the merchants, we are fairly confident that this will be a plus for the merchants downtown.

Peter Kann: And now we will take some audience comments.

Phyllis Teitelbaum: I would like to speak in favor of ‘status quo’. No growth. Growth is not always good! I have not heard anything in the discussion that makes me think that the downtown would be improved b the kind of growth we are talking about. Buldings going up to 65 ft would definitely be a bad thing. Anyone who has been to Stamford CT knows that they built huge buildings that destroyed their downtown. So, I think, we have vacant stores. I don’t think we should be talking about growth at all. We should be talking about supporting and sustaining the merchants we have and keeping the downtown as nice as it is. Make it more clear, more aesthetically attractive…but no growth!

Bill Moran: I just wanted people to remember that there is another satellite area called Jugtown!

Kevin Wilkes: My mistake. I apologize.

Ruth Fiucynzki: I live in the Township and love it. I love coming into Princeton Boro to shop. I want to congratulate whoever it was who kept the Shopping Center from growing up. I think we have forgotten nature…how important nature is to our health. When you go to the Shopping Center in the autumn, you can look out over it at the trees…and it is gorgeous! If you had built up, you would have missed that beauty. So, we really have to stop thinking about cars and parking. It just breaks my heart to see one more bit of asphalt put down for the car! I truly hope you find ways of getting places without them. [applause]

Candace Preston: I’d like to follow up. Our daughter was in charge of parking demand in Cambridge MA. A town that everyone would agree is vibrant. Her job was not to encourage parking. Her job was to make sure that the merchants did not add parking. She was in charge of helping merchants and institutions like Harvard and MIT find and develop other ways of getting to their jobs and around town. I think that the idea of requiring more parking only encourages more cars only discourages efforts to develop mass transit. The fact that we require people to add parking is the exact opposite of what we want to do for our downtown. We don’t want more cars coming down there! We want to find other ways of doing it. And the extent to which we can look at the Cambridge model. And I’d like to applaud the university in trying to help in that respect with their employees. It has helped the use of many parts of Cambridge that were not used as much.

Audrey Chen: One quick question. Before anyone can pick form these alternatives, can anyone answer: “What is the maximum retail occupancy ever reached in Princeton in the last 10 years?” I submit that it has probably never reached a point where we have to be really concerned about growth.

Marvin Reed: One of the things we have talked about in the re-exam is doing a capacity analysis. Part of that is “What is the capacity of the existing structures? Not just the capacity in terms of cars and traffic.” The question I raise is when I see people buying downtown properties for the prices they are paying, then I have the feeling that regardless of what it says in the requirements, they are buying them on the assumption that one way or the other they will manage to get variances or advocate changes that will make it possible for them to turn them into bigger income-producing properties. Now we might say “Fine, don’t let’s impose a parking requirement on them, but let us recognize that we have been imposing a parking requirement on them in order to keep the density down. If we really want to keep the density down, then, and we agree that that is what we ought to do, then let’s not disguise it as a parking requirement. Let’s figure out what we really are going to do about transit and off-site locations.

Kevin Wilkes: I’d like to address Audrey’s comment and Phyllis’s comment by saying that option ‘A’ and ‘B’ suggest different types of growth. ‘A’ suggests not an increase in ground floor retail space. It suggests additional housing on floors three, four and five that do not exist. These suggest additional ground level retail….because these would clear off sites in residential neighborhoods and build new buildings. I would suggest to Phyllis that there is one reason for not staying with the status quo. And that reason is that Boro property taxpayers are under tremendous pressure as Boro expenses grow, we have very little projected growth in our rateables, except for Hulfish North and the building across the street. If Boro taxpayers, amongst themselves, are willing to share the expense of increased growth of government expenses, then we should not build any new housing. If we would like to share the property tax burden with people who would like to occupy a floors 3, 4 & 5, I would suggest we should consider option ‘A’.

Marty Schneiderman: You just suggested something important. If option ‘A’ would be for housing density, then I would vote for it. That is a very different message. I want to follow up on what Marvin said. The concept of ‘what can we do as a community?’ to allow shopkeepers in town to compete with big box stores…You talked about various kinds of regulation things that were well intentioned but have unintended consequences. I think what we do to do community-wide: what are the specific things we can do to attract, sustain and allow shopkeepers to maintain the downtown. One of the things that clearly comes to mind since the 30 years I have lived in town, is the proliferation of banks and investment companies in retail space. They do NOT encourage people to come shop. So: What is the nature of the retail we want…that encourages our community and makes it the kind of place we want to be? We need those banking services, fine. But there are second stories...other places for them. I’d like to suggest as an ‘other’: 1. look at regulatory changes that make it advantageous for people in the downtown area and 2. the notion that the kind of retail matters.

Fran Benson: I was thinking about how I need new underwear! And I can’t get it in town. So I have to go over to Rt One. I’d rather shop right here! [Laughter and applause].

Hendriks Davis: I know you are trying to cut things off I will be brief. With this particular section of Princeton Future’s wonderful outline, I think some rethinking, and more expansive thinking, is in order here. I am not talking about status quo because I do not agree that we should stay exactly where we are. I think this topic should be changed to ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. This is too narrow. It focuses only on the downtown. This comment applies to this endeavor as well as to master planning. Most cities, should I say that word here? Most towns of our size, with the resources we have, have entities within them, that think about economic development. It ties in with Kevin’s comments and it ties in with other comments. If we don’t think about economic development in our community, then we will be stuck in the status quo and the status quo will start to go down. So my suggestion for ‘other’ is that this whole topic be re-thought and re-titled more comprehensively.

Bob Geddes: May I just say ”That is what I said!” A downtown plan that stars with economics, that starts with social, and have physical and create this together.

Peter Kann: We will try to get a vote now. All in favor of the ‘status quo’. It could be defined as ‘no growth’ or simply as ‘a continuation of current trends’. 4 hands. Under ‘Change’. Encourage greater density by building up to the presnt height limit of 65 feet and move on-site parking requirement off-site. ‘A’ is essentially grow ‘up’. Vertical. 20 hands raised.

Marty Schneiderman: Without specificity as to housing in it?

Kevin Wilkes: Correct. Clearly, once we have a raw direction, we will need to have another meeting, “if we did this, how do we do it?”

Peter Kann: Option ‘B’…essentially the town would grow ‘out’. 1 vote. Option ‘C’. Create mixed-use satellite centers, such as Dinky Station Plaza East Nassau St, Jugtown, Clifftown/Valley Rd/John/Leigh, Northern Witherspoon/Hospital “Other”.. Option ‘D’: Create a district plan for the downtown, including economic, social & environmental plans - 36

Kevin Wilkes: What that is saying, we need to do effectively what Princeton University is doing.

Hendriks Davis: Take the word downtown out.

Susan: Bob, Hendriks is suggesting taking ‘downtown’ out, but isn’t that what the topic is?

Kevin Wilkes: There is more a need for a plan for the downtown than there is for a residential neighborhood.

Peter: It remains defined as downtown.

Bob Geddes: a Downtown economic, social & physical plan. Option ‘E’: Develop more mass transit, not more parking – 32 Option ‘F’: Regulate/’incentivize’ type of business in downtown to enhance merchant mixture - 23 votes

Marvin Reed: I can’t resist. When we were planning this development in meetings like this with Princeton Future, the one thing people said they wanted was a food market, the borough Council actually wrote into that agreement a discount on the land rent to the extent there is a food market there. That idea of giving a bonus is possible. It just dawned one that Victoria Secret might be the next entity that comes along! You can do that in creative ways if you want to get into that level of detail.

Anne Neumann: The more independent stores you have downtown, the less crime. More independent stores reduce crime. Break. TOWN-TOWN Whether, technically, one Princeton or two, we want both the Township and the Borough to work as one for all Princetonians. 1. STATUS QUO – TWO TOWNS WORK WELL 2. CHANGE: A. FULL CONSOLIDATION – PRINCETON BOROUGH AND PRINCETON TOWNSHIP MERGE TO CREATE A NEW POLITICAL ENTITY CALLED CITY OF PRINCETON. B. FUNCTIONAL DEPARTMENTAL CONSOLIDATION – FOR EXAMPLE: MERGING THE POLICE DEPARTMENTS, CONSTRUCTION DEPARTMENTS, PUBLIC WORK DEPARTMENTS. 3. OTHER -----------------------

Kevin Wilkes: [break in tape]…functional departmental consolidation. We have a Regional Planning Board, a Regional Health Department, Regional Recreation Department. There are a lot of success stories in existence of collaboration between the Boro and the Township on a governmental level. Maybe there is some more to be done. Maybe the police departments could be merged? There have been discussions about that. Maybe the two construction departments can be merged? Maybe the Public Works Departments could be merged? Maybe the Zoning Department can be merged? There difficulties. But these things can be resolved over time. Maybe there other strategies you guys want to put on the table for us.

Peter Kann: Let us reverse the order, and start with Bob Durkee.

Bob Durkee: I am going to save ou some time here and not say very much about this. When we look at the Campus plan in the Arts and Transit Neighborhood, that is an area where the line between the 2 municipalities runs right through the middle, just as it runs right through the middle of Forbes College. Clearly, as we think about serving the community, we think of the Princeton Community as the larger Princeton Community, the Boro and the Township together. We are affected quite directly by the municipal dividing line. So anything that is done to make it easier to think about the Princeton community as an integrated community is something that we would certainly support.

Marvin Reed: Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit, since the last consolidation referendum in 1996, which I supported…and my picture with Mayor Tuck-Ponder was on the cover of the thing, from time to time, I have been called down to Trenton to explain to legislative committees “What is the matter with Princeton?” Why, after all of these years, of all the towns, it has had more votes, and has turned it down more often? We also had to explain to them how shared services work. And, I recently went down a year ago, when the legislature was looking at that question again and had to deal with it again… They said to me: Shouldn’t the legislature create a Brack Commission, like they do with military closures? And just make a list of all of the towns that ought to be consolidated and put it before the legislature and vote it up or down and stop fooling with all of these 536 separate municipalities! Richard Cody, the Senate President appointed me as his representative on a new Local Unit Alignment & Re-Organization Commission that was created by the legislative joint committee. I can tell you this: the current feeling in the legislature is that there are too many municipalities in the state. In their mind, it is one of the reasons that property taxes are so high in a number of places. That may not be true, but that is what they think. Likewise, my wife has attended a number of the governor’s town meetings, where he has gone around to the counties. Every single meeting, one of the first questions people ask is “Why are there so any municipalities in the state?” It has become a current issue. Now, on Tuesday, I will finally go to the first meeting of that commission. I don’t know what is going to happen. I do know that the legislature has re-written the procedures, the basis on which you do it. I have been involved in those discussions. And some of the reasons I thought it was so difficult for Princeton to consolidate have been accommodated by allowing you to retain the established districts, retain districts within municipalities, you can have neighborhood district advisory councils for the planning and zoning process if you are concerned about protecting your particular interests. There a lot of ways to reach a prior agreement on terms. It will be very difficult. Mayors all around the state are screaming that the governor is saying municipal aid will be cut if you don’t consolidate and your population is of a certain size. I will say to them that shared services are often better but that is not a guarantee that they aren’t more expensive. Part of that is the very process of trying to develop municipal services on a shared basis. It is timeconsuming and tedious. Particular interests have got to be accommodated and that takes a lot of time. If we do dive into it again here in Princeton, we do know a lot more about it from our past experiences.

Peter Kann: Can I just ask a related question? Does the fact that this has not happened yet reflect the fact that the political leadership in each of the Princetons is either divided or against it? Or, does it reflect the fact that even when the political leadership is in favor of it, there is some public mistrust or opposition to it?

Marvin Reed: What I’ve said: You have to look at it the same way corporations look at a merger. It has to be a true merger. It can not be a hostile take-over. One of the problems in this town was that when they first had the votes on consolidation, it was always that the people in the Township voted it down because they thought the Boro people were trying to take them over. And then more recently when the population of the Township grew, then it reversed. People in the Boro were saying that the people in the Township are going to outvote us and they are going to take us over. I think what has been put into the legislation make it possible to avoid that kind of thing. Will we keep municipal garbage collection in the Boro? Will we keep an overnight parking ban in the Boro? Will we keep a dog-leash law? The new legislation provides that if that is what is bothering you, you can come to a prior agreement, that the new municipality will prescribe a district where you have to have your dogs leashed, and another where you don’t. The overnight ban on parking might extend into Leigh Avenue and Birch Avenue and some other places in the Township. The point is, you must reach that agreement ahead of time. You don’t “we don’t know, it will be up to the new government.” Because that creates anxiety and anxieties are real.

Bob Geddes: I am going to propose an ‘other’ which includes certain aspects of what has been discussed & Hendriks Davis’s point. I propose that Princeton [that is joint Boro & Township] create a Princeton Preservation & Development Corporation &/or authority…that is a legal issue…which does economic planning, social planning & development, and physical planning and development, functionally for both Boro & Township. The basic point is to create a mechanism, an instrument for the preservation and development of the Boro & the Township.

Sheldon Sturges: I do have cards here. Please write your question and we will answer it. There is also a blog at www.princetonfuture.org. ___: Marvin, this may be a myth when I first moved here that when consolidation can up before, it did not pass because there was some movement in Princeton University to make the students and the faculty get very active. I don’t know whether that is true or not, but I have heard that a number of times, back in the early 80’s or late 70’s.

Marvin Reed: You know, I have heard that too. But I have to think that it wasn’t true. Maybe there were people in Nassau Hall that thought life would be calmer if we only had to deal with one municipality. I don’t think they ever went so far as to ever influence their student body to vote in any particular way.

Bob Durkee: Having been in Nassau Hall since 1972, there is no truth to that. The idea that we would have any success persuading our faculty to do one thing or another is …not likely to be a winning proposition!

Len Newton: I have gone through this 3 times since I’ve been in Princeton. The last time, the strategy was wrong. The people who were actually doing the day-to-day work on the last consolidation vote said ‘we know who voted down the others and we’re not going to talk to them’...We’re going to go out and get more people on our side: the main group was going to be university students. They didn’t know how to win. They could have won. There wasn’t a big difference.

Dorothy Bedford: I am an elected officialin this town. I represent the School Board here today. I am the person charged with getting out the vote for the School budget elections on April 15. Because many of you are Boro residents, I have to explain to you why you have a 10¢ tax increase and the others of you who live in the Township are getting a decrease. The School Board has been convinced for a decade and we feel very strongly on the Board today that the towns should consider consolidation.

Arch Davis: I have been here since 1969. At first, my sense was at first that the Township was Republican and the Boro was Democratic. There was a worry in the Boro about that. Then, both of them became Democratic, and there was the worrythat the Township was dominated by large wealthy estates…and there was the feeling the both towns were pretty busy with their own little business. If you consolidated, how would you handle double the business in one committee. I think the last consolidation vote was a year or two early. Unfortunately, we were constrained by the building programs of both towns to upgrade their municipal complex…that sort of coursed the vote and it didn’t work. I am not convinced economics would be better. We have voluntary officials. The bigger the town gets, the more you are going to have paid officials doing things. There are multi-state buying cooperatives that can be joined. The downside of that is that it cuts out local businesses. To be a little facetious, I would have voted for it, if we had included West Windsor and all of those juicy rateables on Rt One.

Peter Kann: I will add a moderator’s semi-facetious comment, somewhat related. It does seem to me to be bizarre that we have two communities, two Princetons, and one political party. And, the logic of a democracy, I think, would say the opposite: One ought to have one community with two political parties. [applause]

Gail Ullman: There is, in fact, another Master Plan being worked on now in Princeton by the Recreation Board. Several of us have served on it. I am going to use the opportunity to put on the agenda one of my pet concerns which to do with the unification of the park departments in both towns. We do not have a master park program. We have a variety of different kinds of parks in the community. I would go further to say that if you look at our community as a whole, as an organic. Literally. In the tree, bush and flower sense. There is no community-wide planning for what we grow in this town. And, the new master plan that the Recreation Board is beginning to develop does, at least in the one draft that I have seen, suggest that the parks efforts be consolidated under a department that would somehow fit in. I think that this is a terrific idea. I think it will allow the community to flourish. The varying tree ordinances in both towns have slightly different logic, bases…there is a logic to having a single, ecological, environmental focus throughout the whole town. We are a ‘tree city’. But there is a lot more than that. So I urge all of you when that time comes to be as supportive, as you possibly can, of a community-wide parks organization.

Bob Geddes: I think what you have been talking about, town-town, leads to the logic of creating what Princeton Future and the Regional Plan Association have called The Princeton Index which is a way of gaining information about the social, economic and environmental facts about our community. There examples of it. The Long Island Index looks at the ups and owns of that area with great impact. The Silicon valley Index looks at the economic issues…jobs, housing. We are going to suggest to the community, we are coming for support for creating an index which will be monitoring the facts, both in terms of the economic, social and physical facts, but also opinions from the community. So that many of the issues raised here…shocking information will come forward, I assure you, in terms of what is happening to our community on some sort of continuing basis. It is done elsewhere by university-town collaboration. Providence & Brown University is the outstanding example. Not only is there an index for Providence as a whole, but every neighborhood has a map on the web, all of the information of change, potential and so forth, for every single neighborhood. It is available and known. It si that kind of useful information that we are going to be coming to you for support. The Princeton Index.

Anne Neumann: Let me answer an implied question from Arch Davis before I make my comment. As a member of the Environmental Commission and its Sustainable Princeton Initiative, I can assure that we are working on a cooperative buying program for the 2 municipalities. It will include the university as a partner. It will be green and local. And to Gail’s point, we are about to present to the town a natural environment resources index which, with the help of the Stonybrook-Millstone Watershed Association, will have indexed and listed the natural resources in the 2 Princetons. With the exception of the parks department, with the functions that Kevin has listed there, the police dept and public wks…As far as I understand it, those are the only functions that are not consolidated. I don’t know whether we have to vote on consolidation because it is going to be forced on us by state government. I would like to consider that we merge the police departments by attrition. Our police are unionized. There are points in time when retirements are coming up and it is easier to consolidate than others. I would like topoint out that we can vote for Bob Geddes’s excellent plan for a Preservation and Development Corporation and still vote for consolidation. Why don’t we call the new entity the ‘Town of Princeton’, rather than the ‘City of Princeton’.

Peter Kann: We are going to try to take a preference vote again. All in favor of the STATUS QUO, defined here as 2 towns work well, or reasonably well: 0 votes No support! Under ‘CHANGE’… FULL CONSOLIDATION: 42 votes

Susan Hockaday: Is that unanimous?

Peter Kann: Ok..FUNCTIONAL CONSOLIDATION: 15 votes And an ‘other’: The creation of a PRINCETON PRESERVATION & AUTHORITY as I understand it, would sit above the town governments or side-byside the existing town governments. ---: Could you repeat that? We weren’t paying attention.

Peter Kann: Bob, as this was your proposed idea, would the authority replace the existing town governments, or, sit above them and have authority over the existing governments…or, would it sit off to the side and get them to cooperate?

Robert Geddes: Yes! No, seriously, what we lack is a means to deal with many of the issues that are brought up today. In a sense, it is what, in cities, is called the economic development process…or the social development process. In other places, it is housing & re-development. Sometimes it includes a parking authority. It intentionally does not have a predetermined structure. It works for the preservation and the development of the community, so it is the most important decision you could make. In cities and towns that have done this, you can find example at different scales, it the way in which a community continues to act as government for the kind of discussion we are having here today. It should be very clear that a civic organization such as this doesn’t make those decisions. It can make recommendations and have these conversations. ---: Would it operate like the joint planning board?

Robert Geddes: Yes.

Peter Kann: So all of those in favor: 17 votes. Next issue is… GOWN & TOWN We want the University and the Community to work together as genuine partners in creative, equitable relationships. 1. STATUS QUO 2. CHANGE: A. ENCOURAGE PRINCETON UNIVERSITY TO REVIEW ITS PRESENT VOLUNTARY DONATIONS AND P.I.L.O.T.s TO SEEK UNDERSTANDING AND CONSENSUS WITH THE COMMUNITY, BASED ON RATIONAL & PRINCIPLED APPROACHES. B. ENCOURAGE PRINCETON UNIVERSITY TO CREATE A COMMUNITY CAPITAL INVESTMENT FUND FOR COMMUNITY HOUSING AND TRANSPORTATION NEEDS. 3. OTHER ----------------------

Kevin Wilkes: We believe we heard you say that we want Princeton University, the institutions, and the community to work together as genuine partners in creative equitable relationships. Some of you might suggest that that happens…the status quo. Some of you might suggest that that can be improved. How can we change? One idea is to get Princeton University to review its present voluntary donations and its PILOT [payments in lieu of taxes] to seek understanding and consensus in the community based on rational & principled approaches. I was told by my colleagues not to go into a discussion of what they might be. Joe O’Neill wrote a white paper on what those principles and 4 strategies might be. They are out there and can be discussed. Another option could be to encourage Princeton University to create a community capital investment fund for community housing & transportation needs. Other universities have done similar things in their communities. Maybe there some other strategies you guys can bring to the table. Peter Kann: Kevin do you want to start this time and tell us what you favor?

Kevin Wilkes: I am in favor of ‘change’ and I am in favor of ‘A’ and ‘B’.

Bob Geddes: Same.

Marvin Reed: I am going to demur for the moment. Because most of the concerns of the Planning Board at this moment have to do with the physical plan of the Princeton University campus, and the towns’ Community Master Plan as the Campus Plan impacts on us. I would like to keep that discussion completely separate from the discussion you want to have in ‘A’. Because I don’t think the two should be linked. We should not be…first of all, there are land considerations that the Planning Board is looking at, and I don’t think the University should be allowed to, in effect, make a substantial contribution to the community that, in effect, buys out obligations we want to make to them in terms of their physical plan, as it applies to circulation, transit…and particularly the impact of that plan on nearby neighborhoods. As for Princeton University creating a community capital investment fund, that probably requires further discussion as to just what that would be.

Peter Kann: Bob Durkee, I mean there is obviously some feeling on the panel, at least the first two, that the University, notwithstanding its tax-exempt status and its generosity in many ways to the community, ought to do more. Not surprisingly, the community is inclined to look either expectantly, or covetously, to the rich University.

Robert Geddes: I’d l