April 16, 2005
Schematic Scenarios
Princeton Public Library

Present: James Kilgore [Princeton Packet, 37 Heather Lane], William Robertshaw [345 Witherspoon St], Alan Zar [345 Witherspoon St], Gail Johnson [43 Leigh Ave], Sanford Zeitler [205 Nassau St], Owen Leach [293-295 Witherspoon St], Elena Bruno [69 Harris Rd], John Vidulich [27 Arnold Dr, Pr Jct/Kahn Properties], Karen Jezierny [181 Mt. Lucas, Princeton University], Ken Smith [Town Topics], Lance Liverman [327 Witherspoon St, Township Committee], Pam Hersh [31 Sergeant St, Princeton University], Cynthia Astrom [69 Harris Rd], Louie Lucullo [69 Harris Rd], Andrés Reinero, [38 Carnahan Place], Antonio Reinero [38 Carnahan Place], Mary Bonotto [48 Clover Lane], Jamie Laliberte [5 Harris Rd], Russell Stappert [272 Witherspoon St], Peter Madison [645 Snowden Lane, Regional Planning Board], Mildred Trotman [181 Witherspoon St, President of Borough Council], Wanda Gunning [144 Mercer St, Chair of the Regional Planning Board], Michael Mostoller [22 Morven Place, Regional School Board, WSCS Team], Yina Moore [19 Green St, Regional Planning Board, WSCS Team], Sheldon Sturges [37 Palmer Sq W, Princeton Future], Kevin Wilkes [WSCS Team], Holly Grace Nelson [WSCS Team], Susan Hockaday [111 FitzRandolph, Princeton Future], Charles Alden [WSCS Team], Rebecca Cox [9 Madison St], Jeff Furey [319 Witherspoon St, WSCS Advisory Committee]

Yina Moore: Let’s get started! Good morning. We reviewed the hospital properties’ parameters that were developed from your comments in our 7 open meetings since November. They were brought together through a review of those comments by the WSCS Advisory Committee. The Advisory Committee has met 4 times. The last meeting was on March 30. The revisions and comments were made and placed on the www.princetonfuture.org website.

There were letters published in the Princeton Packet and Town Topics from the members of the WSCS Advisory Committee outlining the parameters and directing fellow citizens to the website. What we asked people to do was to “Contact us”.

If they had any comments of any type, they could use that format to do so. [Click on ‘contact us’ and send email]. What we are finding, and that is something I will share with you right now, is that we have had since March, when the primary content was placed on the site, we have had 1676 hits by mostly people in this community.

Those who have read the papers and came to the meetings have been following the process on TV30 and on the website. We are finding in March an average of 54 hits/day and in April 59/day. Already in mid-April, we are over 900. Some other data of interest: we have the number of pages, other than the homepage, which have been reviewed. We know how each document and page on the site is being read. Today we are going to continue on in this mode. At our last Advisory Committee meeting, we went from looking at the parameters, It was suggested 2 major issues be addressed [and, if possible, they will be by May 14, our final presentation]. The first one is more editorial in terms of syntax and whether the parameters are sounding as if they more like demands… a ‘must’ do something…or ‘should’. And, we are looking at some of the words. Then, with regard to the nature of some of the suggestions with regard to the taxation element. We have had volunteered to us from Pam Hersh that the University’s attorneys could provide information about what work they have done and what their understanding is about zoning’s ability to influence and actually mandate the mode of taxation. We are thankful for that volunteerism. There is also a subcommittee of planners, designers and architects that has been meeting. It includes the WSCS Team of Michael Mostoller, Kevin Wilkes Holly Nelson, Shirley Satterfield and myself, as well as volunteers Alan Goodheart, Joanna Kendig, Chuck Alden. They have come together at several subsequent meetings to provide expertise and advice about what we are going to look at today. Today, we are going to look at the hospital: the physical options. We have talked about the policy. We are going to use a modification of what was established as the approach. We have had a strategical approach which is still valid. It is just that it has shaken out a little differently. Michael Mostoller will tell you more about that. This is 5 ways the site might be developed: from using all of the

existing buildings to a full tear-down and variations in between. That still is the consideration but it is not categorized in exactly that manner. Michael will explain that in more detail. Also, Michael & Joanna Kendig worked quite a bit on the Site design. You’ll be looking at the second half of the meeting at Witherspoon St Corridor suggestions by our landscape planning group led by Kevin Wilkes. They looked at the entire street and how it might be laid out.

Michael Mostoller: Our committee tried to generate images of, that I think, design proceeds in 2 directions. One from the parameters we had described in terms of the 5 possibilities. And the 14 criteria, or parameters… Then, there is, in fact, the physical site that has streets around it…has buildings…has a physical orientation…has a north and south. That design at the beginning is a series of hypotheses about what an eventual solution is going to be. So that I want you to consider these as possibilities, as questions being asked in terms of what a layout might look like that tests the possibilities of the site and the criteria at the same time. And the design is a vehicle you use as step in the development of a final plan, layout, decision and community strategy that actually might contribute to a larger conversation. There are many decisions that have to be made. Much of what we would present would not expect to be implemented in exactly the ways we’ve shown. This is food for thought! We want you to see what the possibilities, limits and images might be.

Existing

Let me walk you through these with that in mind. Of course, discussion today is very important to us. We are going to come back in approximately a month. We can refine these. Add to these. Make suggestions to these for that presentation. We are, in all of the views, exactly in the same spot: hovering over Community Park School. We have kept the houses on Harris St in every scheme. Now, it is possible that one of the options that should always be explored, and our committee agrees with: What would happen if we kept all of these buildings exactly as they are? We know that there will be a cost involved if we begin to demolish them. There is going to come a point where the benefit of the re-use of any one particular structure is going to have an economic meaning in terms of the return we can get from what we put in. That is a relatively complicated assessment that is going to have to be ongoing and continuing as we proceed.

We have shown certain buildings staying in some schemes, and not in others. But that doesn’t mean that that would be the only way we can keep any of the buildings. One solution then, if it could be cost-effective in every way, and it would meet some of the goals we are hearing from the community…in our meetings and in the PCH/League of Women’s Voter’s meeting in this room last Wednesday: this is a very valuable site for residential housing development. Varied & diverse. Diverse in terms of building type, apartment type, ages of people living there, costs of apartments, so on and so forth. This is investigated in relationship to them. Now, of course, you don’t get it free. I hear around a little bit that it is going to cost a million dollars to tear that big building down. You are not going to move people into apartments the minute the hospital goes out the door. There will be an enormous cost in renovating the building for re-use, no matter what. So because you haven’t torn it down, doesn’t necessarily mean you will save money. Let’s walk through the schemes. They each have their pluses and minuses. They are essentially in 2 large categories: the ‘town house block’ which is a more unitary development and there are three of those which I will show you in a moment…and then there 3 ‘urban village’ ideas. And, as you will see, you will have to synthesize in your own mind, as we go along, some of the possible options as they begin to emerge. We, as designers, tested the site for solutions. So, for example, in this particular scheme, there are the houses…in every scheme there is a new street, at least. Most often that new street is an approximate continuation of Leigh Avenue. In this particular one there is also a street here [parallel to Harris Rd.]. So that idea is underlying all of the schemes. The block is too big. We don’t want a super block. We would introduce the mechanism of town life, which is the street, and access to whatever kind of residential accommodation occurs in each scheme off of those streets! There are no super blocks. In this one [#1] this is the garage. We have come up with an idea that could repeat in any of the schemes. We could build an approximate 2-story structure on top of the garage and on the side of the garage, exactly like Witherspoon House, right here, which ‘covers’ the new garage. We could put apartments which face onto a front yard and a street. On top, there would be a courtyard for that group. In this particular scheme, it is possible to re-use these 2 buildings [on the corner of Henry/Witherspoon], and even this one, if it seems likely that the medical office outpatient usage can be sustained. This last is always a consideration in all of the schemes going forward. Some of this we were developing in parallel with our space/landscape group. It is probable that we wouldn’t recommend such a big open space here. You will see in the second presentation that there is a concept of a more linear open space in front of the hospital. We now think all of the schemes will abide with this. The key idea of these 3 schemes is a unitary development of town homes that have an inner access to parking for that set of units. So that all of the houses, they could be 2 or 3 stories and they could be multiple uses and occupancies. The form does not preclude a variety of types of occupancies inside. And along the street, there could be our ’standard Witherspoon mix’ of residential and commercial uses. We would utilize the character as it exists, some commercial on the ground floor, all residential upstairs.

In the second scheme, this housing block is turned the other way. This is the scheme that most reflects the scale of Harris Street, because we flip the scale and have single family homes on a new street, and the unitary town home block is here. With the possibility of 3 story buildings on Witherspoon St itself. The third is a variation of 2, where we build at higher density all through the site. We don’t build the single family homes which are extremely low density.

Our conclusion is: the way to affordability and the way to diversity is through a density that allows us to include different kinds of units and a number that allows us to significantly impact the affordability issue.

Karen Jezierny: Michael, do you have a sense of what that number is?

Michael: We are going to talk about that. 20 units/acre and up. The JW Neighborhood, we estimate, is about 22.

Yina: Although the zoning is around 10 or 12 units per acre.

Michael: We are going to show you a slide of that. #3 is about 15. #2 is about 10. #1 is about 10…100: 50 for the apartments, 50 for the town houses. Let’s go to the second group now.


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would be a garden apartment/elevator-type building which is shown here and here. Garden apartments..[Garden apartments are apartments where you walk in …there is a stair, there is an apartment here and an apartment here and it repeats]… These are ‘house apartments’, I call them, that are scaled like the ones over here on…help, how do you pronounce it? Vande-VEN-ter? Van-DE-ven-ter? These are that scale and they look like houses, but in fact, they have apartments in them. So there is that type of unit. We have in #6, garden apts, a senior apartments complex, an apt building, garden apartment, garden apartment, and townhouses all together. So you can see how the urban village idea emerged. And there is a street around the middle and on the side. It is possible, depending on the exact limits there, that we could go through there, but I am not sure.

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On Scheme #5, we have left the garage as is. But you could do the same thing as in #6. We have a row of Vandeventer apartment buildings along Witherspoon St. Row houses, garden apt, garden apt, town houses, Vandeventer types along the south side of Franklin.

This shows the possibility, as we continue, that we could consider replacing the existing Franklin St. public housing project with 2 or 3 story buildings. Those buildings were built in 1938. They are going to need work. We don’t want them to be lost in any way. If replacing them would mean that, we don’t want to do that. It is also possible upgrading in some manner.

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Scheme #7 shows the possibility of keeping the existing tall building and putting a street through. You can see why design is hypothesis. Probably, we could get one apt type building here [on the south side of the Leigh St continuation]..a house-type building which brings down the scale. Continue that down Witherspoon St. This could be town houses [on Henry]. Here is our Seniors apartments. Garden apts on the new st. We could have either town houses or apt houses along the western edge. We have a whole block that could actually be a facility…even a CCRC, perhaps, that would not be the whole site, but utilizing about one half of the site. This half-block could be an entity…a development proposal, in which you would keep that building and build smaller buildings around it, as many assisted living facilities now provide. The idea that emerges here is the possibility of utilizing the large hospital building for apartments, which could be lofts, or some sort of CCRC model. And these buildings could either be parceled off or part of that.

So you see, the site, through this design exploration, begins to tell us things that we now know!

• We always think about dividing it up: at least in two.

• We always think it is possible that some of the buildings can remain.

[But we are not sure which ones are the right ones to do yet because that really has to be costed out.]

• We see that by introducing a mix of unit types, we could attract our mix of people that we are interested in. If we construct financing mechanisms that allow that to occur, then we would be allowing for the diversity of incomes we are speaking of, in terms of our affordability goals and our goals as a diverse, integrated social community which is so important.

• The hospital garage offers us this possibility, which is one that I think that now that we can see it has been done right outside this window [covering the garage by an apt building] is not as farfetched as it might seem. There are still technical issues that need to be investigated.

So, in summary, I would say, every scheme depends upon a parcelization of the site in some manner. Each one a little different. For instance, in Scheme 1, this is a parcel, this is a parcel and that is a parcel. In Scheme #3, each of the parcels tries integrate itself back into the community by connecting to the street. This one indicates a goal that would create a community like Queenston Commons, which is a ‘unitary’ development, where all the siding is the same, all the paint is the same. All the windows are the same, but it is still very nice! This would be that direction. In Scheme #5, we start, urbanistically, with the idea of an urban village. I would say a village is an entity that starts out with a whole lot of different types. At some point it becomes a town which is made up of a whole bunch ___and more of each one of those things. So this is the diverse model, and this is the unitary model. They each have their own value. I will stop there.

Mildred Trotman [President of Borough Council]: Is scheme # 7 the only one that considers the Housing Authority’s apartments?

Michael: No. We just showed this, that given that site, it would be possible to re-design it in terms of goals to be formulated, probably on behalf of HABOP, that would generate increased housing.

Mildred: I know this is not final, and only conversational, but the other schemes don’t consider it.

Michael: This [Maple/Franklin Terrace idea] could fit into any scheme! We just showed it once.

Mildred: Got it.

Jamie Laliberte: I am sort of concerned about saying anything because I am absolutely amazed! I have been here for most of these meetings. I am not seeing 3/4 of the discussions that have gone on in any of these schemes! High, tall, urban development is not what I heard from the neighborhood. 5-story, 3-story brick buildings in the Witherspoon area is not what I heard!

Michael: These buildings are 3-story…

Jamie: The garage is 5! If you put those apts on top of the garage, it will be 5 stories. The garage is already 3 stories. I don’t know where I missed it. But this is not what I heard.

Michael: These are 2 & 3. The option you would like is this one [Scheme #2].

Jamie: Yes, but I am not saying I would like any of them!

Michael: Would you want Harris Rd houses all over the site?

Jamie: No. I don’t want Harris Rd houses all over the site because that wouldn’t be effective. I think that having a huge block, and that is a huge block, [I walk it a lot], of nothing but apts and town houses is counter to the entire area we are trying to restore.

Michael: What would you suggest?

Jamie: I’m not sure. I was leaving it up to the experts. But having huge buildings encompassing the entire block…

Michael: Why are 2-3 story buildings huge?

Yina: Many of the houses in the neighborhood are 3-story, if you look not only at the elevation.

Michael: We have tried to up the density and reduce the impact. In every case you will see that the exterior, except right here, and you don’t have to accept that, it is high there now [the main hospital building], but we don’t have to keep it… the entire surrounding in relation to the neighborhood has been attempted to keep the scale low. That is the experts’ answer!

Yina: That was certainly one of the things expressed…concerns of height. What we are looking at in the strategic approach is …If you tear down everything, there is the lowest density possible. Either to do nothing and have a park…or to have the density that might simulate the density of the Harris Rd block… on up to something that is higher density. These show ranges. Perhaps that scheme that Michael just described as a repeat of single-family, detached house throughout the block hasn’t been illustrated. But it is certainly one we talked about in our second, workshop. And Michael mentioned, it also has to be costed-out. From the point of view of the Boro gaining property tax, that would be the least revenue-generating type of development. But there other criteria as well.

Michael: We could build 10-20 $3 million homes, MacMansions on the site.

Jamie: That’s not what …If you had presented that, I would have been stupefied too! That was not what I heard. Mixed use, housing, reasonable density, low, low profiles, is what I think I heard from all of the Workshops. Some stores. Some single family homes, some town houses. Not something that replicates this thing [pointing to Witherspoon House]. I mean this is gorgeous for this area. I wouldn’t want it where I live.

Michael: I meant by that reference, that you could do a building in front of and around a garage.

Holly Nelson: I think there is something useful, to be gained by this type of multiple scenario. When it comes down to the reality of what is going to happen to the site, Anyone who is going to spend money on it, is going to want to make as much as he can. What we need to do is to get everybody to see what that might look like! And, hopefully, what we are doing is a more palatable version. And if it still isn’t what the community wants, at least they have seen what it looks like from coming to the meetings.

Gail Johnson: I live on Leigh Avenue. Do you see that extension as a 2-way street?

Michael: I wouldn’t want to predict what the right answer is…

Kevin Wilkes: We have discussed both ways, Gail. I think we’d like it to be a 2-way st. But we realize that it produces strangeness at the intersection at Witherspoon St. So we are a little nervous about that.

Gail: Would you see the rest of Leigh being a 2-way st?

Kevin: We hadn’t thought about that at all.

Michael: I would doubt it.

Yina: It is too narrow.

Michael: I think we are not detailed enough yet to know the answer to that. The goal would be to keep the traffic on this new street at a minimum.

Kevin: It will only extend one block. It will end at a T at the end of that. So you don’t want to channel a lot of traffic there. It kind of makes sense for people that are in there to be able to turn right or left on Witherspoon and go.

Gail: And…are those gray spots, parking?

Michael: Yes. That is asphalt. There are standards where you have to have bump-outs & islands etc. I did not draw them!

Bill Robertshaw: This is my first meeting. I don’t understand why there is a need to increase the density of this area. It is already getting crowded with the streets and what not. I agree with the lady behind me about this.

Michael: Every scheme up here lowers the density. There are 4000 people per day going in and out of the hospital.

Bill Robertshaw: Well, we have now many homes where the single homes with windows on 4 sides. But here, you have row houses, tenements or whatnot, I envision this being the beginning of a slum development. Maybe it is 50-100 years from now. If you drive through slums, I think a lot of them look like this. I don’t see this being any improvement whatsoever.

Jeff Furey: I am concerned that if you go to that 20 units per acre which I know that is what the Witherspoon neighborhood is…You’re going to have that overcrowding where we don’t have more green... If you ever go to Community Park at night, to the playground, especially at night, in the summer, you might have 150-200 people out there. Lance can corroborate this. I think we have to keep it to that 10 units per acre. Try to get some green, play area. I think that is very important. What I see is a real mix, the way you have. You have 4 development areas: the garage, the medical offices, In the long term, we are going to have something like this. It is all schematic. It is also all economics.

Michael: I agree.

Jeff: To use the hospital’s present structure and convert it into apartments makes sense. But these things are not cheap. The university did their study and they just felt that if they took over, they take every thing down.

Michael: I was trying to indicate that we have been discussions around the town that it would be so expensive to tear them down, but that is not necessarily an actual economic investigation.

Jeff: Right. I am in commercial real estate. The rule of thumb is $8-10/SF to knock down an entire structure. That’s bringing everything off of the site and literally leveling it. It is a real cost. And what the hospital needs is real cash to re-locate. They are looking for the highest price. We have to be very careful of the 20 units per acre. The urban will be an extension of the downtown.

Michael: If we took these three schemes [#5-6-7] which are approximately 20. They could go up or down. We could build some of these along Witherspoon as medical office space. These could be 2 houses. We have introduced every building type into the whole system. Single-family homes, garden apt, town homes, here are the Vandeventer-type buildings. The vocabulary is drawn from the town. The density is going to be a discussion between the people who want it to go down and the people who want it to go up! We will reach some sort of compromise, I guess, around the amount of money that is required to go forward on the site with any development whatsoever. That is going to mean multi-family residences. There is a series of options for going forward with multi-family residences, a series of options for putting streets in, a series of options for keeping the buildings. It is like a game of chess now. We have the pieces. We have the board. We are going to play it out according to a set of values that is still ongoing. I, personally, don’t think it is going to go below 15. Because I don’t think anything is going to be affordable by anybody because it is already at such an extremely high density now. Anything we do is going to lower the density, significantly. It is going to put a community in the middle of five-minutes in all directions to everything…every convenience that you need. So, in fact, even though there is a garage here, these are residents who are not going to need to drive very much. It is a very walkable site. There are many reasons why trying to look for compatible ways to have more people living here benefits us in other ways. It benefits us from the standpoint of affordability. It benefits us from the standpoint of…these are not going to be built out in the Township where everybody will have to drive to get to where they have to go. So by building more units here, we will be reducing the impact of traffic everywhere in Princeton. So there is a multiple impact from the advantages of appropriately higher density.

Bill Robertshaw: When you say 20 per acre, what is the size of the units you are talking about?

Michael: They could vary from 1000 to 1500 SF.

Owen Leach: My property is 293-5 Witherspoon. First of all, everything you have shown up there is an improvement over what is there now! We are getting better, not worse. Have you calculated which of these plans feeds the beast more? The tax revenues? The beast, in my opinion, is Princeton Township. The politicians will make us do what will pay them the most. So I wonder which of these pays them the most.

Yina: That is an interesting point about Twp vs Boro. We haven’t drawn that line about which units fall within which. That will be done. Scheme 2 is actually the lowest density. To be clear, densities are the number of units per acre. That is different from ‘overcrowding’ which is a per unit condition, ie. the number of people who live in an apartment/unit/house.

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THE TOWN HOUSE BLOCK. Scheme 2 has 60 town houses, 12 single-family, detached, as the gentleman said, windows on all 4 sides. And there are 72 units total. When the unit site ratio is very low, that will put pressure on each unit to pay a certain property tax, but also a high value in terms of a purchase price in the interests of the property owner. The next scheme, in looking at density is Scheme 1, which has 50 apartments and 50 town houses. What was to be Scheme 4 had 70 apartments, 44 town houses, generating 114 units. Scheme 3: 40 apartments, 88 town houses for 128 units. THE VILLAGE BLOCK. Then the range of schemes from 5, 6 & 7 are between 158 and 177 units for the site. How they break out: twp v boro…and as parcels for development will greatly impact what the developer interest, the developer’s ability to turn a profit, and which will always influence the price of the land. There are also other data to go into which this goes into: whether the garage is there or not. In many cases, the garage is a leftover from the prior use. It provides excess parking. Over 750 spaces. It seems parking is a great asset in Princeton for whatever reason. Down in that location, it may not be as prime. It is a resource that we would want to consider for the total site’s development. Retail spaces are opportunities. We haven’t gotten into the discussion of zoning today because we talked a lot about it in 2 prior meetings. The desire for similar zoning in that area for Witherspoon St would be similar to the RB in the Boro where it is a unit required to have 60% residential with an opportunity for 40% commercial. It depends on how units are developed within this block. And how parcels are divided will impact how it plays out. For example, there has been no interest in recreating Palmer Square, where ALL of the buildings’ first floors are retail. In order to keep the residential feel primary, we have to look further as to how the buildings on Witherspoon St would develop. The Henry Ave-to-Franklin Terrace houses on the back of Harris Rd on the perimeter are primarily residential of varying densities, as was noted. Each of the schemes has different kinds of approaches. If they are single-family primarily, it would not include a community building as a type. Not to say that there wouldn’t be landscaped open public areas within the site, but there wouldn’t be a center. But 3 of the schemes allow for that as a potential. One is the senior building. I think that’s it. There averages of unit size from 2000-2500. This becomes dependent on what is marketable. What household types are being served. And of course the unit types they are situated within. The design of the site allows for these types of scale.

Owen: So would Scheme #3 be the one that is going to generate the most revenue for the governmental entity because it has more of the 2000 SF townhouses? Has an estimate been made?

Yina: Not necessarily. 177 is bigger than 128.

Owen: I understand. But the value of the 2000 SF.

Yina: It depends what the units actually are. The CCRCs pay quite a bit of rent that well exceed the market for a normal apartment. How that figures into the revenue stream is going to be an interesting thing in terms of taxation and the value of the property. The price of the single-family at 2500 SF in the lowest density would have to sell for quite a bit if the revenues from the sale of land are the primary interest being served. The apartment at a lower scale of 1000 SF could be any rent. What determines the rent is what the market will bear. How you envision the scheme in terms of the diversity being sought in both height and access is what will also be a factor. There is no way to say which one, absolutely. But if you are holding true to the basic principles - varying unit types and diversity of options for living on the site - then you will probably find that you have to have more than a town house and a single-family detached house. Not only on the numbers but on the type of unit. I guess that is a long way of saying that the jury is still out in terms of that kind of determination.

Lance Liverman [Township Committee]: I would just like to say that as a public official, I am not only interested in how much property tax and how much money that this thing is going to bring into the government. I am looking at the overall picture. I want to say that what I am looking at is beautiful. Mostly I’d like to see mixed use, basically. I think we are going in the right direction. As a government official on Township Committee, We are not the beast! We are looking at the total picture. We want to work with everyone.

Yina: Because he wasn’t here at the previous land use discussions on the North End of Witherspoon St, Mr. James Kilgore, the Publisher of the Princeton Packet, would like to speak.

Sheldon Sturges; Just by way of introduction, this gives us a chance to thank Jim and the Packet for publishing and distributing A Recommended Plan for the Downtown at no cost to Princeton Future.

Jim Kilgore: I hate to go off a little bit on the side here. A while ago you had a discussion session on the North end of Witherspoon St and the B1 zone. I know that Princeton Future was discussing that particular area. I thought it was important for the property owners in the B1 zone get together and talk about what our thoughts were. Many of us have been there many years. We have properties there. We care about the neighborhood. We care about the future of Princeton. A number of years ago, there was a move afoot to change the zone in the neighborhood and we got together and petitioned Township. And we were successful in doing so. We felt that mixed use commercial residential. Retail was very positive for the area and continues to be. Several of my neighbors are here. We had a meeting in March. There was about 15-16 of us. The vast majority re-stated our desire to keep the neighborhood as it is, but to work with Princeton Future and other groups to try to improve the landscape, the lighting, the sense of community that exists in Princeton. We are very proud of our neighborhood, as many of you are in this room. So, I would like to read this note, petition. It was signed by 14 property owners representing 24 parcels in the B1 zone. Two individuals didn’t sign. One who is involved in the political community said he couldn’t. The other said he wished to have the zone changed to residential use. Let me read the letter. We are here to help.

“Board of Advisors
Princeton Future
37 Palmer Square West
Princeton, NJ 08540
Ladies & Gentlemen:

The group, Princeton Future, and others have recently discussed the future of Witherspoon St in Princeton Borough and Princeton Township. Much of that discussion is focused on the neighborhood mix of housing, commercial & retail use, along with trends in the neighborhood. Of significant concern is the future use of the University Medical Center at Princeton site, which may become vacant with a move by the medical center to another location. There has been discussion of zoning, the streetscape, lighting, quality of life and future direction of the Witherspoon Street neighborhood.

This discussion about Witherspoon Street will continue as it should.

The purpose of this letteris to make it clear that the majority of the Witherspoon St property owners in the B-1 zone in Princeton Township strongly support the current zoning and a vibrant and attractive Witherspoon St community.

The B-1 zone on Witherspoon St is one of the very few communities that allows a mixture of residential, commercial and retail business in one zone. This mixed use zone has allowed residential, commercial and retail uses to flourish for decades. In additional current zoning laws strictly limit business uses with building size limits and off-street parking requirements. Hence there are many controls on the current B-1 use.

About 15 years ago The Princeton Regional Planning Board attempted to rezone the B-1 zone on Witherspoon St to residential use. At that time the majority of B-1 property owners successfully petitioned the the Princeton Township Committee not to change the zone.

On March 9, 2005, the majority of B-1Witherspoon St property owners and their representatives met and restated, unequivocally, their desire and belief that the current B-1 zone on Witherspoon St is working and should remain unchanged.

At that meeting it was further agreed by the vast majority in attendance that a petition letter be drafted to emphatically state that the overwhelming majority of B-1 zone Witherspoon St property owners request that the current B-1 zone on Witherspoon St remain in place.

This letter serves as that petition which is being sent to the board of Advisors of Princeton Future, to the Princeton Regional Planning Board and to Princeton Township Committee.

The names and signatures of the petitioning B-1 property owners or their representatives are listed below along with the addresses of their respective properties in the B-1 zone.

James B. Kilgore, PacPub 300, 283-287, 290, 292, 294 Witherspoon St, 9 Birch Ave.

Alan N. Zar, Treasurer, 345 Witherspoon Associates LLC, 345 Witherspoon St.

Marge & Phil Torrance, 254 Witherspoon St.

Dr. Anthony Vasselli, 299 & 303 Witherspoon St.

Michael Cortese, 311 Witherspoon Street St.

Ken Smith, Town Topics 305 Witherspoon St.

Louis Lucullo, Lucullo Inc 337, 339, 343 Witherspoon St.

Dr. Sam Hamod, 282-288 Witherspoon St.

Beverly Leach, 293 & 295 Witherspoon St.

William Bunting, 266 Witherspoon St.

Annunziata Nancy Matthews, 341 Witherspoon St.

Russell Stappert, 272 Witherspoon St.

Sanford Zeitler, 216 & 274 Witherspoon St.

I would be glad to answer any questions you might have and perhaps the other property owners who are here will wish to speak.

Susan Hockaday Jones [Member of the Steering Committee of Princeton Future]: Did you bring a map which shows exactly where these properties are and what you are asking us to consider?

Jim: We don’t. Back at the office, there is a sketch of the B-1 zone. Part of the area includes the school and the municipality. These are the individual private property owners within that zone. Sure, we can provide whatever information you need. But basically these individuals are the majority of the property owners.

Mildred Trotman: This is a question to Mr. Kilgore. The mixed use you just quoted, is there a ratio between residential 60% and commercial 40% as there is in the Borough?

Jim: No.

Mildred: If not, at what point will the powers that be in the Township say “This is enough business” because if there is no limit it could creep into total commercial.

Jim: It is very difficult to add…You have to have onsite parking. There are certain side-yard requirements. It is very, very difficult to convert a building. We have gone through it a number of times and we have tried to make it so you fit into the community with off-site parking we’ve been able to use. We have renovated those buildings. They no longer have kitchens or anything like that. We want to keep the look and feel. In the back we have a picnic area. It’s green. We have trees. We have gardens. If those weren’t residential, you’d have asphalt, you’d have parking. In the back you have a green space. Sunlight. Garden. Trees. To try to balance some of the other asphalt and cement things that you have in the neighborhood. Anybody that converts, you have to provide the parking. I believe it is 1 spot for every 150-200 SF of office. So for a small house, you have to have 6-8-10 parking spaces based on the SF you are trying to convert. I think that is quite restrictive. Again I think that there have been different commercial uses on this street. I think some of these houses were commercial before it went back to residential. Some have gone the other way. I don’t know what the amount of commercial there is..The amount of residential IS reduced from what it was before. But I think to convert further by individuals because they don’t have adequate parking, a lot of these lots are very small, they have to get a variance. And I think the town is very restrictive in giving variances for a change in use. Because if you have a residential house in the B-1 zone, you have to go before the Township officials in the case of the B-1 zone to get approval to change to business use. You have to show parking. You have to show other requirements. So you do have controls in place that are quite restrictive and quite appropriate.

Jeff Furey: I was part of that meeting. There were 15 people at the meeting as Jim stated.

14 were actual property owners on the street. 1 lived directly behind. Out of those 14, there were 11 who I would term “investors”. They own the property. They do not live in the property. Some of them live as far away as California. Then you had one property owner who is also an investor because he has 3 units. A so-called mix. Then there were 2 who actually live there. You have to understand that to understand how they felt and how they voted. There was one person who had no objection to its current zoning also had no objection to it becoming mixed use as mentioned by Mildred. His feeling was to maintain the mixed zoning of the Boro along the street. Office-retail on the first floor, residential on the second…making it continuous down Witherspoon St. For this kind of use, your needs for parking are not quite as great. The people living there would use the same parking at night that the retail would use in the day.

Michael: This is going to follow in the next discussion a little bit. Mildred Trotman reflected our concern. The B-1 allows it to be all B, even though there are, in fact, restrictions. You are, of course, an important part of that street. We are listening.

Sheldon: I’d like to thank Jim. It is very important that the citizens of the town come and get heard. You have been very polite and courteous. All points of view forge a community consensus. Thank you.

Kevin Wilkes [WSCS Team]: Good morning.

We looked at the length of Witherspoon St. in terms of some specific design issues. What I am going to talk about now are some goals and possibilities for the redesign & improvement of the actual public space along Witherspoon St. including the sidewalks, the street corridor, the trees, tree canopies, utilities, parking, driveway curb cuts, street cuts and certain adjacencies that occur from school district and institutional uses that bring different groups of pedestrians and bicyclists up and down the street throughout the day. We are going to look at some possibilities for addressing what is quite honestly the shabby condition of the sidewalk & curb network on Witherspoon St. We want to see what are some of the physical possibilities we could expect to implement relatively easily and relatively quickly to make an immediate visual improvement in the streetscape and make an improvement in the quality of life of people who walk up & down and park along the street. As you know, Witherspoon St has a long history in our community. I want to show you an engraving from 130 years ago where Witherspoon St was the primary component of the town’s circulation system. Neighborhoods were already in tact along the street. You can see the emergence of the downtown. You can see clusters up and down. Witherspoon St has had vibrant history for 100s of years! This is a map which calls out the specific area we are going to be detailing. The yellow line.from Nassau out to 206. A large amount of the landmass is held by the cemetery, the medical center. And the Community Park, Municipal Pool, Township Complex. Alan, Holly and I have worked on this. So looking specifically at Witherspoon. Looking north at Paul Robeson, by the Arts Council…some of the salient details: the tree canopies & the utility poles duking it out. Pedestrians crossing. Sidewalks. If you look south, the buildings take on a bigger prominence. The beautiful Bradford pear trees don’t create the same kind of canopy that the mature oaks create to the north of the intersection. There is more traffic. There are more territorial battles between pedestrians and traffic in the CBD. The sky plate is more open to the south…but somewhat similar depending on the trees.

EXISTING CONDITIONS: We first did some analytical work. Holly is going to take you through some of the things that we determined as we walked the neighborhood are relevant existing conditions. Why they are important to us is because of the history of the neighborhood and the history of the street. Existing conditions indicate to us how buildings and sidewalks have been used over the past 200 years. And as designers, we can analyze these dimensions, these elevations, these sections and we can look for solutions to really localized problems.

There are a number of places where there are steep slope problems at the curb.

There are a number of places where the curb is in total disrepair and is flush with the asphalt.

There are a number of areas where the planting strip, which is a piece of an attempt at lawn between the sidewalk, has totally collapsed because of the amount of foot traffic crowded off the sidewalk which kills any grass trying to grow.

There are utility poles in unfortunate locations. There a number of trees in extraordinary shape that need to be enhanced. There are a number that have been chopped and butchered and damaged and are on a downhill slope. Through our design study, we have come up with some consistency as to how the street works.

Holly Nelson: These sections start down by the town hall. There is a very different character in the north. It is much more open and less defined by buildings on both sides of the street. In particular, there is a big open area at the Community Park Pool parking lot on the west side and the new fire station across the street. What I have tried to show is the pine trees which at one time blocked the view of the cars but now are so tall that you can see under them.

The small details…the curbs, the planting strip, the sidewalks. Even though I live in this neighborhood and walk here a lot, I don’t consciously register the stuff.. . So this is a good exercise for me to get out there and record. One thing is the parked cars are on the East side of the street in the Township and on the West side in the Boro. It is just a funny thing that doesn’t necessarily have any implications, but if you are thinking of putting in a bike path it might matter. We’ll get to that at the end.

What you begin to see as you move towards the downtown is a house with a porch with a front lawn, then a sidewalk, then a planting bed with a tree, then the street. As we get closer into town that becomes the norm. That is one of the differences you see in section between Witherspoon St and the Downtown where you have buildings coming up to the edge of the sidewalk without that transition.

So, the sense of houses, porches, front ard and then street is the structure of Witherspoon St. What we show in the following slide is where that structure gets messed up…where there are mistakes that need to be amended.

Kevin: The spatial character and the quality of street experience change dramatically as you move closer to the Boro. The spatial character narrows as buildings move closer to the street line. There you see the existing hospital structure and how it looms over the street section, and that continues as the street actually starts to narrow. Here is the section down by the Clay Street Learning Center where the houses start to develop a steep slope on the Eastern side of the street. And the same thing starts to happen as we move closer into town on the Western side of the street, especially down here right below Torrey Lane across from the new Hunan restaurant. Here again we see a series of slope-edged conditions. There are a couple of commercial locations like Jefferson’s where off of the street they have a paved parking lot of some sort. Some are in use and some of the paved areas are no longer in use. Finally as we get closer to town, we have the cemetery on the East and a series of churches and private residences on the West. In most cases the churches have a paved sidewalk area in front of them for gathering. Those are areas we want to enhance and improve.

WHAT NEXT? So now we are going to start here and walk back down the street looking at some images and suggestions…

One of our first goals, we want to establish a very healthy environment for the street trees along Witherspoon St. We want to create in our new sidewalk detailing a way for the existing, mature trees can be ensured of as long survival as possible. And that the new trees that get planted to replace trees that have died or to fill in gaps where we think trees are missing. Those new trees have the best chance of surviving.

On the west side in front of the Arts Council, it is already planned to widen the inbound lane to create a right-hand turn lane that will people to turn from Witherspoon onto Paul Robeson, without backing up people trying to drive through or turn left. In that right hand turn lane, we propose that there be a bus stop installed. That is largely the condition that exists today.

The bus stops in the traffic lane. It will be slightly improved. We advocate that the sidewalks now be continued to the curb throughout the southern half of Witherspoon St. Throughout most of the Boro, we advocate that the sidewalks be continued to the curb and the planting strip be eliminated. We advocate that the sidewalks be a medium that supports the growing of trees. We need to stop fighting tree roots. We don’t want to use poured-in-place concrete. We want to use a unit paver that is designed with gaps of a small quarter of an inch around the edges. They allow water to get to the roots. We believe that the material underneath the sidewalk be a structural compacted fill that allows for tree roots to grow in an organic medium. But the structural fill allows for the sidewalk to be stable and level. As trees grow, one of the great problems is tree roots. With this type of system, the sidewalks will not lift and break. You can modify the bricks to accommodate the growth pattern of the trees.

On the eastern edge you see an extraordinary line of majestic trees. We believe we should do everything we can to save every possible tree. We do believe that the curb should be raised up to 7 inches here. Around the trees, the curb should be dropped down to be flush with the street bed and brought back up beyond the root base so as to not chop at the bases of those trees. If we cut at the roots or pour hot asphalt on the roots, we will cause damage. New trees we want to plant, we don’t want to plant in the grass strip. We want to plant new trees further away from the street curb.

Witherspoon St is crowned roughly at Quarry. On the west side, there is a significant steep-slope issue. Please notice how much the utility lines have won out the battle with the trees in front of the churches. Further along, on the west side, there is a series of commercial businesses, we have an especially bad condition: a 2-ft drop-off from the sidewalk to the street. We steps from various buildings pushing into the public right of way because it is so steep. We have curb cuts that bottom out every single vehicle. We have 2 strategies. For that one little section, we propose that we extend this curb out 8 feet….a neck down….and eliminate parking for 100 ft there. Allow the sidewalk to widen and slope gently at angle that anyone can accommodate. We heard over and over that we want traffic to slow down and be more aware of children that are crossing…without putting in stoplights or even traffic signs. We could also put crosswalk embedded lights in the way they have at McCarter. Little strategies that would force drivers to slow down. We are actually going to propose this at two more places as we go north. This will also create a little more room in front of the businesses for people to stand and chat. It would be nice if people didn’t have to dance when they passed each other on the sidewalk. Now option #2, if we don’t change this, is to install a railing on the edgeand actually cut this piece of sloped asphalt out, put in a mini-wall and create an 18” flat space that is level with the curb that allows people who park there to actually open the passenger door. Right now they can’t. The railing might go from Maclean to Torrey. Here, in front of the Mexican Grocery store is a very dangerous condition to try to navigate. It is even worse in front of Forer Pharmacy. The root base of the existing tree has caused the sidewalk to lift up. It slopes backwards down into the store. Any heavy rain runs down and into the doorway. In the winter it is an ice problem, where ice builds up. So it is bad for the business owner and bad for the pedestrian. When we rebuild the street, we want to make better accommodations for our trees to survive. At the new building, they cut the pitch out and the problem has been pretty well solved. On the east side, we need to do everything we can to protect these trees. That doesn’t allow us to raise the street in there. Some might say “why can’t we just raise the street so we don’t have the slope condition. Well, the problem is that on the other side of the street, we don’t have the problem. We can only raise the street bed a few inches for the most part.

At the intersection of Lytle, with Clay St at our back. Extreme disrepair. We also see the front porch, the front garden, Obviously this height came from an earlier time, when people would sit on the porch and actually say ‘hello’ to people they knew walking along the street. And it would ten minutes to go from corner to corner because you’d stop and chat with a few people. Possibly if we improve the pedestrian world and convince some property owners to restore their gardens, we can bring it back to the neighborhood. We think that would improve the quality of life in the neighborhood. Developing a pedestrian line that is vibrant, with people watching over the street. We have to make the street a wonderful place to be in. You should want to stand out in the evenings and want to chat with your friends. The sidewalks shouldn’t be minefields of ankle-twisting danger!

There are a handful of commercial properties that started out as residential and flipped. We would like to suggest to the business owners that they make some attempt to dress up their formerly front yards through strategies of planters and gardens and detailing that might help restore some of the character of the still-residential building next door. This beautiful building, in wonderful shape…for a small amount of money, the curb appeal and beauty of this as people walked past it could be enhanced dramatically by creating a garden space off of our sidewalk.


There a series of ‘ghost curb cuts’ where people used to park. People park around back. We’d like to see these removed. We’d like to see the sidewalk detailing continue to the curb. We’d like to encourage the owners to enhance the front of their buildings with plantings. If they don’t want to take up the asphalt, maybe some planters would help.

Maintenance is a big issue. It is not something we can address as designers. But the whole neighborhood is in need of ongoing maintenance that would be supported by local residents. I think they will be more willing to take care of something if they felt it was beautiful and special to them. Our hope is that the improvements are really the first phase of people taking ongoing care of the public street corridor and respecting it as their space as well as the town space.

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We propose a series of bus &/or jitney stops along Witherspoon St. Three of the ones we propose are already there. We want to know what people think should happen at a bus stop. We would like to think that down the road, the Boro would institute a jitney service that will take people through the town and the boro so people don’t have to get out their cars. I imagine some kind of a loop that comes down Witherspoon St. and goes somewhere across Valley or Terhune and goes somewhere down Harrison and somewhere back into town down Nassau. That quadrangle could be the basic route. We propose 3 stops on the northbound lane and 3 on the southbound lane. This one is the existing one on Franklin. We want to move that half a block to the north into a new park space. We want to move the one across from the Arts Council to right here by the new Square by the Library. And the third would be down by the Board of Education building. And on the inbound lane, the first would be a Community Park, where it is now.