February 16, 2005
Report on Finidngs to Date
Princeton Public Library

Present: Tom Schmierer [Alchemist & Barrister], Nick Hilton [Nick Hilton Studio], Jack Roberts [Recreation Department], Jim Kilgore [Princeton Packet], Linda Tsui, Phyllis Suber, David Newton [Palmer Square Management], Polly Burlingham, Yvonne Bleiman, Anne Neumann, Anita Fresolone [Palmer Square Management], Royal Craig, Torben Huge-Jensen [Bowhe & Peare], Michael Mostoller, Mike Suber [Bicycle Committee], Alan Goodheart, Robert Geddes, Yina Moore, Kevin Wilkes, Michael Floyd, Marvin Reed [Chair, Master Plan Subcommittee of the Regional Planning Board], Wanda Gunning [Chair, Regional Planning Board], Gail Ullman [Regional Planning Board], Barrie Royce[Chair, Borough Zoning Board], Robert Gunning, Sheldon Sturges, Susan Hockaday Jones, Arch Davis, Marvin Israel, Pam Wakefield, Bill Wakefield [Regional Planning Board], Tomasina Schiro, Betsy Hoover, Rie Huge-Jensen [Bowhe & Peare], Matthew Hersh [Town Topics], Susan Wright [Cranbury Station Gallery], Heather Robinson [Pryde Brown Photography], Barbara Marrion, Gwen McNamara [Princeton Packet], Charlotte Bialek[Regional School Board], John Vidulich [Coldwell Banker], Eric Craig, Holly Nelson

Yina Moore: Thank you so much for coming. We are hoping that this evening meeting would help to bring out merchants so we can further discuss the southern end of Witherspoon St. Before we get to that, I want to update you on where we are. I’d like to get a show of hands of those who have not attended a WSCS meeting before. Just under 10. I want to hand out our findings to you. The WSCS study was initiated back in October. The concept was developed in August and September. It came out of the many meetings Princeton Future had as far back as 2001 that talked about the downtown and the community’s interests not only in the commercial aspects but also the neighborhoods which abut the downtown. We looked at the kinds of activities within, the problems, the challenges and how the community would participate in the future of the town’s development. Of course we are sitting in the community room of the library adjacent to the new public square that came out of Princeton Future discussions about a desire for public space… but also downtown housing and a grocery store. That came out of meetings with citizens such as yourself. We talked about the needs in addition to accommodating parking.  At our first WSCS meeting on November 13, we talked in a circle about each of our recent experiences of and on Witherspoon St. It got us started thinking about what we like and don’t like. How you rated the experience most vividly. How you envisioned the street. What came of that discussion were lots of thoughts about what really thought the street is and should be in the life of our community. It serves many purposes, as we identified them. A set of values came out of that initial meeting: Witherspoon St is valued for the shared experience it engenders, the familiarity and variety of the people and places it supports, the history of its neighborhoods, its diversity of uses and people it serves. “It is our street”. A closing emphasis on it’s being more local than regional and national. The roles of the street are diverse in that it has many functions. It serves as a spine in the skeleton of other streets in the network. It serves as an artery which moves other goods and services through the community. It is a heart, the vital organ that drives all of the functions and the spirit of the community. It is the Main Street in the sense of its importance to the town. It is a gateway providing access to the center of the town. And it is a corridor which, for the purposes of this study, includes the street as a functional element within the community but also the land uses adjacent to and on the street as well as the fabric of the neighborhoods which surround it. Obviously the character is residential in much of the street. That is the way participants envisioned it primarily. The trees and the tree canopy are very important. People sitting on porches has been a strong factor. The liveliness of the street. The concerns that challenge us: the re-development of the street, the legal processes that create re-development; neighborhood preservation, building character, as well as people within structures; historic, archeological and anthropological preservation of the street.  There is a concern as to how terms are used in the Master Plan when referencing a change, such as beautification and preservation, and what that actually meant. The impact on other connecting streets was brought forward. The process of zoning and implementation is on the list. The physical observations are: some of Witherspoon St needs maintenance of unkempt properties; vehicular traffic management; pedestrian and bicyclist dangers need to be addressed; maintenance of sidewalks; consistent & sufficient lighting; improved bus stops; and alternate modes of mobility in response to proliferation of automobile traffic. I can pass out this list to those who have not yet received it.

Where we have come in three process: we have had 3 workshops on consecutive Saturdays on sections of Witherspoon St. Northern, beginning at 206, Central from Leigh & Birch to Wiggins, and Southern, from Paul Robeson to Nassau St. We had tables where there were recorded conversations with facilitators. The notes and minutes will be on the web. The organization of the study has 14 maps. They are basic sections: landscape & open space, transportation & utilities, land uses, character & history, zoning & implementation. In order to produce this report there is a WSCS team of which I am a member, along with Michael Mostoller, an architect in town, Kevin Wilkes, also an architect here, Shirley Satterfield, Holly Nelson, a landscape architect. We are hoping to have a transportation consultant to do a lot of the analysis and planning of a transportation system. We have to a very important juncture. We now have a WSCS Advisory Committee made  up of several volunteers who are giving even more of their time. There are 18 that range from neighbors to school board members, all kinds of representation, who are interested in working out the details. Between our January and February open meetings, we have had 2 lively, stimulating and productive meetings. What we are doing: we have identified issues and concerns; made observations; then the initial responses, a hot/cold test as to whether what’s been observed is acceptable/needs work/and what might make things better in terms of moving forward from just words towards what might be more physical in nature. These overlays behind me help us to visualize what problems might be corrected. Along with graphic components, there will be implementations and policies recommended, verbal and possibly financial. This is on the matrix I will hand out for the North section of the street.

At our Feb meeting, we focused on the Central section. That meeting spent a great deal of time looking at the land use issues of the hospital site. We came up with a general basis for how to proceed. While not ready for publication, there are some preliminary thoughts about how the hospital site might move forward. There 14 major points. And there are 5 strategies as to how to consider them. The site and its place within the community is certainly something that has been discussed quite a bit since our first meeting as well as at the Healthcare Task Force. What I think what we have found from greater citizen participation and discussion about the hospital site and what it might become is that there are many options, but that there are many prevailing themes. Residential, as a use, is preferred, although there are many residential types. The residential types, and the development of the site, need not be singular in approach through the developer in terms of land configuration. In terms of how the site is developed, it need not be a mass but can be broken up into different parcels. And there is also opportunity for bringing the site to the scale of the neighborhood.

Michael Mostoller: Can I just say why we did that? For some of you, this may be repetitive. The residential thing is not just made up. It is an obvious residential site. In a sense these 5 maps show why this true. When we look to the north, there is a clear community focus. Then there is a residential section across from the school. When we came down here to the central section, we saw that this is a mixed-use/residential section. And the word was that everyone is trying to preserve this.  And the same was true here [just north of hospital]. We haven’t really been able to discuss the south section. I am hoping that we will able to later on tonight. So it’s ‘preserve residential character’ [to the north]…’preserve residential character’[to the south]…it makes you think about this [the hospital site] in a different way. If you go back over to the zoning map, the potential zoning instruments we have available to us now, may not be sufficient to prevent zoning which allows larger buildings than we want through consolidation of lots.  We could consolidate, enlarge and change use all simultaneously which would completely change the residential character of the street. If you actually look at the street, it is actually very fine grained. That small grain is a very important part of its character. As well as the fact that the street is residential primarily. So that its physical character would become one continuous kind of building.

All of this adds up to saying: “Now let’s look at the hospital site in more detail.”

The potential is that it [the hospital lot] should always be considered as smaller structures.

The zoning might reflect that in terms that it is not just one zone. 

 It could be broken up into parcels.  

It could then be: mixed-use, multi-type, multi-cost, diverse and affordable. 

This follows from the consideration we had in these discussions. What our perspectives have enabled us to suggest: it should be primarily residential. And that housing should be more than one type of housing, more than one price. Probably more than one building type. And it should somehow or other as it evolves preserve the diversity and infuse the community with an affordable situation. It follows from the overall conversations we’ve had.

Yina Moore: In addition to the preference for residential development, it is clear that the term ‘mixed use’ was being used, particularly when you are talking about the whole site, that that might result in more commercial use than is desired by the citizens of the town. There were discussions about the character of the central area of Witherspoon. The RB in the central section allows for 60% residential, 40% commercial. But, each property has developed individually. And in many cases, they are either all residential, or a different of residential/commercial mix. There is concern amongst the Advisory Group not to encourage through a single developer to plan the kind of development where all first floors are commercial. That would make the area very commercial in nature. One of our members said that that would result in a Palmer Square-type of area rather than a residential neighborhood that may have a little bit of local-serving commercial…small, service-type of commercial that would be sustainable locally, and was not a regional type of activity. There has been a great deal of discussion around what is called a CCRC [a continuing care retirement community]. Those are large developments with 3 different forms of housing: independent, assisted living, and nursing home living. It is felt that that would be more or less the same type of use as the hospital is today, might be larger than the community can absorb, in a physical sense, not a market sense. And that the locational aspects might not be appropriate. In fact, when looking at the hospital as a land owner, it was felt that the CCRC function might be better located at the Merwick site. There is interest in some age-specific housing where seniors may be accommodated because of  the need to have an elevator building…and the way the site is looked as a whole might concentrate more density in the center.  The southwest corner is considered an important area for community use. There is a definite thought that the Franklin parking lot be considered in the scheme. Some of the discussion has suggested adding it to the cemetery, as it is looking to expand. In the hopes, that, in exchange, the cemetery would provide more opportunity for public access…potential for walking as well as biking. That would be a trade-off. There is a real concern on how to minimize the impact on the residents of the public housing on the site. There is definitive interest that the new owners of the sites be full tax-paying users, not PILOT [payment in lieu of taxes]. So that is a basic summary.

Michael Mostoller: We are going to try and do what we have done before, which is some brainstorming: Housing all the way down, as opposed to, say, commercial on the ground level. A CCRC-scale, vs a senior-friendly scale, vs independent units. It will depend upon the options of physical disturbance and on what we want to keep and what we don’t want to keep. I don’t think we know the answer to that in any way whatsoever.

Theoretically or practically at this moment. We did outline a series of potential options: a no-build approach, the least disturbance; minor disturbance, keeping the garage, some selective demolition; remove some of the perimeter buildings; keep some core buildings; demo all buildings, but keep parking; demo everything.

Torben Huge-Jensen: How does this fit into the Master Plan of the Boro?

MM: We will make recommendations to the Master Plan Subcommittee.

Torben: How does all of this fit in together…into the zoning and master plan of the Boro?

Yina: There really isn’t a plan for the hospital site. In terms of an area, the surrounding area is zoned primarily residential with some options for commercial.  The property is zoned ‘hospital’ which in the future can only be used by a hospital unless the zoning is changed.

Torben: The hospital is leaving whether we like it or not. It is gone. The people that own it are going to sell it for a profit. Am I right? There is nothing we can do about it. They are in business to do that.

Yina: We own the zoning. You can’t ..

Barrie Royce [Chair of the Boro Zoning Board]: The point you are raising, I think, is that the area must be re-zoned and the Planning Board has been, will be charged to do that. That is why it is important for groups like this to make input to the people who are thinking about what is going to happen.

Torben: Hasn’t that already been done?

Barrie: No.

Torben: Ok. There is no master plan for the Boro?

Yina: There is a Master Plan for the Boro, but there is no determination of the use change for the hospital site.

Barrie: The Master Plan needs to be changed to take in account the reality that you postulate [!]

Torben: How can they then already say that they might sell it to a hotel? If I were on the board of the hospital, I would sell it for the most money I can get right now.

Yina: It happens that 2 days ago the Healthcare task Force Report was released. Barrie was a member. It referred use change considerations to the planning board. We are hoping that this process will help to inform their process, because there will continue to be input from the community about what the community interests are in that site. So this is the opportunity.

Torben: As late as 2 days ago, the Mayor indicated that it probably should be sold to the university. That’s not a hospital. They want to use it for people who come here to study. Where is the Master Plan for Princeton which is directing all of this? There is no one that has a real detailed plan of anything!

Yina: That is why we are here!

Michael: There is going to be a re-zoning process. If we can generate enthusiasm, cogency and interest about a plan, that also makes some sort of economic sense, perhaps it will influence what will happen. It will be out of the interests that have come of our meetings. Otherwise it is simply going to be sold through whatever process occurs out of economic considerations alone. So we are trying to influence the instruments that exist in the community by presentations and by a report that will allow those making the decisions to make a good decision.

Barrie: Maybe we should get Marvin to comment on the process.

Marvin: The report is very clear. THE PROPERTY NEEDS TO BE RE-ZONED. It would need to be re-zoned if the property were to expand. It would need to be re-zoned if something takes the place of the hospital. While the university expressed interest in some kind of a swap, the university unless the Master Plan is changed and unless the zoning is amended. That is the process that the Planning Board is now engaged in.

Tomy Schiro: Do we know the time frame. Are we aware of a deadline when the zoning change is to be made so we can have input before it happens. They could be doing this right now and we don’t know about it. I am just curious. Is the re a public timeframe that will tell when the rezoning will be done.

Torben: It will be 5 years after the hospital gets a deed on the property it wants.

Michael: It will not move to a new building before five years. So let’s say 3 years. So there is a process that is going to be ongoing all through this period.

Tomy: Can you schedule zoning meetings so that we will know when to come?

Marvin: We haven’t set a schedule yet, but we would hope the schedule would move expeditiously, so that we can stay ahead of the hospital, before they put out RFPs and advertisements for selling it, so that anyone who is a potential buyer would know what the limits are on what they can expect to do.

Sheldon: Tomy, Professor Royce is the Chair of the Borough Zoning Board. He’s in the phone book.

Tomy: Wonderful!

Barrie: Anyone who phones me after 9 at night will get an obscene response! E-mail is much safer. Be clear about this: the zoning board has nothing to do with planning. The zoning board takes things that the legislature has approved and decides whether you can make little tweaks which on balance are an advantage to the community, rather than a disadvantage. The people that you really you really need to get to think about this in a way that you would like, is the planning board. They are a public board, which has public hearings. You have to go and be heard.

Anne Neumann: The planning board is primarily reactive. It reacts to projects which are brought to it, primarily, as I understand it. I would like to recommend that as we think about rezoning the hospital, we think about amending the Master Plan. Many communities have master plans with more in them which try to engineer retail and residential uses in a more effective and detailed way. So this might be a God-given opportunity to re-master the Master Plan!

Gail Ullman: Wanda is chair of the Regional Planning Board and Marvin is Chair of the Master Plan Subcommittee of the Planning Board. Yina, and I and Bill Wakefield are all on the Planning Board are all sitting here listening. They can tell you what the process will be, although perhaps not the timeframe. It will be extraordinarily public, I will assure you of that. There is no way that it can’t be. It has to be…and besides, it will be. Wanda, why don’t you explain what the process will be?

Wanda Gunning [Chair of the Regional Planning Board]: Let me begin with the Task Force Report. This will go to both of the governing bodies. Marvin will appear before them. I am presuming they are going to refer it back to the Planning Board. We have discussed which committees will be involved in this.  Marvin is chair of the Master Plan, they will be taking the crack at looking at what should happen in this space. There will be, from time to time, public participation meetings in which the public can come and comment. ALL planning board meetings are public, under the sunshine laws. Master Plan usually meets monthly at 9 o’clock in the morning, quite often a Tuesday. It will probably meet more frequently, but none of this has been set yet. As this progresses, there is a second subcommittee, the zoning amendment review committee [ZARC]. These are the people who actually recommend the ordinance changes to the governing bodies. The governing bodies will or will not adopt them, or will make changes. As far as changing the Master Plan, we went through an update a couple of years ago and Princeton Future was very active in pushing for this and being involved in this. We do update various parts of it all the time. Within the past year, we have done work on Open Space, there anew maps of the open space trails and so on. Marv and his committee are very active. And we do work on the various elements. I know what you are talking about are guidelines which

a lot of master plans incorporate. We haven’t moved to that point, because quite frankly it takes a lot of consultant work and a lot of time. We are a very busy board so we welcome public input. This is how we find out what the community wants. I’d like to invite all of you to come to the master plan meetings and to the planning board meetings. There will be a chance for you to say how you feel about this. Marv..

Marvin Reed: There is no question that whatever happens at the hospital site is going to be different. It isn’t just what happens on that site, because whatever happens there has an impact both above and below. The kinds of things you are doing affect that. It would be very helpful not only for what you have in the way of input for the hospital site, but these other changes ought to come to us as well. Because in order to have a balance to what happens in the development, not only are there certain parameters that apply to the hospital site, but to balance that off we ought to apply other parameters to the area north and to the area south. So, keep at it!

Yina: Wonderful. That concludes our background presentation. Let’s move into what we hope will be a discussion of the southern section of Witherspoon St. We are hoping with merchants here tonight, we can gain their input.

Michael: I can report that the sense we got from the community is that there should be a line here. [at Paul Robeson]. This is one kind of neighborhood and the downtown is another. The kind of sketching we’ve done here,  there are large continuous buildings down here, starting right here, there are smaller, independent buildings. There is a scale of use where you have a sort of an intimate mixture, as opposed to the red zone here [CBD] where you some residences up on top. The feeling is that Downtown is downtown and that downtown creep should not occur. There are a series of issues down here…housing issues as well. I don’t whether any of you knew Fred Travisano. He lived over Lahieres and one of the great advantages he had was room service. Our offices are now over a sushi shop. So that is one aspect of the kind of character down here. When we speak of the hospital site, perhaps we should think of ‘layered living’…that it is not always housing all the way down…or all commercial all the way up. There is some vertical mixing that is desirable here, also in terms of housing type. There are still issues surrounding the completion of the square and public access…the location of bus service…the whole area back here, with the access by the liquor store to the area back here. There was always talk about a walkway. There was discussion about the Griggs Corner site and what that might become. It would be a good time to have a discussion, from the floor, what suggestions you might have about these places. We want to know what you would like to add to what we have started downtown. We don’t want to leave it out. Clearly there is always impact between the relationships of the parts. And also, what the powerstation might be.

Eric Craig: I’d like to ask: has anyone talked to the people who own the Griggs site and what they’d like?

Michael: Yes, they have come to earlier meetings and we are assuming that what they want to do is to develop the site.

Eric: OK

Michael: We would like them to come and do something.

Sheldon: If there are comments to relay to them, this would be a good to time to make them. Do you have an idea?

Eric: No, I don’t have an idea. I just wanted to know how they felt about it and whether they wanted a change.

Michael: Anyone want to talk about downtown?

Anne Neumann: How did we get a Subway?

MM: I suspect it is the magic of capitalism at work.

AN: My point is a larger one, do we want more formula restaurants and formula stores then we already have in Princeton? I would assume we’d like to hold the line on Witherspoon St against national chains, stores and restaurants!

MM: How about our merchants? Part of the reason we are holding this meeting tonight is so that you can catch up with us. Any comment?

Charlotte Bialek [VP of the School Board]: I miss the hardware store. There is no pharmacy. There is no real utility and uses store right now in the downtown. You can go clothing shopping, or books, but you can’t pick up batteries.  I think we really do need to look at the utilitarian aspect of the commercial in the downtown.

Yvonne Bleiman: Forer Pharmacy..

CB: Yes. But we are talking about the downtown.

Nick Hilton: You want my help? I have two things to say: If I lived in Freehold or Ewing, I don’t see any reason why I would come to Princeton to shop. The national chains are able to pay the rents which are as high as they are in malls. All of those stores are already in all the malls. Consequently, the downtown of Princeton has no real character. If you go to Greenwich, there is reason to go there, because they have locally-owned, unique little shops. Urkens went out of business because he lost 25% of his business the first year Home Depot opened. And he never got it back. At least that is what he told me. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to brook the competition. But if we have mall stores in the downtown, why would somebody come here and put up with the congestion and the parking? Other than the university, for stores, stores like mine mine are squashed out to the outside where the rents are lower, when we should be able to be in the downtown.

MM: Why do so many people come to town on Saturdays?

NH: I have heard that there are a lot of people who walk around and don’t shop. That could be anecdotal…let me know if I’m wrong.

Eric: I’d like to have a dollar for everyone who comes here and doesn’t shop! Let’s face it, Princeton is 20-25% higher than anywhere else! Why would you come here?

MM: What should we do in our planning?

EC: People come to sight see.

AN: We do have a few stores that draw people from out of town. One of them is the Princeton Record Exchange. People come from all over the east coast to visit that store…and I would say Micawber Books is a happy exception to some of what is happening in the downtown. Mrs. Gunning understood earlier when I talked about the Master Plan earlier. ..that there are communities that have changed their zoning ordinances to make it harder and harder for formula restaurants to enter our downtown. I guess that one of the things I wonder is why is this meeting being held under the auspices of Princeton Future? Why isn’t it under the auspices of the Master Plan or the Planning Board?

Bob Geddes: Thank you for asking your question. Princeton Future’s purpose is to be a participatory civic organization that tries to help the elected representative government be better. That is all it does. It is a “What if?” Organization. Let’s go back in history. There was a parking lot here. And the issues of what that parking lot ought to be..the “What If?” issues were discussed in meetings just like this. We weren’t fortunate enough to have this room. We had to meet elsewhere. This room came about as a result of those “What If?” meetings. He idea of the square, the idea of walkways, the idea of a garage woven into the downtown, but one which we didn’t see all the time, in fact, one that became part of the general fabric of the downtown. All of those ideas came out of Princeton Future meetings. That’s what this is. There should be many of these. Having said that, however, there is, though, a fundamental structural difference between what happened 5 years ago and tonight. Tonight we have to deal with the reality that we don’t own the land. The government owned the land. It was our land. We have to begin to think about: what does that mean? What procedures, what kind of institutions? What process could there be to influence the future when we don’t own the land?

AN: I think we need some sort of Princeton Development Board. Perhaps some sort of civic or private development corporation should be formed to buy the land!

[transcription is incomplete]