Land Use Articles after April 1, 2002
Land Use Articles January - March, 2002
A 'transit village' is derailed, Boston Globe, December 26, 2001
West Windsor council blasts task force's town center plan, Princeton Packet, December 14, 2001
Task force on town center isn't certain it wants one, Princeton Packet, December 11, 2001
Economic growth eyed at fund-raiser The Trenton Times, November 2, 2001
Five buildings to rise at Forrestal Princeton Packet, October 19, 2001
State plan panel: Sprawl kills The Trenton Times, October 18, 2001
Devil of a deal, or is it a deal with the devil? Princeton Packet, October 12, 2001
Sarnoff plans to sell land to Princeton U. THe Trenton Times, October 9, 2001
Suburban sprawl seen as health hazard The Boston Globe, October 8, 2001
Merrill Lynch: Smart growth vs. sprawl The Trenton Times, August 12, 2001
BMS escapes sprawl label The Trenton Times, August 12, 2001
Investing in cities The Trenton Times July 30, 2001
Sarnoff campus declared 50 percent greenbelt land The Trenton Times, July17, 2001
Maryland Farmland a Focus in Suburban Sprawl Battle The New York Times, June 25, 2001
Educate, invest, promote The Trenton Times, June 20, 2001
Smart growth is best hope to build future Princeton Packet, June 19, 2001
New jobs outpacing housing, planning group warns Princeton Packet, June 15, 2001
Author: What price public input? Princeton Packet, May 30, 2001
Not just one town's call, Trenton Times, May 30, 2001
Small towns fight to keep their sense of identity, Trenton Times, May 29, 2001
DiFrancesco considering options for 'smart growth' Trenton Times, May 23, 2001
Planners tighten Route 1 zoning Trenton Times, May18, 2001
BASF to shut Rt. 1 site, Trenton Times, May 15, 2001
Land whets appetites of area brokers, Trenton Times, May 15, 2001
Sarnoff: Zoning changes too drastic Trenton Times May11, 2001
Sandra Starr Foundation Conference Focuses on Impact of Region's Transformation, April 29, 2001.
A 'transit village' is derailed
By Anthony Flint, Globe Staff, 12/26/2001
KINGSTON - Fresh from Georgia, where fast-paced development has overrun much of the landscape, Tom Bott, chief planner for this latest boomtown in Southeastern Massachusetts, was impressed when residents came up with a proposal to encourage building on the empty land around the train station.
People living within walking distance of the terminus of the Old Colony commuter line would be less likely to use cars, he thought. Developers would be required to provide all kinds of benefits to the town in return for building there, including adding sewer treatment capacity.
And, in an additional bit of planning wizardry, builders could buy development rights from the owners of open land elsewhere in town and shift them to the land around the station, preserving hundreds of acres of open space in the process.
The residents of Kingston, however, were not as impressed, soundly defeating the proposal for a ''transit village'' at Town Meeting earlier this month. A flier mailed out prior to the meeting warned of monstrous development and diminished quality of life. Residents feared a mini-city rising up in their midst.
''I guess the headline could be, `Town not ready for the cutting edge,''' said Bott, as he surveyed the site, a barren sandpit near Independence Mall. ''The growth is going to come, but what we'll get is more subdivisions.''
Kingston's experience has become another source of frustration for those advocating new approaches to managing development in suburban and rural Massachusetts. In the ''smart growth'' movement, planners seek to stop sprawl on open land by channeling growth into urban centers and villages near transit.
But the second part of that equation has proved elusive.
Established residents balk at having development concentrated in one place, preferring single-family homes on 2-acre lots - which advocates say is a slower but sure route to gridlock and overwhelmed infrastructure, including schools.
''People have bought into a certain lifestyle and they don't want that lifestyle disrupted,'' said Ralph Calderaro, volunteer chairman of the Kingston Master Plan Implementation Committee, which proposed the transit village. ''To which I say, wake up and smell the roses. The world is changing, and you're at the fulcrum of it. If you're not pro-active in dealing with this, you're going to be swamped by the growth.''
Paul Tanous, a resident on nearby Copper Beach Drive who opposed the new district, said residents don't want to put a gate up at the Kingston border, but prefer traditional development such as Indian Pond Estates, where homes sell for between $600,000 and $1.5 million.
''Everybody's in favor of that because of the quality of people coming in here - attorneys, doctors, people who have made money in the stock market. They will get involved in town politics and give us a more professional look, similar to Duxbury or Hingham,'' Tanous said.
Clustering development near the train station ''would take away the small-town Kingston feeling. It would create a city within a town, and nobody wanted that,'' Tanous said.
The 2-acre zoning in Kingston is one way to manage growth, Tanous said. Building permits in Kingston are capped at 70 per year as well. But development interest here as well as the rest of Southeastern Masachusetts has intensified, spurred further by the activation in 1998 of the Old Colony line to the Kingston station, with its 1,100-space parking lot.
In addition to Indian Pond Estates, other subdivisions are being upgraded and expanded, and new proposals are in the pipeline, said Bott. Channeling the growth around the train station would have the added benefit of preserving the precious few remaining tracts of undeveloped land, he said, under the proposed system of ''transferable development rights.''
That system, as well as the concept of dense development near train stations or ''transit-oriented development,'' is increasingly common in other parts of the country. Developers in the Atlanta area are proposing projects near commuter stations because of traffic congestion and restrictions on auto emissions, he said.
Both Bott and Calderaro said they understand why residents would resist the concept of concentrated development. But they said that strains on police, fire, and public works would be eased by developer contributions to the local infrastructure. They also said there would not be a huge influx of children into the schools, because many of the residential units would attract retirees and ''empty-nesters.'' The number of bedrooms per unit would also be restricted.
Proponents of the transit district, who said it would generate up to $1.8 million in new tax revenue, said they were blindsided by a disinformation campaign that included thinly veiled references to socioeconomic issues. A flier published by a group called the Concerned Citizens for the Preservation of Kingston's Integrity warned of out-of-town developers running amok, increasing the population of 11,000 by 50 percent or more.
''Look beyond the whitewash of those who stand to gain financially, and those who do not care about the qualify of life for Kingston citizens,'' the flier said, warning of ''high-density, mixed-income, subsidized and other housing.''
At Town Meeting, some residents expressed concern about some of the residential units going to low-income families. Developers would have had incentives to set aside some affordable units.
According to Bott, one resident of Copper Beach Drive who had just secured a permit to add to her house, asked: ''Who would want to live so close to the train? `I just had to say, same as you, so they can walk to the train to go to work,''' Bott said.
More logistical concerns were also raised, chiefly the lack of a second access route for the area around the train station, which is badly snarled when the 5:10 p.m. train from Boston pulls in. But residents' cultural objections to compact development in Kingston have left proponents of the district shaking their heads.
''We were talking in terms of something akin to Mashpee Commons,'' a compact, mixed-use development on Cape Cod, said Calderaro. ''It was the village concept, comparable to what's currently in the town center, but certainly not a city.
''Kingston will be confronting and has been confronting significant growth. We're one of the fastest-growing towns on the eastern seaboard, and that growth is not going to stop,'' he said. ''You can't put up a gate, and say, `Sorry, full, you can't come in.'''
Anthony Flint can be reached by e-mail at flint@globe.com.
This story ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 12/26/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
West Windsor council blasts task force's town center plan
By: Gwen Runkle, Staff Writer December 14, 2001
Governing body is expected to pass a resolution Monday saying it will not consider rezoning the west side of the Princeton Junction train station to allow housing to be built there.
WEST WINDSOR - The Township Council soon could put a serious dent in any plans for a town center on the west side of the Princeton Junction train station.
Frustrated with the direction taken over the past two months by the Town Center Designation Task Force, a subcommittee of the township Planning Board, the council is expected to pass a resolution Monday saying it will not consider rezoning the west side of the Princeton Junction train station to allow for housing to be built there.
"We need to send out a clear message," Councilwoman Rae Roeder said Monday. "We have been in court for the past 10 years fighting (with developer Toll Brothers) to keep 1,100 residents from moving into the west side. Why would we all of a sudden turn around and say we want more? This resolution puts an end to that. It shows there are not enough votes on the council to consider rezoning."
The resolution also calls for Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh and the Planning Board to change the focus of the task force from achieving center designation to forming a plan for the Princeton Junction area that conserves financial resources and preserves and enhances local aesthetics and amenities.
So far, the task force, made up of three Planning Board members and seven neighborhood representatives, has come up with a two-part plan for a center around the Princeton Junction train station.
Most members agree the east side should be more like a village center, with a focus on beautification and limited redevelopment of the Acme shopping center. But not everyone on the task force likes the idea of making the west side a town center, with development of retail and office, decked parking and a bus rapid transit station. Some members have voiced reservations because of the possible need to include high-density housing.
Several guest speakers have told the task force it would need to include high-density housing in its town center plan in order to conform to what is outlined in the State Development and Redevelopment Plan.
Currently, the land west of the train station is zoned for research, office and manufacturing, not residential.
And even though Ms. Roeder has been the only member of the council who has regularly attended the task force meetings, she was not alone in her support of the resolution. Council President Alison Miller and Councilwoman Jackie Alberts both said they are fed up with state officials thinking the only way to solve regional traffic problems would be to further develop West Windsor.
"It would be a cold day in hell before we do that," Ms. Miller said.
Councilwoman Kristin Appelget said she is perturbed the task force is not concentrating on what it was originally formed to do - deal with circulation issues and examine locations for realigning the Alexander Road Bridge.
And while Councilman Charles Morgan cautioned the council to carefully examine the resolution's wording, he voiced support as well.
Back to top
Task force on town center isn't certain it wants one
By: Gwen Runkle, Staff Writer December 11, 2001
West Windsor panel struggles with planning proposals for the future of the train station area.
WEST WINDSOR - As the clock begins to wind down for the Town Center Designation Task Force, a subcommittee of the township Planning Board, it has reached a critical juncture.Even though the task force has yet to reach a solid consensus about its plans, it must begin to take a look at transportation and circulation issues in order to formulate a report for the Planning Board by early next year.
And while the task force heard suggestions from three transportation speakers - Jack Kanarek, senior director of planning/project development for New Jersey Transit, Peter Bilton of the Greater Mercer Transportation Management Association and Dianne Brake of the Regional Planning Partnership - at its meeting Thursday, several neighborhood representatives still have concerns about what seeking town center designation from the state really means.
For the past two months the task force, made up of three Planning Board members and seven neighborhood representatives, has focused on developing a concept of what a town center around the Princeton Junction train station should look like.
So far, most members agree the east side of the train station should be more like a village center, with a focus on beautification and limited redevelopment of the Acme shopping center. But not everyone is happy with ideas for making the west side more like a town center, including development of new office or retail services, decked parking and a bus rapid transit neighborhood connector station, mainly because of the possible need for high-density housing.
"The irony is, we already have terrible traffic problems and high taxes from too much commercial and residential development - yet here we are discussing adding a town center, with not only more commercial and retail development, but also high-density housing," said Susan Abbey, a representative of Berrien City.
Carlos Rodrigues, the special projects manager for the Office of State Planning who spoke to the group in November, told the task force that without high-density housing it was missing a key component of what was outlined for a town center by the State Development and Redevelopment Plan.
The State Plan outlines five types of centers - urban centers, regional centers, town centers, village centers and hamlets.
Urban centers are by far the largest, followed next in size by regional centers, which often serve as major employment centers and are located in the state's major transportation corridors.
Regional centers (Princeton Borough is one) are compact and contain a mix of residential, commercial and office uses at an intensity that will make a variety of public transportation options feasible, with boundaries well defined by open space or natural features, the State Plan says.
Regional centers have a population of more than 10,000 people, with a density of more than 5,000 people per square mile.
Town centers, while smaller, also have compact, mixed-use cores of development providing all of the commercial, industrial, office, cultural and governmental functions commonly needed on a daily basis by the residents of the town and its economic region, according to the State Plan.
A town center should have an existing population of between 1,000 and 10,000 people and have a density of more than 1,000 people per square mile.
In contrast, village centers "are not meant to be centers providing major regional shopping or employment for their region," the plan says. A village center is primarily a mixed-residential community with a compact core of mixed uses, including commercial, resource-based industrial, office and cultural, which offers employment, basic personal and shopping services and community activities for the residents of the village.
The population should not exceed 4,500 people, with a net housing density of at least three dwellings per acre. A village center is also within a reasonable proximity to an arterial highway and is served by a secondary street system.
In 1998 the township submitted plans to the state to designate Princeton Junction as a village center, but has not received any feedback on the application.
But no matter how the group proceeds in the near future, the speakers at Thursday's meeting all indicated they will be on board for support.
In particular, Mr. Kanarek stressed that New Jersey Transit would be more than willing to work with the township.
"Princeton Junction is a very important station to our system. It has one of our highest riderships," he said. "As West Windsor develops its own vision for the area, New Jersey Transit is strongly interested in working with you and making the best use of the property around the station."
And if the township decides not to do anything with the area, "We do not have any plans to do anything ourselves," he added.
His associate, Mark Gordon, also noted New Jersey Transit would not mind decking the 2,700 parking spaces it owns on the west side of the train station. The township owns 950 spaces, he said.
As for the traffic problems in the Princeton Junction area, both Ms. Brake and Mr. Bilton said the Greater Mercer Transportation Management Association's upcoming bus rapid transit study could offer a feasible solution for the community in the long run.
"The traffic is here and more congestion is on the way," Ms. Brake said. "What West Windsor does to stop it won't have any effect because it's a regional problem. The only option is to introduce transportation choice to the region," she said.
Subcommittee Chairman Bill Benfer, who is solidly behind the bus rapid transit idea, pointed out Sarnoff Corp. and American Home Products also support bus rapid transit.
But Mr. Bilton said the feasibility study would take six to nine months to complete and even then his group would have to find someone interested in implementing it.
At its next meeting on Thursday, the task force is expected to discuss the results of a meeting about the feasibility of alignments for the Alexander Road Bridge involving Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh, Township Engineer George Fries, subcommittee members Mr. Benfer and Steve Decter and representatives from the state Department of Transportation.
©Packet Online 2001
Economic growth eyed at fund-raiser
11/02/01
By JOSEPH DEE
Staff WriterFund-raiser targets growth
PLAINSBORO -- Hundreds of people from many different walks of life gathered last night to share a common vision for sensible economic growth in Central Jersey.
Developers, politicians, architects and union members were among those who attended the Regional Planning Partnership annual fund-raising and awards dinner at the Princeton Marriott Forrestal Village.
RPP President Dianne Brake spoke about the impact the destruction of the World Trade Center towers will have on New Jersey. "The events of Sept. 11 have had, and will have, real effects on central New Jersey's economy. New York lost about 20 percent of the office space in lower Manhattan . . . there will be pressure to add even more office space here."
Brake called for a change in statewide policies and for new planning practices to avert even worse traffic congestion and air pollution and to help new workers find affordable housing near their jobs.
She said the location of new office buildings will help determine whether problems of sprawl can be avoided. "Given current practices, it is likely that the growth pressure will be on greenfields, on our remaining open land.
"If we build on greenfields, how will the new workers get to work?" Brake asked. "On our congested highways? And where will these workers find housing? In Pennsylvania? Certainly not in New Jersey, where very few municipalities are accepting more housing. We already have a growing jobs-to-housing mismatch."
The Regional Planning Partnership has long advocated some of the same principles of the State Development and Redevelopment Plan -- to steer new growth into underutilized urban and older suburban areas. It gave its annual C. McKim Norton Community Development Award to the Willingboro Town Center Redevelopment projects.
Under that project, the once-bustling Willingboro Plaza retail shopping center is being reborn as a mixed-use hub of light industry, housing and offices. It will be home of the Burlington County township's new public library.
Brake said the Regional Planning Partnership is working on a number of fronts that offer hope for smart growth. The partnership is beginning to work on a project that is exploring segregation and the economic imbalance among cities and so-called inner-ring suburbs and the rest of the state. That project was initiated by Martin Johnson, president of Isles Inc., the Trenton housing and environmental nonprofit agency, Brake said.
Other projects address transportation needs in this region and environmental concerns, she said.
State Department of Transportation Commissioner James Weinstein received the partnership's Van Zandt Williams Jr. Community Involvement Award. Weinstein was chosen because he has "encouraged a new culture at the department, one based on the context of context-sensitive design," partnership board chairwoman Carol L. Beske said prior to the award ceremony. "Roads can divide us, or connect us. Context-sensitive design recognizes the power of the transportation system to make a community better or worse. Under your leadership, commissioner, a huge number of DOT employees are being trained in context-sensitive design, on how to do their work to enhance communities." Sen. William Schluter, R-Pennington, expressed his support for the regional group and observed that "My campaign (for governor) is based on property tax reform, campaign finance reform and controlling sprawl."
© 2001 The Times
Five buildings to rise at Forrestal
by Gwen Runkle, Staff Writer
October 19, 2001PLAINSBORO - Despite protest from more than 50 residents from the Princeton Landing development on Sayre Drive, the Township Planning Board unanimously approved an 800,000-square-foot office and research complex for Princeton Forrestal Center and traffic-calming measures to go with it Monday night.
The 72-acre complex, known as the North Campus, will consist of five, five-story, 165,000-square-foot buildings in the northwestern section of the Princeton Forrestal Center, Princeton University's 277-acre corporate office and research complex on the east side of Route 1 between Scudders Mill Road and the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.
The project developer, the Patrinely Group, has no affiliation with Princeton University and is under contract to buy the property, said David Knights, Princeton Forrestal Center's marketing director.
According to Princeton Forrestal Center officials, the traffic-calming measures would increase the safety of Sayre Drive for Princeton Landing residents and would route additional traffic generated from the North Campus away from the development.
But the Princeton Landing residents were not convinced.
"This project defies common sense," said Phillip Rhodes, a Sayre Drive resident.
Susan Smiley, a member of the citizens group Friends of Sayre Drive, agreed.
"The North Campus will have a profound adverse effect on Princeton Landing because it will bring hundreds more cars to the Sayre Drive interchange," she said. "They will increase the noise level for residents living nearby and what about the people who enjoy walking or biking to work?"
She also pointed out that Sayre Drive is the only entrance and exit for the development and added that it needs to be clear at all times for emergency vehicle access.
The township and Princeton Forrestal Center have been in negotiations over the traffic improvements, which change Princeton Forrestal Center's general development plan, since the Planning Board approved concept plans for the North Campus in January.
The Princeton Forrestal Campus is planning to change Stellarator Road into a northbound one-way road from Forrestal Road to the Route 1 on-off ramps, improve the interchange of Sayre Drive and Route 1 and eventually extend Campus Road to College Road East.
According to Richard Orth, Princeton Forrestal Center's traffic engineer, changing Stellarator Road into a one-way road will force people working at the North Campus to use Campus Road to get to Route 1.
"This will direct traffic from the (campus) and from the existing Plasma Physics Lab to have to utilize Campus Road to Scudders Mill Road to get to Route 1 instead of Sayre Drive," he said.
Improving the interchange of Sayre Drive and Route 1 by realigning the southbound Route 1 off-ramp will improve safety by increasing visibility and widening a section of Sayre Drive just west of the underpass to include a left-turn stacking lane will allow westerly through traffic, mainly Princeton Landing residents, to continue freely into their development, Mr. Orth said.
It is estimated the North Campus development with the proposed road modifications will cause morning peak-hour trips headed for the Forrestal campus that use the Sayre Drive interchange to increase from 92 to 517 and the afternoon peak-hour trips to increase from 100 to 220. Those numbers assume no extension of Campus Road to College Road East.
Extending Campus Road to College Road East also will encourage drivers leaving the North Campus and heading to Route 1 to use Campus Road instead of Sayre Drive, Mr. Orth said.
Mr. Knights said he expects improvements to the Sayre Drive interchange to begin in late March 2002 and changes to Stellarator Road to occur in early July 2002.
Construction of the extension will be triggered by one of two things, either an increase in trips to or from the campus to 1,300 trips in a given peak period or when Patrinely Group files for the building permit for the fifth building of the North Campus, he said.
Construction at the North Campus also is expected to begin in the spring of 2002, Mr. Knights said.
©Packet Online 2001
State plan panel: Sprawl kills
10/18/01
By LARRY HANOVER
Staff WriterTRENTON -- Two dramatic shifts in direction emerged yesterday in attempts to bring life to New Jersey's official anti-sprawl plan.
The State Planning Commission used a speech by an expert from the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to launch efforts to demonstrate sprawl -- which creates communities where walking to either school or a business is impractical -- is a serious public health detriment.
Also at yesterday's commission meeting, Chairman Joseph Maraziti Jr. called on the next governor and Legislature to make it mandatory for officials to follow the State Development and Redevelopment Plan.
William H. Dietz, director of the CDC's Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity, showed color-coded slides graphically illustrating a sharp rise in the last decade in obesity and diabetes.
Reduced physical activity is a likely contributor to those statistics, Dietz said. While fast food and other high-fat options are part of the problem, neighborhoods with neither parks nor connecting sidewalks also play a role, he said.
"An urgent response to chronic disease is warranted," Dietz said of obesity, diabetes and other ailments.
Obesity is second behind tobacco among U.S. health risk factors, contributing to 300,000 deaths a year, Dietz said. Twenty-five percent of Americans are obese, resulting in $100 billion a year in national health care costs, or one in every $10 spent, he said.
Diabetes, often an obesity complication, represents 25 percent of all Medicare costs, he said.
Physical activity such as walking reduces numerous health risks, including high blood pressure and falls by the elderly, he said.
Robert Yaro, executive director of the Regional Plan Association, which covers the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut area, said public health may be key to triggering awareness and support of the state plan.
"The bumper sticker coming out of this discussion should be, `Sprawl kills,' " Yaro said.
Karen Gerlach of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation said her charity is seeking proposals to spend $30 million in 25 vulnerable communities nationwide to assess what changes can be made to improve public health.
She said she did not know until reading the State Plan that the Garden State is "10 steps ahead" of recognizing the link between sprawl and public health.
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Maraziti said he has concluded fighting sprawl is so important the plan must be made mandatory for all state agencies to follow. He also said discussions must get under way to break through resistance put up by municipalities regarding land use.
"What (home rule) has done is led to paralysis," Maraziti said.
Maraziti said the migration of firms from New York City after the attacks has persuaded him that time has grown short to rein in uncontrolled growth.
Maraziti also called on the state Department of Health not to move its biohazard laboratory out of the city, which would be a blow to the job base.
DHS spokesman Dennis McGowan said the department has outgrown the lab at Market and Warren streets -- where anthrax testing is being conducted -- and has begun looking into replacing it, but said there are neither immediate plans to move nor a prospective site.
© 2001 The Times
Devil of a deal, or is it a deal with the devil?
By: Packet Editorial October 12, 2001
PACKET EDITORIAL, Oct. 12
Depending upon one's point of view, the deal announced this week between Sarnoff Corp. and Princeton University either spares the Route 1 corridor another unwelcome, unsightly, sprawling, traffic-generating development or merely puts it off until some unspecified date in the future.
The optimists among us will hail the university's planned purchase of 90 acres of prime Sarnoff property fronting on Route 1. The university, after all, has no immediate plans to extend its campus across the Millstone River into West Windsor. Even if and when it does, it can build on all that land it owns between the river and Route 1 (the soccer fields and the so-called "Fete" field) before it even has to think about developing the other side of Route 1.
So that precious 90-acre parcel in front of Sarnoff's research facility - one of the few scenic vistas of open space still gracing the Route 1 corridor - will be in no imminent danger of development if the university's purchase of the property goes through. Sarnoff, which wants to expand its 600,000-square-foot facility into a major technology campus, had planned to put about 800,000 square feet of research, office and hotel space on the 90-acre site; selling the land to the university will reduce the size of the proposed technology campus from about 2.9 million to about 2.1 million square feet.
So Sarnoff cuts its expansion plans by about 25 percent, Princeton University gets a piece of valuable property that it has no immediate plans to develop, motorists along Route 1 can continue to savor at least one unspoiled view and neighbors concerned about traffic and quality of life can breathe a whole lot easier.
So who could possibly find fault with this deal? The pessimists among us, of course.
First, they will look at the details of the university's agreement with Sarnoff. Significantly, the sale of the 90 acres will go through only if Sarnoff's general development plan, including the 800,000 square feet proposed for the site, is approved by West Windsor. Even though Princeton says it has no intention of developing the site, it will not buy it without this approval - which, it should be noted, would greatly enhance the value of the property.The university's interest may simply be to increase the worth, on paper, of its already considerable real estate holdings. Or it may be to build its own research facility somewhere down the road that would tie in with Sarnoff. Then again, the university could decide to make a tidy profit by selling the property to a developer, who would promptly exercise the general development plan approval and put up an 800,000-square-foot monstrosity.
It isn't as though Princeton University has never put its land to profitable use in the past. Right next door in Plainsboro, the Forrestal campus, established in 1951 on an 825-acre tract containing 16 laboratory buildings, has grown to 1,600 acres containing offices, research facilities and light industry, along with townhouses, apartments, a hotel and a shopping area.
And that doesn't include proposed development of the former Princeton Nurseries lands along Mapleton Road, which the university purchased as an investment and now plans to turn into a 220-unit luxury condominium complex and 2 million square feet of office and retail space.
Is this what Princeton University has in mind for the Sarnoff property? We hope not. We'd like to join with the optimists in believing that the university will neither sell the property to a commercial developer nor develop the land itself until its own expansion needs require it. We suspect the latter condition won't come to pass for many, many years. And that's how long we'd like to see at least one small piece of Route 1 frontage remain blessedly green.
©Packet Online 2001
Sarnoff plans to sell land to Princeton U.
10/09/01
By KAREN AYRES, Staff WriterWEST WINDSOR -- Sarnoff Corp. plans to sell about 90 acres of its massive Route 1 property to Princeton University if the township approves the company's development plans for its proposed "Technology Campus," Sarnoff CEO Jim Carnes said yesterday.
Princeton University has no immediate plans to develop the tract, which lies on the Route 1 side of the company's 345-acre property, according to Richard Spies, the university's vice president for finance and administration.
Both men declined to discuss the sale price and stressed that it is contingent on planning board approval of the general development plan for the technology campus, which Sarnoff officials plan to present to the board early next year.
"We hope this will provide flexibility for development of our facilities and programs," Spies said.
"Universities by their very nature need room to expand. We are not acquiring these lands for commercial development."
About 800,000 square feet of development was slated to be built on the tract in question when Sarnoff submitted plans early this year for a technology campus that included 3.5 million square feet of space.
Carnes said the plan has since been scaled back to about 2.9 million square feet, which will include about 1.5 million square feet of new office and research space to house Sarnoff's spinoff companies.Part of the project calls for adding about 150,00 square feet and renovating the current structure, which is about 600,000 square feet, he said.
Carnes said the university will acquire the development rights on the 90 acres after the purchase, so the 800,000 square feet that could be built on the tract will be included in plans presented to the township. That way, he said, officials will be clear on what sort of growth could eventually occur on the property.
Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh praised the deal and said he was optimistic it would improve the quality of life for West Windsor residents -- many of whom have voiced loud objection to the scale of Sarnoff's original plans.
"This will feed into what West Windsor would like to see," Hsueh said.
Carnes said most of the 800,000 square feet that Sarnoff will lose in the deal was slated to be rented out to other companies."The sale, if and when it is complete, will give us funds from the sale without having to develop it," Carnes said. "The main reason to develop the front was to generate some funds."
Spies said any suggestion about what the university would construct on the property would be entirely speculation. The property lies across the street from about 400 undeveloped acres also owned by the university, he added.
Any development on the 90 acres likely would be decades away, Spies said.
Carnes and other Sarnoff officials are compiling the new general development plan for the campus under a .21 floor area ratio, or FAR, the figure used to determine how much can be built as a total percentage of the property. The original proposal called for a .24 FAR.
The planning board is currently reviewing zoning guidelines and some members have advocated pushing the FAR lower than .21, which Sarnoff officials have said could push them out of town. Current zoning calls for a .30 FAR.
Carnes yesterday reiterated his claim that such a decision could force Sarnoff to reconsider its plans, even as township officials were quick to endorse the sale agreement.
"If this deal doesn't succeed, then we're back to square one," Carnes said.
West Windsor officials said they were pleased with the potential deal because they don't want to see Sarnoff, which pays hefty taxes, leave town.
"This is the kind of company we want to keep in West Windsor," said Rae Roeder, a township council member.
The technology campus was originally slated to be built in phases over about 10 years, but Carnes said the process likely will take longer now and will depend on the speed with which the economy recovers.
"The economic environment as it exists will have an impact on this," Carnes said. "We're fairly responsive to those types of things."
Carnes said the agreement would not affect where the construction would be located on the rest of the site, but he is working with the township to avoid areas earmarked as greenbelt for environmental preservation.
The agreement with Princeton also gives the university the first chance to buy any other property the company decides to sell, he said.
Copyright Trenton Times
Suburban sprawl seen as health hazard
Discourages daily exercise, scientist says
By Anthony Flint, Globe Staff, 10/8/2001
Already blamed for traffic jams, habitat destruction, and the loss of community character, sprawl is now being linked to another ill: flab.
The suburban landscape forces people to drive everywhere and virtually rules out the opportunity to walk and be active on a regular basis, according to Dr. William H. Dietz, director of the Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
''This is something where we need more data, but my personal belief is that community structure is tightly linked to physical activity,'' said Dietz, 56, who left Newton and a respected position at the New England Medical Center for the CDC to pursue a crusade against obesity.
He is now one of a handful of researchers in the nation studying the ways that development patterns influence personal habits - fortifying claims by environmentalists that sprawl is a health hazard.
''I would not go so far as to say that suburban sprawl makes us couch potatoes - that's a thesis, not a fact. But it's a promising avenue to explore,'' Dietz said.
A project dubbed ''Smart Track'' is looking at how neighborhood design, car use, and physical activity relate to each other, using a sample of 400-500 people in Atlanta.
''It was quite a shift for me to move to Atlanta and learn that there was no place for me to walk to shop, and that when I went out to a restaurant I had to drive to a shopping center,'' Dietz said. ''Post offices and dry cleaners are all in shopping centers. You drive there even if it's a mile away. Traffic is bad and it's difficult to walk anywhere.''
In Newton, he said, ''our children walked to school, from Newton Centre. What made that possible was sidewalks and crossing guards and neighborhood schools. I could walk into Newton Centre to do errands.
''Newton and Boston are walkable communities with central shopping areas.''
Citing US Department of Transportation statistics, Dietz said that 25 percent of all trips are less than a mile, but that 75 percent of those trips are made by car.
In addition, long commutes eat up the time that people have for preparing healthy meals, spending time with their children, and going to the gym.
Physical activity plays a crucial role in the development and persistence of obesity and its complications, doctors say. Sedentary lifestyles have been linked to heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, and some cancers.
Medical researchers estimate that nearly one in four Americans is obese and 60 percent of Americans are overweight.
Even walking a small amount each day helps, according to Dietz and two CDC colleagues, health scientists Richard Killingsworth and Jean Lamming, leaders of the Active Community Environment Initiative.
Some of that initiative's recommendations include designing neighborhoods so people have the opportunity to walk, with more sidewalks, established and safe pedestrian routes to schools, and parks and recreational facilities in walking distance to lure children away from sitting in front of the television.
For his part, Dietz said more data is needed to inform the ''role of community infrastructure in physical activity levels. But this does bring us into the conversation with people who want to reduce reliance on cars and create liveable communities.''
Studying child obesity all his professional life, Dietz didn't plan on becoming an expert on land use and development.
But he said the physical landscape is a major factor in America's bulging waistlines, for the young and old.
''I came here to broaden my capacity to understand this problem and do something about it,'' he said.
His goal, he said, remains the same: ''To make physical activity part of everyone's life.''
This story ran on page B2 of the Boston Globe on 10/8/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
Merrill Lynch: Smart growth vs. sprawl
08/12/01
By LARRY HANOVER
Staff WriterEditor's Note: One in a series of occasional reports about the challenges of development and land preservation in New Jersey.
HOPEWELL TOWNSHIP -- A few years ago, the 450-acre expanse of rolling farmland seemed to stretch endlessly as you exited from the bustle of Interstate 95 onto sleepy two-lane Scotch Road.
One could hardly visualize how Merrill Lynch's planned 3.5 million-square-foot office complex might transform the landscape.
Today, the view from Scotch Road, now a four-lane thoroughfare divided by a tree-lined median, commands attention. The edge of the campus, home to three- and four-story brick office buildings, springs up amid the meadows.
Yet only as you drive onto its U-shaped access road does the sheer size of Merrill Lynch's office park become apparent, with structure after structure unfolding. Five office buildings, populated by 3,800 employees, are occupied. When the 1.5 million square feet of Phase I are finished -- completion is projected for March -- there will be eight office buildings among the trees and ponds.
It's easy to picture how the Merrill Lynch project redefined the debate about sprawl in New Jersey, spurring former Gov. Christie Whitman -- whose administration provided millions in incentives to entice Merrill Lynch to Hopewell Township -- to reverse course, making the complex the rallying point for efforts to control development.
But when the Hopewell Township Planning Board unanimously approved the project in 1998, its members were reflecting a sentiment that had prevailed during the recent lean economic times. Large corporate neighbors were considered the salvation of residents suffocating under high property taxes.
Each viewpoint has had its day, and planners and other experts can only wonder if, in the long run, the Merrill Lynch project will be seen as having irreversibly damaged the township's rural character or actually be regarded as "smart growth."
If there's anything approaching consensus, it's that the jury will be out for years to come -- and that anti-growth feelings in general will continue to ride high when the economy is strong and subside during downturns.
In the 1970s, Hopewell Township residents built a ferocious reputation for defending their bucolic 58 square miles along the Delaware River.
Opposition to the "missing link" of Interstate 95 mounted in the decade, culminating in the plan's demise in 1982. The anti-development movement prevailed against plans to provide sewer service for most of the township as well.
But, as evidenced 30 years ago in the township's first master plan, it was foreseen that Hopewell might need to accommodate large-scale development. The southeastern section, abutting developed portions of Ewing and Lawrence, was designated as a place to grow.
In 1996, sellers of what became the Merrill Lynch tract broke through the main development obstacle -- sewer service.With Merrill inquiring about the property, owner Bristol-Myers Squibb did what ratable-hungry municipal officials had failed to do for six years -- strike a deal with ELSA, the Ewing-Lawrence Sewerage Authority. The next year, the financial services company reached terms to buy BMS's rolling meadows for $38 million.
Township officials were elated.
But they also fashioned their own, ill-fated, competing sewer deal with Trenton, hoping to use potential Merrill Lynch hookup fees to build a line servicing a wider area. The anti-development revolt was on -- and a township committee that had been all-Republican for 20 years in short order became all-Democrat.
Bill Wolfe of New Jersey's Sierra Club launched the argument in 1998 that eventually helped persuade Whitman to express regret over having aided Merrill Lynch's Hopewell bid.
The very State Plan for Development and Redevelopment that calls for building along corridors such as I-95, he said, also calls for directing investment back into New Jersey's cities.
It's an argument that holds sway with State Planning Commission Chairman Joseph Maraziti Jr. He calls Merrill Lynch a "missed opportunity," saying the state should only have provided millions in incentives to help revitalize Trenton -- even if the corporation fled to Pennsylvania in response.
"The census says New Jersey has the highest (median) income in the nation," Maraziti says. "I wonder the extent to which we need to sell our souls to maintain or enhance the wonderful economic position we have in this state."
Mayor Marylou Ferrara has no doubts about the sprawl debate, either.
"You can't walk, drive or fly past it without seeing sprawl," Ferrara says. "It's an auto-centered, 1970s-style corporate campus. . . . And it will induce But Donna Lewis, Mercer County's planning director, has a different perspective. With a virtually built-out Ewing on the parcel's edge and with Trenton Mercer Airport, a Conrail line and I-95 nearby, it does not merit the sprawl label, she says.
"No, it's absolutely where development belongs," Lewis says.Merrill Lynch sold its campus to the planning board largely as taxpayer relief. A study predicted a $1 million annual surplus to Hopewell Township taxpayers, with a $2.3 million surplus to the school district more than canceling out a $1.3 million deficit incurred by the municipality for providing services.
It was a strong incentive -- $1 million today would be the equivalent of 5 cents combined on the municipal and school tax rates. That would translate into about $135 a year of tax burden lifted from someone owning a house assessed at the township average of $255,600.
Former Mayor William Cane, a current planning-board member, says the decision, made in the context of 6,500 jobs having been lost countywide from 1994 to 1997, was right.
"You can't have your municipality develop as mansions," says Cane, who believes the property-tax influx will make housing more affordable. "That's not the kind of community I was born and raised and grew up in. We need a place to put our young people and our seniors."
James Hughes, dean of Rutgers University's Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, says it's hard to determine whether township residents ultimately will judge the project so harshly.
A slumping economy may change views toward Merrill, he says. But even though there has been no discernible effect on traffic yet, he says congestion that comes with the project's long-term completion may prompt resentment.
"The difference between 10 years ago and today is 580,000 more jobs in New Jersey," Hughes says. "That means 580,000 more work trips. Congestion has gotten a hell of a lot worse in every place. There's a phenomenon where there are no undiscovered back roads."
Donald Scarry, principal economist of New Jersey Economics in Mount Laurel, says he too is torn by the conflicting issues of jobs vs. quality of life.
Chasing ratables is shortsighted because it attracts new residents requiring services, he says, but he has a problem with simply labeling projects as sprawl. Good schools and single homes are worthy pursuits, he said.
"Those are positive values," Scarry says. "You can say it's disgusting looking and look at what it does to traffic. But people want to move there."
It's hard to sympathize with a corporate giant that reported $1.68 trillion in total client assets at the end of last year.
But, Merrill Lynch officials say, they have done nothing but try to be good neighbors.
Merrill Lynch did consider Trenton briefly and does believe in urban sites, as evidenced by being headquartered in New York City, planning consultant Stuart Appel says. But the lack of space clearly made Trenton impractical.
The Hopewell property would have been developed, whether by Merrill or someone else, Appel adds, and has been built on with great care to the environment.
"The state, the county, the township -- they very much wooed Merrill Lynch," Appel says. "This is the product of 20 years of planning. To say the company promoted sprawl is very much a misnomer, very much unfair."
That wooing included brokering a $225 million loan for equipment and furniture, which saved Merrill Lynch up to $13.5 million in sales tax, plus a $6.4 million grant for creating up to 1,400 jobs, says state Economic Development Authority spokesman Glenn Phillips.
The state also provided a $3 million employee-training grant and secured $30 million in federal funds for improving the Scotch Road interchange, a project previously in long-range plans.
In fact, corporate officials contend, Merrill did residents a service by using studies with conservative forecasts of the project's effects on Hopewell Township.
On the fiscal side, spokesman Joseph Cohen says, events have proven the conservative description correct.
In predicting a $1 million fiscal surplus, Rutgers University professors based their estimates on corporation predictions that the 3.5 million-square-foot campus ultimately would be assessed at $400 million.
But now, Cohen says, the 1.2 million-square-foot Phase I alone will be worth $500 million.
The corporation has approval over 20 years for a hotel, conference center, light manufacturing and more office space on its site, although Cohen says there are no immediate plans for additional construction. It also has no immediate plans for 440 acres it bought across Scotch Road, he says.
Last year, the campus was assessed at $96 million, representing one office and one accessory building. Merrill paid $1.8 million in school and municipal taxes -- 5 percent of the combined school and municipal tax levies.
That was not enough to prevent increases this year in each tax rate of 3 cents per $100 of assessed value.
Over the years, perhaps the ultimate judgment on whether the complex represents poor planning will arise from the development that arises around it.
Merrill's Appel says there is no space for sprawl to spread.
And so far, Wendy Field, manager of Gloria Nilson/GMAC Real Estate's Pennington office, says she has seen only a minimal number of Merrill employees move to the area, with no real effect on the market.
But when Ferrara says she has received letters from two developers seeking to buy her 30-acre farm to build housing marketed at Merrill Lynch executives, Field is not surprised.
Rutgers' Hughes says it is inevitable to see "creeping sprawl" -- much like the Route 1 Corridor -- when a development like Merrill Lynch comes along. Only a strong master plan can rein it in.
Ferrara says the township is taking strides to provide controlled development, zoning for a "town center" directly to the east of Merrill Lynch, which would include two to five housing units per acre. Although forced by the courts to redo the ordinances, Hopewell is downzoning much of the rest of its acres.
Dianne Brake, president of the Regional Planning Partnership, says more planning, including options for mass transit, is needed to help make such measures successful.
Right now, she says, the verdict on the Merrill Lynch complex, which her organization has supported in theory for 30 years, is out.
"It could be suburban sprawl," Brake says. "Or it could be responsible development."
Copyright 2001 The Times
BMS escapes sprawl label
08/12/01
By LARRY HANOVER
Staff WriterHOPEWELL TOWNSHIP -- "Smart growth" advocates hold up the 450-acre Merrill Lynch campus as the poster child for suburban sprawl even though its proximity to Interstate 95 and densely populated Ewing allows for argument to the contrary.
But a few miles north, tucked in one of the township's more scenic rural areas, lies a 433-acre Bristol-Myers Squibb campus that planners say is a pure example of sprawl even though it has slipped below the radar of the debate.
To many observers, the former Mobil Research and Development Corp. complex is a case study on how times have changed. In particular, it reflects the relative lack of public awareness about dwindling open space that existed before former Gov. Christie Whitman's initiative to save 1 million acres.
Mercer County Planning Director Donna Lewis says all officials can do is work with the pharmaceutical giant in shaping the project responsibly. BMS is seeking to rework township approvals granted to Mobil in 1990 and create a more palatable expansion of the 1 million square feet of office and lab space.
"For Bristol-Myers to take it on is the rational thing to do," Lewis says. "But for someone to come intoday and want that kind of development where it is, we would seriously question it."
In 1990, Hopewell Township, whose administrator at the time was future County Executive Robert D. Prunetti, approved plans with little controversy for Mobil to build up to 2.8 million square feet over 20 years.
BMS, which was about to sell its property along I-95 and Scotch Road to Merrill Lynch, bought the property in 1997 following Mobil's pullout after three decades.
Last year, when BMS put forth its own plans, it appeared the township might block them over concerns of depleting the groundwater.
The township committee withdrew a 2-year-old approval of BMS's water plan, then hammered out a new one. The deal, which is under state Department of Environmental Protection review, calls for extensive monitoring and allows for construction to be halted should unforeseen problems arise.
Bill Wolfe of New Jersey's Sierra Club chapter says the water plan will harm neighboring Pennington's well supply and blasts the township committee for failing to act against sprawl.
Wolfe went door to door during elections for Democrats, "throwing bombs" as he calls it about Merrill Lynch and a then-proposed Trenton sewer link, but refuses to work with them any longer."I think Merrill is sprawl, but my God, there's a responsible debate on Merrill," Wolfe says. "No one can say Bristol-Myers is in a good location except Bristol-Myers."
Deputy Mayor Jon Edwards agrees the project is sprawl, but after a township-hired hydrogeologist gave BMS's plan a good review, felt officials were obligated to endorse it.
"This was inherited," Edwards says, "and what you do is the best you can with the cards you're dealt."
George Hawkins, executive director of the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association, who participated in the water negotiations, also calls it a good deal."I did not see (rejecting BMS's) plan as a winnable issue," he says.
Hawkins says the corporation deserves praise for efforts to be responsive to environmental needs.
BMS wants township approval to cluster office buildings farther from Pennington-Rocky Hill Road and leave 31 more acres of farmland untouched."I think what we're doing with the site is very much keeping in mind the community and the preservation and ambience of the Hopewell region," BMS spokeswoman Becky Taylor says.
It's hardly unanimous that, given today's focus on sprawl, the township was wrong in 1990 to approve Mobil's expansion plan.William Cane, who sat on the township committee then, has no regrets even if it is not the most preferable site.
Officials did take a close look at sewer, water and traffic issues, he says. Most of all, officials helped residents by bringing in a ratable to ease their property-tax burden.
"It's buffered by farmland, it's a clean facility," Cane says. "Most of us have to work for a living, and I think as elected officials and economic development people, we look to bring in good ratables. There's a balance to that."
As it turns out, township planner Michael Bolan says, the project has not spurred sprawl because of what surrounds it -- including Stony Brook's 785 acres of open space and other county-preserved farmland.
Copyright 2001 The Times
Investing in cities
07/30/01
By EDITORIALOne of former Gov. Christie Whitman's most solid accomplishments was to win public approval of a $1 billion bond issue in 1998 for the purpose of acquiring and preserving a million acres of open space. By a margin of almost two to one, the voters agreed that this investment was an essential part of any program to prevent uncontrolled building and paving from ruining the quality of life in New Jersey.
But the open space bonds can be no more than part of such a program. As New Jersey Future points out in its "Smart Growth" report, another key part must be the provision of incentives that will attract builders to existing communities, in accordance with the State Development and Redevelopment Plan, and away from open lands.
Polls conducted by New Jersey Future suggest that the public is as much in tune with this strategy as with the purchase of open space. The polls show strong support for rebuilding roads and other infrastructure and preparing industrial sites in existing communities. Some 72 percent of respondents disagree with the proposition that the cities can't be improved. Sixty-five percent say that investing in already developed areas that need repair should be a bigger priority than buying up and preserving open spaces. Virtually the same percentage favors the idea of another $1 billion bond issue, this time to rehabilitate New Jersey's large and small cities -- a bond issue that would complement the open-space bonds. "In fact," says New Jersey Future logically, "without significant state investment in rehabilitating our communities, the preservation of one million acres will not be possible."
The state's 2002 budget includes only $25 million in additional incentives for repairing infrastructure and developing industrial sites. That's too little money to achieve real change. The next governor and Legislature should remedy that deficiency.
© 2001 The Times
Sarnoff campus declared 50 percent greenbelt land
07/27/01
By KAREN AYRES
Staff WriterWEST WINDSOR -- Sarnoff Corp.'s plans to build a massive "technology campus" were put in jeopardy again this week when planning board members designated half the company's Route 1 property and more than 2,350 additional acres as greenbelt land for environmental preservation.
The board decided to earmark more than 15 percent of the township as greenbelt property, including about 150 acres of the 300-acre Sarnoff property.
"There's no going back to it now," said zoning officer Sam Surtees. "What's done is done."
Current law doesn't prevent development in greenbelt areas, but the planning board and township council soon will review an ordinance that would prohibit development in those areas.
If the ordinance is approved, Sarnoff officials could be forced to alter their plans for the part of the campus to be located between the Little Bear Brook and Big Bear Brook streams -- the center of the greenbelt area on the company's property.
Sarnoff spokesman Tom Lento reiterated the company's objection to the designation yesterday but declined to comment further.
Sarnoff's plans also could crumble if the planning board votes to reduce the amount of allowable development on the property to less than 21 percent. The board tentatively voted several weeks ago to drop the floor-area ratio from 30 percent to 21 percent on both the Sarnoff and BASF properties.
Several board members have pushed for an even lower number, which Sarnoff says could push it out of town. The board likely will take a final vote in a few weeks.
The board adopted the entire greenbelt map as presented in the master plan draft at Wednesday's meeting, but Jackie Alberts, the new council representative on the board, hopes to expand the designation even further.
"We want to expand the greenbelt to include all unprotected upland forest in West Windsor," Alberts said. "We can put more green in the greenbelt."
The township's environmental commission is working to redraw the township's greenbelt map, which Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh said could result in additional preservation efforts.
"If there are new designations, it still has to go through the public review process," Hsueh said. "The master plan is a document that will be updated and revised from time to time."
Surtees said about half the 2,500 acres already are preserved because they are owned by the township or are owned by residents with deed restrictions that prohibit development in the greenbelt areas.
The township will now work to place additional restrictions or acquire the additional acreage for preservation. If the ordinance passes, the greenbelt designation itself could prohibit development.
"If the law says you can't build on it, there's no reason to acquire it," Surtees said.
Under the current policy, the board usually negotiates with landowners seeking to build in greenbelt areas and often transfers development rights to other sections of the property in exchange for preserving the greenbelt land, Surtees said.
"You're not losing your development rights, you're just moving it to another location on the site," Surtees said.
Hsueh said the greenbelt designation on the Sarnoff property has been in place since the 1980s and is not in response to Sarnoff's plans for a 3 million-square-foot campus, which have drawn sharp opposition from residents.
Municipalities generally make the greenbelt designation to preserve lands along stream corridors to maintain wildlife habitats, wetlands, flood plains and native vegetation.
The board is scheduled to vote on the open space, recreation and housing elements of the master plan draft on Wednesday, Chairman Ed Steele said.
If the board has time, it will discuss land-use and traffic aspects of the plan.
The planning board likely will finish voting on the master plan draft at its Aug. 15 meeting.
© 2001 The Times
Maryland Farmland a Focus in Suburban Sprawl Battle
June 25, 2001
By FRANCIS X. CLINES
WESTMINSTER, Md. - "Let the battles begin," proclaimed Commissioner Donald I. Dell, drawing a line in the sand - or rather in a lush 145- acre Carroll County farm tract rezoned for housing - as he vowed to defend home rule against Gov. Parris N. Glendening's campaign to restrict suburban sprawl.
Mr. Glendening, the chairman of the National Governors Conference and a leading antisprawl advocate, hardly shirked from the commissioner's challenge as he warned local governments this month that he intended to start using a neglected 25- year-old law that allows the state to bring court challenges against potentially harmful rezoning decisions.
"It's the responsibility of the state to stand up aggressively and try to protect the quality of life," the governor, a Democrat in his seventh year in office, said in a recent interview. "Our $21 billion state budget will not be used to subsidize sprawl," he emphasized, describing how municipalities generate tax revenues by rezoning farmland for housing developments and then, when the human tide grows, turn to the state for help to pay for new roads, schools and sewers.
"It's crazy," said the governor, who believes that resistance to sprawl has been building a national constituency that grows with each day's rush-hour crawl by suburbanites through patchwork counties of farm tracts and mushrooming developments. "Across the country people must realize that once something is paved over, there's no going back."
Mr. Glendening supports so-called smart-growth restrictions. Such programs have been approved in 24 states in the last year, he said. With home rule the opposition's rallying cry, one "very significant" example of the growing antisprawl movement, the governor said, is Georgia's new law establishing veto power over local zoning decisions viewed as harmful to the environment and to the transportation capacity of the Atlanta metropolitan region.
The city managers of Frederick, Md., about 24 miles southwest of here, recently took one of the most stark antisprawl measures by cutting residential construction permits by half after they discovered that the city did not have enough water resources to sustain its current growth rate. Statewide, the Glendening administration, using a smart-growth program of carrot-and-stick financing priorities, has managed to drastically shift the pattern of spending on school construction. Ten years ago, 62 percent of the state school construction budget was spent on new suburban schools and 38 percent on the modernization of schools in established, higher-density towns and villages, according to state data.
This year, the established areas are receiving 80 percent of the school building money because they have a higher priority than unplanned new development areas that exemplify sprawl. "We must have a real sense of urgency about this," said Mr. Glendening, who has been highlighting Carroll County as a sprawl scofflaw that is violating state and county preservation plans.
Beyond the farm fight, Mr. Glendening criticizes local officials for refusing to renew a regional multigovernment watershed compact and for rezoning to meet solely local needs by approving a new water treatment plant at a regional reservoir relied upon by a much larger area.
"A housing development plopped down in the middle of a farm preservation area becomes a cancer that threatens the surrounding region," Mr. Glendening said of the fight over the county commissioners' 2-to-1 decision to rezone 145 farm acres as residential to accommodate a golf course community of 50 houses.
Situated in the heart of a large rural stretch of protected farmland, the farm was granted the largest rezoning approval in 30 years in the county, which built a reputation a generation ago for pioneering the preservation of agricultural land.
In a court challenge by opponents, the rezoning was found unjustified under state law. But the judge's ruling was rendered moot because a new county master plan had already been mapped with the zoning change included, and the master plan is practically writ in stone.
"That's the scary part: we won but then we lost," said Julia Walsh Gouge, the dissenting member of the county's all-Republican elected commission, who warned of a domino effect in which more farmers will now seek rezoning in a spiral toward sprawl.
"If you're just going to spread out and ruin the whole countryside this way," Ms. Gouge said, "then the beauty of our county is going to be destroyed for the people who moved here to enjoy it."
Commissioner Dell, a lifelong farmer, insists that at the heart of the matter is the sacred American principle of home rule.
"What's at stake here is my ability to govern and do the things I'm sworn to do," Mr. Dell said. "Sprawl is everywhere; I don't think we're any different than any other area," he added. "Smart growth is a word that's overworked, and it's getting me nauseated when I hear it. Managed growth is the right
term, and that's what we're doing."Mr. Dell said the rezoning was justified because the farm was held by an older family seeking retirement. The governor insists that the farmers could have sold their easement rights to the state under existing preservation programs. "It's not government's obligation to guarantee huge land profits to farmers, but that's exactly what the county is doing," Mr. Glendening said, complaining that profiteering was one of the symptoms of sprawl.
Over the last six years, he said, state programs to protect against sprawl by buying easement rights from farmers and agricultural tracts for conservation have permanently protected 214,000 acres. For the first time in state history, land preservation is outpacing farm and forest development, said the governor, a former political science professor and Montgomery County executive who has created a new Office of Smart Growth for his cabinet.
Ms. Gouge, the dissenter in the Carroll County Commission, said some of the staunchest supporters of antisprawl measures had been the farmers themselves. "They've worked for generations to keep the farms," Ms. Gouge said. "And when this rezoning fight broke out, I received endless calls from farmers pleading for me to oppose the rezoning and not destroy what we have."
Copyright 2001 The New York Times
Educate, invest, promote
06/20/01
By MARY SISSON
Staff WriterWEST WINDSOR -- New Jersey's current economic downturn is unlikely to become much more severe. But the state's long-term economic picture is clouded by a need to beef up higher education,ease congestion and compete against other locales.
That was the message of top economists, state officials and business leaders who spoke at the governor's economic summit yesterday.
The summit, held at the Sarnoff Corp., was titled "Building a World-Class Economy in New Jersey."
But acting Gov. Donald DiFrancesco noted that such a task is easier said than done.
"It's more than a theme, it's a challenge," he said. "We need to do all we can to promote this long-term prosperity."
To help the state identify and avoid potential economic snares in the future, DiFrancesco announced that the state would create a task force, composed of members from business, academia and government, to create a blueprint for the state's future development.
One potential roadblock mentioned by several of the speakers is a shortage of higher-education slots in the state focused on high technology.
"We have the equivalent of a six-lane interstate that is ending at a two-lane country road," said economist Joseph Seneca, vice president for academic affairs at Rutgers University.
While other high-tech centers have large, prestigious educational institutions that focus on technology -- like Stanford University in California's Silicon Valley, or the Boston-area Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- New Jersey is lacking such a facility, according to Saul Fenster, president of the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
As a result, successful high school graduates interested in math and science tend to leave the state for colleges in other states, and they tend not to return.
And, Fenster said, research money tends to skip New Jersey universities in favor of institutions in California, New York and Texas.
"If we're a knowledge-based state, that ought to worry us," said Fenster.
Knowledge is becoming increasingly important as the state has moved from being heavily dependent on manufacturing to relying more on high-tech businesses that range from telecommunications to software to biotechnology. "It's remarkable how New Jersey has been transformed," DiFrancesco said.
In large part because of that move to high-tech, New Jersey is doing relatively well in the current slowdown. Although buffeted by layoffs, the state's unemployment rate of 4.3 percent is still low.
"We're starting from a position of strength," said James Carnes, chief executive of Sarnoff, which develops technology advances for television and other industries.
Much of the growth in New Jersey's economy since 1992 has been concentrated in six sectors, according to Seneca.These sectors -- information technology, transportation and warehouses, pharmaceutical and biotechnology, research and technology services, casinos and entertainment, and finance and insurance -- are weighted toward high technology.
"Those six clusters have really driven the state economy," said Seneca. "And (they) promise to drive it in the future."
One reason for that is that job growth is faster in these sectors than in the state as a whole.
Another reason is that jobs in these sectors tend to pay well -- indeed the average job within the six sectors pays 40 percent more than the average New Jersey job.
As a result, while the industries in these six sectors provided 35 percent of New Jersey's jobs, employing some 1.2 million people, they paid out 54 percent of the state's total wages.
Such well-paying jobs in growing fields are, of course, desirable.
"The core economic competency of New Jersey has been defined," said economist James Hughes, dean of the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. "It has the potential for creating the foundation for 21st-century prosperity."
But, Hughes noted, such prosperity relies on sound public policy. And the state's infrastructure, from roads to airports to sea ports, has not been receiving the lavish spending that, say, the telecommunications network has.
"Underinvestment stands side by side with overinvestment," Hughes said.
In addition, growth in fields that require a highly skilled, highly educated work force means workers with less education are at a disadvantage -- and only about 30 percent of the state's population has a four-year college degree."New Jersey has fewer low-skilled jobs," said Mark Boyd, state labor commissioner.
As a result, workers with few skills are less in demand and are being paid less, Boyd said.
Another concern surrounding the state's reliance on high technology is that such companies tend to be mobile, and New Jersey must compete against other states to attract and keep well-paying industries, Fenster said.
And developing countries such as India have made successful forays into high-tech industries.
Historically, developing countries have moved from agriculture to heavy industry and then to high technology, but these days "they intend fully to skip the middle era," said Fenster.
The key to keeping desirable companies and students in-state, Fenster said, is to improve reputations -- both those of the state's universities, and that of the state as a whole.
While Fenster supports spending initiatives to build up the universities in the state, improving the perception of New Jersey as crowded and polluted can be tricky.
People "associate New Jersey with that great American icon, Tony Soprano," said Carnes, referring to the mobster of cable television fame.
"It's difficult to overcome that reputation elsewhere, to get people to relocate -- other than foreign (workers)," said John Martinson, chief executive of Edison Venture Fund.
But Boyd noted that many other areas of the country that have experienced rapid growth have also experienced problems with congestion and sprawl, making New Jersey's reputation less fearsome.
And some people have actually seen the state for themselves. "New Jersey is an easy sell with people who have had experience with New Jersey and with the East Coast," Boyd said.
To Fenster, the state's reputation could be improved by making sure any initiatives to improve education or infrastructure are well-publicized.
"It is very important not only to do these things, but to announce these things," he said. "We've got to be sending this message."
And the state needs to be making an organized effort to keep the economy strong. "We need to plan," said Charles Hance, secretary of the state Commerce and Economic Growth Commission. "How much pharmaceutical? How much high-tech? And where?
"It's the only way we'll do well," he said.
DiFrancesco expressed optimism that the private-public partnership embodied by the task force would be able to guide the state to continued prosperity.
"These partnerships are the common ingredient in economic success stories across the nation," he said. "You have great ideas now. It's just a matter of bringing it together."
Copyright 2001 The Times
Smart growth is best hope to build future
PACKET EDITORIAL, June 19, 2001
Watching the development of central New Jersey for the past 20 years or so has been an upsetting experience for a lot of longtime residents, who have witnessed what was once a peaceful and largely rural landscape transformed into sprawling suburbia, complete with unsightly strip malls, mammoth office complexes, traffic jams at every major intersection and a palpable change in that intangible characteristic called the quality of life.
But the folks who live here aren't the only ones who are disappointed by the way central New Jersey has developed. Equally upset are the folks who work here but can't afford to live here. It is, in fact, this phenomenon - the fact that the number of jobs all those malls and office buildings have created in the greater Princeton area has far outstripped the number of housing units constructed to accommodate the people who work here - that has led to the monumental traffic problems we now confront.
And, according to a new study by the nonprofit Regional Planning Partnership, the situation seems destined to get worse - unless we change our ways.
The RPP report surveyed 24 municipalities in Mercer County, and parts of Somerset and Middlesex counties, and found that approvals for almost 67 million square feet of nonresidential development were issued between 1997 and 2000, compared to only 42,000 residential housing units. In West Windsor alone, approvals were issued for 4.6 million square feet of new commercial development, compared to 1,984 residential units. Plainsboro approved 1.1 million square feet of commercial development, compared to 1,176 residential units.
If current trends continue, the report concluded, about 965,000 new jobs will be created before the region reaches build-out, but only about 70,000 new houses will be built. This means many more people will be criss-crossing central New Jersey from home to work in numbers that stagger the imagination - and the gridlock we'll be facing 20 years from now will make today's traffic problems along the Route 1 corridor seem trivial by comparison.
How did we get into this mess? Simple. In the 1970s and 1980s, we opened up the region to a lot of housing development - only to realize, years later, that more houses meant more schoolchildren, which meant building and running more schools, which was an extraordinarily expensive proposition. So in the 1990s, we got clever and started going after so-called "clean" ratables - the kind of development, like commercial space and office buildings, that generated new property-tax revenues without generating more schoolchildren.
It seemed like a brilliant idea at the time. And it was largely successful; while property taxes continued to rise, the shift from residential to commercial development allowed many municipalities to bring down the double-digit annual increases they had been experiencing in their property-tax rates.
The trade-off, we now recognize, was more traffic.
As area municipalities look to the future, they would do well to pay heed to the recommendations offered in the RPP study. Instead of approaching growth as a stark choice between residential development, which generates more schoolchildren, and commercial development, which generates more traffic, the objective should be balanced development - a blend of housing and retail and office growth, all permitted in numbers and at densities that municipalities can reasonably handle without overburdening either their taxpayers or their infrastructure.
That may be easier said than done, of course, as long as municipalities and school districts in New Jersey have to rely so heavily on property taxes to support their budgets. But in the absence of meaningful tax reform - which would seem, in this gubernatorial election year, to be an unlikely prospect at best - applying the principles of smart growth may be our best hope for building a future for our region that doesn't repeat the mistakes of the past.
©The Princeton Packet 2001
New jobs outpacing housing, planning group warns
By: David Campbell, Staff Writer June 15, 2001
More traffic predicted for an already congested region.
Dianne Brake, president of The Regional Planning Partnership, acknowledges that the partnership's advocacy of increased residential housing and density ratios for commercial development runs contrary to commonly held ideas about good municipal planning.
But she said traditional wisdom, which holds that increased residential housing burdens the property tax base and decreased floor-area ratios for commercial sites decrease sprawl and traffic congestion, in fact inhibits long-term regional planning.
In fact, current development trends could lead to an alarming disparity between the amount of jobs attracted to the region by new commercial development and housing for those workers - only about 70,000 new houses for the 965,000 new jobs that would result from full build-out under current zoning, which, in turn, would bring more traffic to an already congested region, according to a new report issued by the partnership.
"As you can imagine, this is not an easy sell to the municipalities," Ms. Brake said of the partnership's position. "It may seem counterintuitive. It also has bear-with-us elements to it."
The partnership, a nonprofit, independent, civic-action group based on Mapleton Road in Plainsboro Township, recently released its 2001 Data Book, which provides statistics on population, employment, income and land use in Mercer County and parts of Middlesex and Somerset counties - data Ms. Brake called "an eye-opener" for the municipalities."We do this as a kind of wake-up call," she said. "This is information that nobody else is giving."
A highlight of the book is the current development survey, which outlines planned development from 1997 to 2000, much of which has received approval but has not yet been built.
In 24 municipalities within the study area, almost 67 million square feet of nonresidential development and only 42,000 residential housing units were either known, applied for or approved, under construction or completed during the three-year period.
Princeton Borough and Princeton Township, which are near full build-out compared to other municipalities, show 339,200 square feet and 661,736 square feet respectively of commercial development, and 40 units of residential housing each from 1997 to 2000.
West Windsor Township saw 4.6 million square feet of new commercial development during the study period, with 1.2 million square feet approved but not built and another 1.2 million square feet currently under construction, the data book shows.
West Windsor, meanwhile, has approved 1,984 units of residential housing, and 711 units currently are under construction, according to the book.
Montgomery Township saw an increase of 165,747 square feet of commercial development, with 91,648 square feet yet to be built. Montgomery approved 3,432 units of residential housing, of which 572 have been constructed.
Plainsboro Township approved 1.1 million square feet of commercial development and 1,176 residential units, according to the book. Of this, 750,000 square feet of development and 912 housing units have yet to be built.Despite talk at municipal meetings of regional planning, Ms. Brake and Regional Planning Partnership Vice President James Hess said many towns approve development with little attention beyond their own borders.
"Towns don't often know what their neighbors are doing," Ms. Brake said. "They're not aware necessarily of the cumulative impact of development in their own town."
According to West Windsor Land Use Director Sam Surtees, West Windsor and other townships regularly attend meetings with Herb Ames, director of Mercer County's Department of Economic Development, to discuss new projects.
"We kind of exchange ideas, update each other on what projects are coming into our communities," he said.
Mr. Surtees said he sends copies of Township Planning Board meetings to neighboring municipalities, and they observe the same courtesy with West Windsor.
"It's not like the world ends right at the municipal boundary line," he said.
According to the data book's zoning-yield analysis for the region, which was conducted using the partnership's new goal-oriented zoning computer model, current zoning build-out would significantly widen the gap between employment and housing in the region, which would necessitate greater commuting.
Unless action is taken to implement plans for a regional light rail system and enhanced bus routes, this gap could increase traffic volume in the region, which already is problematic, to unmanageable proportions, Ms. Brake said.
According to these findings, full build-out, according to existing zoning, would increase the ratio of jobs to housing to more than 13 to 1.
Ms. Brake said the imbalance is partly due to the ratables chase.
"Different towns are in different states of development, and they have different ratables problems," she said. "It's very difficult to wean a municipality away from fiscal planning to regional planning. A lot of towns around here are in a fiscal hole."
Ms. Brake said a "more balanced outcome" would result from a 40-percent decrease in employment regionally balanced by a 40-percent increase in residential housing.
And she said that reducing floor-area ratios for commercial development, an increasingly common practice in municipalities attempting to fight sprawl, actually results in increased impervious coverage.
"We're trying to alert people that the reaction to this is not necessarily downzoning," she said.
"Downzoning in the Route 1 corridor is going to have a reverse effect."
For one thing, downzoning only changes the floor-area ratio but leaves the impervious-cover allowance the same, she said. And although it would reduce the number of employees at a site, it could increase automobile dependency because a development would not have the density required to make a light rail or other transit system feasible.
Ms. Brake said the partnership is promoting development according to the State Development and Redevelopment Plan, which provides guidelines to municipalities for centralized development where infrastructure already exists.
The State Plan designates this region as a growth area, which Ms. Brake said might be hard to accept for some municipalities that want to preserve their rural or village-like character.
"Local governments have a hard time changing their very local perspective to a regional perspective," she said. "This is a good location for growth. We don't want to sour the economy in the region because then nobody benefits."
©The Princeton Packet 2001
Not just one town's call
05/30/01
By EDITORIALIn New Jersey, basic decisions on land use are made by municipal governments. The policy is called home rule, and it's jealously defended by local officials and protected by the Legislature.
But in a state like this one, with a map tightly packed with municipalities, home rule has an obvious drawback. Planning, zoning and development decisions that may suit one town's short-term interests may be bad news for neighboring towns and for the region as a whole.
Usually, however, there's little that neighbors or the region can do about it. Other municipalities have no statutory process for contesting such decisions. Sen. Peter Inverso, R-Hamilton, has offered a bill that would give them a forum when a proposed development is close to a common border, but it's going nowhere at the moment. Neither county nor state planners have any real authority to overrule municipal land-use policies. The state Department of Transportation can restrict access to major state highways, but even so DOT has little chance, even when so inclined, of stopping a determined town and/or builder.
These facts of New Jersey governmental life underlie what is sure to be a long, vigorous and significant debate over the future of the American Cyanamid-BASF property in West Windsor. The 640-acre tract is at the northeast corner of Route 1 and Quakerbridge Road, an intersection with large retail centers already occupying its other three quadrants: Quaker Bridge Mall and Mercer Mall in Lawrence Township, and West Windsor's Nassau Park Pavilion-Nassau Park. BASF, the current owner, plans to close down the agricultural research operation on the property and put it on the market.
The potential long-term effects of this move on traffic along already-overloaded Route 1 -- and thus on the daily lives of tens of thousands of people in Mercer County and beyond -- can't be overstated.
Under home rule, the basic decision as to what will be done with the BASF tract will be in the hands of the West Windsor Township council and planning board. A few days ago, the planning board tentatively voted to increase the amount of allowable development on the tract -- and on the 335-acre Sarnoff property farther north on Route 1 -- from 15 to 21 percent, and to rezone
the sites to allow offices, research facilities and some retail, all subject to approval by the township council. At 21 percent floor-area ratio, 5.86 million square feet could be built at BASF -- the equivalent of five Quaker Bridge Malls. Plans for the Sarnoff tract call for about 3 million square feet. Several other options have been suggested for BASF, ranging from construction of an upscale mall to purchase of the property by Mercer County for open space. The mall idea would seem to be massive overkill, given the abundance of stores at the intersection; the open-space proposal, while appealing, appears impractical, given the fact that the land's estimated value ($160 million) is 40 times the county's annual open-space purchasing budget.It's not impugning the wisdom or the far-sightedness of West Windsor officials to say that a decision of this magnitude should be made by agencies with a broader jurisdiction. In this case, as it happens, there IS such an agency that may have some say in the matter. A property owner wishing to build even half the potential 5.86 million square feet that the planning board would allow would have to sewer the tract or expand its existing treatment plant -- and that would require approval from the county, the state and the Stony Brook Regional Sewerage Authority, which has board members from seven Mercer and Middlesex county towns.
That's helpful, but not helpful enough. New Jersey, more than ever, needs a way to ensure that land-use decisions consistently are made in a way that satisfies regional interests, not just local ones.
Copyright 2001 The Times
Author: What price public input?
John Weingart tells a story of intractable NIMBY-ismBy: David M. Campbell
The Princeton Packet
Wednesday, May 30, 2001When Sarnoff Corp. unveiled plans to build a 2.75-million-square-foot research campus in residential Penns Neck in February, neighbors and activist groups mobilized such swift and organized opposition that local politicians had to listen.
Township planners responded by down-zoning the Sarnoff property by half, forcing the company to reduce its proposal somewhat while it threatened to build elsewhere, and the issue was paramount in the anti-development rhetoric of West Windsor's nonpartisan elections last month.
Last October, South-Brunswick-based industrial supply company McMaster-Carr met similar opposition when it proposed a 1.06 million-square-foot warehouse and office complex on the Baker Farm in the southern end of West Windsor.
The public outcry was so pronounced that local politicians squelched the proposal nearly as soon as it had been made, and the development of the 170-acre Baker tract was still being fought by neighbors this week during the Township Planning Board's ongoing Master Plan hearings.
If public opposition to new development could make a major corporation like Sarnoff think twice about building in West Windsor, consider the trouble the State of New Jersey had in finding a town to host a low-level radioactive waste-disposal facility.
Last week, at the annual dinner of The League of Women Voters of the Princeton Area, John Weingart, who in the 1990s headed the innovative state agency whose job it was to find just one municipality to voluntarily sponsor such a facility in exchange for the $2 million in annual property taxes it would bring, spoke of the opposition his agency faced, and the lessons it taught about making government work.
In his new book, "Waste is a Terrible Thing to Mind: Risk, Radiation, and Distrust of Government," published in March by the Princeton-based Center for the Analysis of Public Issues, Mr. Weingart tells a story of intractable NIMBY-ism (not in my back yard) that ended up thwarting even the handful of municipal officials who were open to exploring the idea as a possible source of needed tax revenue.
In 1995, the state Siting Board and Advisory Committee, which was established by the state Legislature to find a disposal site for low-level radioactive waste generated in New Jersey, adopted the voluntary plan after attempts in states like Connecticut and Illinois to place their own facility using a geographically neutral approach, which sought to avoid charges of regional favoritism or "environmental racism," failed.
In Connecticut in 1991, for example, three sites chosen exclusively for their geographic suitability all happened to be in the legislative district of John Larson, the powerful Senate president pro tempore, and within a year, under Sen. Larson's leadership, the sites were rejected and the siting process returned to square one.
New Jersey's voluntary approach was an innovative alternative to mandatory siting, backed by the courts, to solve what Mr. Weingart calls an "untouchable and unsolvable" problem.
But voluntary siting in New Jersey proved to be an experiment that did not succeed in building a disposal facility. Rather, it generated plenty of hard lessons in "our inability to deal with risk, and the pervasive distrust of government," according to Mr. Weingart.
In truth, Mr. Weingart points out, low-level radioactive materials "are used in virtually every hospital in the country and routinely trucked on major highways and local roads, past schools and churches and housing developments."
Yet, despite efforts by Mr. Weingart and his staff to educate and conduct outreach with the public - he spoke at countless public forums during those three years - discussion of radioactive disposal ignited instant public furor.
One such response occurred in Montgomery Township before the voluntary plan had even formally begun.
The local Rotary Club invited Mr. Weingart to give an informal talk about the voluntary siting process, not because Montgomery was considering hosting the facility, but because, as Mr. Weingart writes humorously, "Rotary Clubs have one important distinction that made them much more open to the material they received from the Siting Board: They meet weekly, almost always with a guest speaker," which made them "less selective about the topics and speakers they are willing to entertain."
A small story appeared the next day in The Times of Trenton, prompting one Montgomery resident to create almost overnight a coalition calling itself "NJ Speakout!" complete with a post office address; to print up a flyer headed, "Nuclear Waste Dump In Montgomery?" and urge residents to press the Township Committee to oppose the plan - which the council did by resolution, despite the fact that no such plan was even under consideration.
The Princeton Packet responded with an editorial opposing the dump-that-wasn't, which began by noting that Mr. Weingart was once an assistant commissioner in the state Department of Environmental Protection but that "a background in peddling snake oil might have been a better preparation" for his job with the Siting Board.
As Mr. Weingart concludes in his book, "A vicious cycle has been created by the response of much of the public and many legislators. Government agencies are given less authority and fewer resources, presumably until 'they' get it right and show themselves to be worthy."
It is not surprising, he writes, that government does not excel under constraints like these.Copyright © 2001 The Princeton Packet, Inc.
Small towns fight to keep their sense of identity
05/29/01
By ANDREW H. FIXMER
Staff WriterEditor's Note: Part of a continuing series of occasional reports about the challenges of development and land preservation in New Jersey.
They are islands in a stormy sea.
And the tiny boroughs located in the middle of larger townships find themselves shaped by the waves of development that surround them. The people who inhabit some of the "islands" are bracing themselves against the cresting tide of growth that threatens to erode the quality of their lives.
The enveloped boroughs -- also known as holes in the doughnuts -- such as Princeton, Pennington, Hightstown and Pemberton once served as social and economic hubs of the surrounding farming communities.
Now, fields of housing developments have shot up on what was once a seemingly endless terrain of soybeans and potatoes. And the islands are at their mercy.
"The success or failure of the borough is almost completely dependent on the kind of development undertaken in the township," said Dianne Brake, president of the Regional Planning Partnership -- a nonprofit organization (formerly known as MSM) serving Middlesex, Somerset and Mercer counties.
"The difficulties that boroughs face can often become exacerbated by an uncooperative township that is only looking out for its own best interest."
The tiny boroughs -- home to most houses of worship, cemeteries and schools used by those in the surrounding townships -- are plagued with a high concentration of tax-exempt property, leaving the tax burden on the residents' shoulders.
Compounding the economic loss from tax-exempt property, many of the boroughs are fully developed, leaving no room for economic growth. Those that do have space left for commercial development often lose out to townships where strip malls can be built on highways.
"Development has formed new market centers," said James W. Hughes, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Public Policy and Planning at Rutgers University. "And today the doughnut is wealthy and the hole is in trouble."
In a striking example, Hightstown lost about $60,000 worth of taxable property last year. Surrounding East Windsor's tax ratables grew by $60 million.
The irony of a borough souring economically while the surrounding township is awash in new wealth has not been lost on borough residents. "East Windsor and Hightstown have become two completely different towns," said Hightstown resident Eugene Sarafin. "The only thing left that we have in common is the school district."
How these two towns became so different is a story as old as the creation of doughnut communities across the state.Two hundred years ago, there were few population centers in the state and the economy was based almost completely on agriculture.
"There were just a couple of hamlets consisting of a church and a couple houses, but for the most part the population was evenly spread across the state," Hughes said.
As agriculture became more dispersed, railroads were built to connect farmers with far-off markets in New York and Philadelphia. The towns sprang up around rail stations because that is where farmers would sell their crops. It was a natural place to seat government, build stores and locate banks.
"That's why Hightstown and Pennington exist today, because of those old rail lines," said Hughes. "Really, they were farm and market centers. "If you lived in that area, you either traveled to Hightstown or Allentown to do your shopping," said Hughes. "There was nothing else really around that was accessible."
But over time, borough residents found themselves feuding over taxes with outlying farmers.
"So in true New Jersey fashion the boroughs went to the capital to convince the Legislature to allow them to split off from the larger townships," said Hughes. "It was smart in the short term but bad for the boroughs in the long term."
After World War II, the suburbanization of the state's farmland spread the wealth that was concentrated in the boroughs and urban centers, slowly diluting it to the larger surrounding townships, where much of it is located today.
However, it generally wasn't until the 1970s that township residents outnumbered their neighbors in the borough. And it wasn't until the 1980s that suburbanites abandoned shopping in the
boroughs for malls located along highways in the townships."The boroughs are in a position where they have to re-create themselves," said Mercer County Planning Director Donna Lewis.
State planning officials say the cure for crumbling town centers and suburban sprawl is to funnel development into urban areas and designated town centers instead of crowding the suburbs with McMansions. The state plan aims to redirect development to urban centers where officials believe it would take the form of renovated houses and buildings.
"These boroughs are existing compact development -- which is exactly what the state plan calls for," Lewis said. "It's very difficult to create (in the suburbs) what already exists in the boroughs." Those areas, planners contend, are where development should take place because the infrastructure to support development already exists.
"The boroughs have traditionally been the centers, and in most cases it makes sense to keep the borough as the center for services and businesses," said Herb Simmens, director of the Office of State Planning. "Unlike in suburban towns where everything is planned apart and you have to drive everywhere, we would like to see everything close together and in walking distance."
To get townships and their boroughs to cooperate in regional planning, the state has been trying a variety of approaches. If left to Assemblyman Michael J. Arnone, R-Red Bank, the state would refund any increase in property taxes that results from towns consolidating, providing a financial incentive for voters to approve referendums to combine their municipalities.
The proposed legislation was introduced last March, but the bill was held in the Assembly Local Government Committee last week for amendments. The revised bill is scheduled to appear again before the committee in June.
"The benefits to the local taxpayers are just too great to ignore," Arnone said. "We could create more efficient local government by combining services such as police, fire and other local services."
The state Department of Community Affairs has been designating boroughs as town centers and issuing grants to boroughs and townships that work together to focus development in the urban centers and prevent sprawl in the townships.
"We're using extra money and grants as the carrot to get towns to work with each other," said Simmens. "The challenge is to show both communities that there is an advantage to working together."
State planners point to Princeton Township and Princeton Borough as an ideal example of smart development and regional planning. "In Princeton you have the only regional planning board in the state," Simmens said. "That has brought those two communities very close to each
other."Marvin Reed, the mayor of Princeton Borough, agrees that some regionalization of the towns' services has resulted in unifying the community.
"Working together has helped us tremendously. Princeton Township has concentrated on preserving open space and left the ratables to us," said Reed, who described the Princetons as two seamless communities.
"People usually just say Princeton now," he said. "When they say `borough' they mean downtown. And when they say `township' they mean the homes that surround it."
The boroughs inside Princeton, Hopewell and Pemberton townships have begun integrating local services such as recreation and library services. In an extreme example, the streets in Hopewell Borough -- the first borough to be designated a town center by the state -- are patrolled by township police.
No other area borough allows this yet.
And while Hopewell Township officials said they would like to integrate more services between the township and its two boroughs, they also want to preserve the character of the boroughs by building rings of open space around them.
The ring around Hopewell Borough is complete, and planning between the township and Pennington for a similar zone around that borough are under way.
Officials in the Mercer County planning office said they were taking an active role in buying open space in Hopewell Township that partially surrounds Pennington Borough.
"We bought a lot of land surrounding Pennington that formed an informal greenbelt," said Lewis. "It's not as tight as the belt around Hopewell Borough, but it's coming along nicely."
Pennington officials say without regional planning, preserving the borough's character would have been nearly impossible.
"I think we have to look regionally. We can no longer have each municipality looking out for its own best interest," said Pennington Mayor Jim Loper, who described relations with Hopewell Township as an "interdependent relationship."
"Most citizens of the township come to the boroughs for services, but at the same time all of the open space and things of that nature are in the township," he said.
Kathleen Bird, a member of the Hopewell Township Committee and Planning Board, said the Hopewells and Pennington have formed a regional planning initiative for Route 31.
"What we want to do is form a subcommittee from the planning boards of the three towns to help shape and plan for development," she said. "None of us wants to end up with typical American strip mall development. We can all agree that we don't want that."
And Bird said the township wants to expand regional planning with the boroughs so that any time a large development comes to the township, the boroughs get a say in how it is handled.
"Part of this planning process is to make sure we don't inadvertently destroy their downtowns," said Bird. "I think human beings want a sense of community, and the boroughs provide that to township residents."
However, regional planning and shared services have been less successful in Hightstown and East Windsor.
"We agreed to designate Hightstown as a town center in the hopes they would work with East Windsor," Simmens said, "but that hasn't happened yet."
In fact, according to Simmens, Hightstown and East Windsor are the only two "doughnut" partners in Mercer County not attempting some form of regional planning.
But Hightstown and East Windsor officials say that while they don't have any official panels or joint committees, they do talk about development issues facing the two towns.
"We've had interaction in terms of sharing information and inviting comments from each other," said East Windsor Mayor Janice Mironov. "It's somewhat of an informal arrangement."
While sharing services has benefited taxpayers in some doughnut communities, many boroughs refuse to combine some of the most costly services, such as a police department. In Pemberton Borough, voters defeated a referendum that would have combined the township and borough police departments.
"It's cost us a little more money, but we feel better knowing there is a police car patrolling around here every hour of the day," said Pemberton Borough Mayor F. Lyman Simpkins. "If we had gone with combining the two departments, there would only be a township car passing through town every so often."
Boroughs are trying to balance saving taxpayers' money and preserving their borough character.
Partly for that same reason, there have been -- despite some shared services -- five failed attempts to combine Princeton Borough and Princeton Township.
"Sure it would be easier and less time-consuming if we were just managing one town," said Reed, the borough mayor. "But borough people want to protect our strong downtown flavor. Even if it means significantly more taxes, they say it is worth it to preserve our identity."
Copyright 2001 The Times
DiFrancesco considering options for 'smart growth'
05/23/01
By LARRY HANOVER
Staff WriterEWING -- Although acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco has little more than seven months left in office, he is taking steps to try to leave an imprint on the state's "smart growth" efforts.
The acting governor soon will select from a menu of 50 proposed programs aimed at giving elected officials and developers the incentive to turn the state's growth and preservation plan into a living document, policy chief Connie Hughes said yesterday.
But administration officials are wrestling with the price tag of those ideas, which were assembled with input from a number of organizations, Hughes told attendees of a forum on the State Development and Redevelopment Plan at The College of New Jersey.
With a revenue shortfall expected in the upcoming fiscal year, the DiFrancesco administration is deciding which programs would be most effective before choosing which to include in the proposed budget, Hughes said.
Hughes called the State Plan a meaningful first step. But its success hinges on having the people who shape development decisions want to follow it voluntarily, she said.
She said the State Plan cannot be viewed simply as dealing with how land is used. It must look at linking economic development with creating a skilled work force. It also must enhance transportation, a key to getting workers to new jobs, she said.
"The emphasis is on smart growth," she said, "not no-growth." Among the possible programs is a one-shot injection of $100 million to revitalize urban areas, Hughes said. Whitman's budget proposed $10 million, but spending the money up front might be more effective than annually
appropriating such an amount for 10 years, she said.Other possibilities are a new Office of State Planning advocate, an urban tax credit and extending the urban enterprise zone program. She also said an annual $3 million in planning grants to municipalities might be doubled.
Hightstown was announced yesterday as a recipient of such a grant, worth $26,670, to assemble a plan to expand its downtown retail district and to develop vacant borough tracts.
The forum provided for a lively exchange among planning officials, a builders representative and a mayor, Hopewell Township's Marylou Ferrara. Patrick O'Keefe, executive vice president of the New Jersey Builders Association, said the state often fails to follow its own plan. For example,
he contended, there is no comprehensive strategy to preserve 1 million acres of open space.Ed Schmierer, an attorney for the New Jersey League of Municipalities, said the state does have a preservation plan that dovetails with the "best of home rule." The plan crystallizes as soon as a developer makes a proposal.
"It's that precise moment when local officials realize what's happening and the resources that could be lost, and it's an absolute scramble," Schmierer responded. "That's our plan, and you know what? It's working."
State Planning Commission Chairman Joseph Maraziti Jr. said criticisms fail to take into account that the plan will take years to reach its goals. Ferrara said the plan erred in endorsing growth where Merrill Lynch is building its Hopewell Township office complex, but supports it in general.
Copyright 2001 The Times
Planners tighten Route 1 zoning
05/18/01
By KAREN AYRES
Staff WriterWEST WINDSOR -- A decision to reduce the amount of development allowed on the massive American Cyanamid and Sarnoff Corp. properties along Route 1 is not set in stone, township officials said yesterday.
The township planning board opted Wednesday night to place zoning restrictions on both properties that would limit development to 21 percent. The two properties cover about 1,000 acres.
The 6-3 decision came after Sarnoff officials said they might take plans for a "technology campus" elsewhere if the board approved the original proposal of limiting development on its property to 15 percent, a concept included in the township's master plan draft.
Current zoning allows 30 percent development.
"We are very pleased with what we think is a positive first step," said Tom Lento, a Sarnoff representative. "It's a sign of the kind of cooperation between the town and Sarnoff that we've been trying to do all along."
BASF, which now operates on the American Cyanamid site, announced Monday it will close its doors next summer, which means any new zoning regulations will greatly shape future development for whomever takes over the company's 640-acre site.
The planning board intends to vote again on the development issue when review of the entire master plan draft is complete, which is likely several weeks away.
And the planning board can change the master plan at any time, said Ed Steele, the board's chairman. "Two years from now someone could come in and say, `This isn't going to work,' " Steele said. "It is not frequent, but it certainly could happen."
Any zoning changes also must be approved and put into law by the township council.
Charles Morgan, the township council's liaison on the planning board, opposed the measure, saying he does not believe the council will approve a 21 percent floor area ratio, commonly referred to as a (FAR). Morgan said a 21 percent FAR might work on some sites, depending on the layout of development plans, but he does not want to put the requirement into law.
"When the neighbors see something with a 21 percent FAR that is well-designed, it would be acceptable to the community," Morgan said. "But it's important to force Sarnoff or anyone else to fight to do that." But planning board member Bill Benfer, who voted in favor of the measure,
said the 21 percent FAR will not limit the board's ability to approve development plans."We'll be the people to decide where they can put the buildings," Benfer said. "Let's look at their plans."
If Sarnoff built out to the current zoning limitations of 30 percent, the company would generate about $18 million in tax revenue each year, according to statistics compiled by the township's tax assessor.
A 21 percent FAR would generate about $12 million, and a 15 percent FAR would yield about $9 million.
In an effort to reduce potential traffic problems, the planning board included a provision in the vote that stipulates any future development plans for the sites must include a designated right-of-way for mass transit. Part of the township's master plan draft includes a proposal for a
light-rail system that would serve the Route 1 Corridor from the Quaker Bridge Mall in Lawrence to the Forrestal Village area in Plainsboro.The draft proposes placing the two properties into an entirely new classification for research and development that would limit manufacturing. The document has proposed reducing FARs on eight additional properties in the township as well. All the reductions combined could reduce the
township's tax base by about $23 million a year if each property were built out to current limitations, according to tax assessor statistics.The board is expected to vote on the additional FAR reductions Wednesday. Housing and traffic circulation elements of the master plan draft also are scheduled for discussion.
Copyright 2001 The Times
BASF to shut Rt. 1 site
05/15/01
By ANDREW D. SMITH
Staff WriterWEST WINDSOR -- BASF, the giant German chemical maker that last year bought the American Cyanamid research center here, announced yesterday it will close the long-troubled site -- a move that will eliminate some 500 jobs and perhaps spur the development of Mercer County's most valuable piece of open land.
The decision will end 40 years of crop-protection research at the facility, which continued developing herbicides, pesticides and fungicides even as frequent ownership changes and a weakening market for its products created uncertainty about its future.
About 200 of the jobs will be eliminated sometime between June and August this year, company officials said. The remaining 300 will be phased out over a 14-month period as research teams involved in specific projects finish their work.
The fate of another 85 people -- employees of former lab owner American Home Products who still work at the site in space leased for AHP's Fort Dodge Animal Health Care business -- is uncertain.
As for the land, a 640-acre parcel that fronts both Route 1 and Quakerbridge Road, problems stemming from possible environmental complications, changingzoning regulations and tangled ownership arrangements make it difficult to predict when and how it might be developed. But observers expect it to attract interest.
"That's a real jewel of a property," said Steve Benner, the township's tax assessor. "Somebody will be looking to reutilize that space, it's so valuable."
BASF decided to close the research center, said spokesman William Pagano, because it is too small to operate as efficiently as much larger facilities near Ludwigshafen, Germany, where BASF is headquartered and where most of its research operations take place.
Overall, the giant chemical company, which made $1.2 billion in profits last year on sales of $34 billion, employs 103,000 people. Its research facility in Germany alone boasts more than 1,000 people in the company's agricultural products division and more than 10,000 employees total, Pagano said.
The company's Mount Olive office, which houses the world headquarters of its agricultural products division and the North American headquarters of everything else, employs about 2,000 people.
"When you operate on the scale of BASF, a small facility just isn't efficient," Pagano said. "We regret having to let people go, but we will try to make it as easy as possible for our employees by treating them with respect throughout the process."
According to Pagano, for those employees who are willing to reapply for work elsewhere, there are "some, but not many" openings at BASF sites near Raleigh, N.C., and Ludwigshafen. For the rest of the workers here, there will be "fair" severance packages.
Employees of the facility were first notified of the decision to shut down the place yesterday, said a research scientist there.
The woman, who spoke anonymously, said workers there had never felt their jobs were completely secure under BASF ownership. Still, she said, news of the shutdown was a shock when it came.
"Obviously, everyone's upset because we just heard about it," she said. She described the layoffs as affecting "pretty much everybody. Essentially, we were told that the site would be closed by the end of next year."
Luckily for employees, American Home Products built employee protections into its deal to sell the operation to BASF last year, the scientist said.
"It's pretty much of a standard package," she said. "They did have an agreement with AHP that they would give employee packages if they laid people off within two years, so they're honoring that," said the employee, who expects to take a retirement package.
Founded in New York in 1907, American Cyanamid opened its research facility here in 1962.
The company became a major player in agricultural products by developing, among other things, the first synthetic fertilizer and an early strain of corn that could tolerate herbicides and yield more food. It also created a line of pharmaceutical products for people.
In 1994, American Home Products bought Cyanamid, but the company never made money on Cyanamid's agricultural products business.
Several years ago, as demand for pesticides was declining, American Home Products decided to sell Cyanamid. After considering offers from companies such as Dow Chemical Co. and Bayer, AHP agreed to sell the division to BASF for $3.8 billion in cash, plus a transfer of debt from AHP to BASF.
BASF integrated many of Cyanamid's manufacturing and distribution centers around the world into its agricultural products operations. But from the moment BASF bought the property here, there was speculation there would be cuts.
Since then, BASF has trimmed the size of the division worldwide from about 9,800 people to about 7,500 today -- a move that analysts think is necessary.
"Agricultural products is a very competitive business," said Justin Craib-Cox, a stock analyst at Morningstar. "BASF is trying very hard to compete with a number of big names like Monsanto and DuPont and in order to do that, it has to be very efficient. The company cannot afford to keep businesses operating if they are not profitable or if their work is duplicated elsewhere."
Staff Writers Tony Hagen and John Oliver contributed to this report.
Copyright 2001 The Times
Land whets appetites of area brokers
05/15/01
By MARY SISSON
Staff WriterWEST WINDSOR -- The closure of the former American Cyanamid, now owned by BASF, might be depressing for the 500 employees who work there. But it's exciting news for the area's real estate brokers and developers, who expect the 640-acre parcel to sell for a princely sum -- one analyst estimated a sale price of $160 million -- despite a slowing economy. The reasons? As always with real estate there are three: location, location, location.
"It's a great piece of property, located right in the heart of the Route 1 retail zone," said Aubrey Haines, vice president of the brokerage Trammell Crow.
The large property is situated at the northeast corner of the intersection of Route 1 and Quakerbridge Road. The Quaker Bridge Mall lies across Quakerbridge Road. The Nassau Park
shopping center is on the other side of Route 1. And the Mercer Mall lies on the opposite corner of the intersection."It's a phenomenal location, and it always will be," said Steve Tolcash, senior partner at Insignia/ESG & Buschman Partners. Such a location, Tolcash said, will sell even in a soft market. "It may not be the best time," he said. "It still comes back to location."
But despite the location, the site has some drawbacks. The property is still owned by American Home Products, the pharmaceutical company from which BASF bought the lab last July. But BASF has two years remaining on an option to buy the site for a price to be negotiated.
In addition, because of the chemicals used at the facility, the state Department of Environmental Protection must examine the property and determine if a cleanup is necessary. That process could take anywhere from a few months to several years, depending on how much, if any, pollution is found.
BASF spokesman William Pagano said the company does not anticipate any problems will be found on the site. But even if it is polluted, Ted Kraus, president of TKO Realty, does not expect environmental issues to stymie a sale.
"The land's too valuable to just say, `It's contaminated. We're going to let it sit,' " said Kraus. Instead, he expects the land to sell, minus the cost of any cleanup.
A more potent barrier may be the township of West Windsor. In some ways, BASF was an ideal tenant for the township. The company kept much of the property undeveloped as farmland while contributing significant tax revenues from its agricultural research facility. The property is assessed at $54 million, and property owner American Home Products makes the largest tax contribution to the township of any single entity, paying $1.83 million in taxes last year, according to Steve Benner, township tax assessor.
A similar use "probably isn't a viable option," Mayor Carole Carson said. "How many companies do agricultural research?"
Yet even before yesterday's announcement, township officials were moving to halve the amount of development allowed on the property. The planning board is scheduled to vote tomorrow night to revise the town's master plan.
Officials from American Home Products and other affected landowners, including the Sarnoff Corp., have been fighting the proposal. The board also can make things tough for a developer by not expanding the type of development allowed. Currently, the BASF site is zoned for office
space, agricultural use and research and development.Kraus and Haines expect that, because of its size, the lot will eventually have to be rezoned to include some residential and some retail use. "There's not one single use you could put on it," said Kraus.
But Sam Surtees, director of community development for West Windsor, said he thought it was very unlikely the types of development allowed would be expanded.
"Not under this planning board," he said. Even if the board is unyielding, the site will likely still find a buyer -- but it will fetch a lower price and take longer to develop."If they only build offices, the site will take forever to finish. If they can build (office, retail and residential space), it can take less time to build and, therefore, be more valuable," said Haines.
Tolcash expects the site to mainly become home to offices, and for it to be a decade-long development project. But, he noted, the area already has several large companies "that can change the landscape in a major way in one fell swoop."
Even with all the zoning issues, Kraus is expecting the price for the land to go perhaps as low as $250,000 an acre -- $160 million for the whole lot. Staff writers Andrew D. Smith and John Oliver contributed to this report.
Copyright 2001 The Times
Sarnoff: Zoning changes too drastic
05/11/01
By KAREN AYRES
Staff WriterWEST WINDSOR -- Sarnoff Corp.'s plan to build a massive "technology campus" along Route 1 will be impossible if the township planning board approves zoning changes now under consideration, say company officials. And a decision to limit development at Sarnoff and 10 other commercial sites in town eventually could cost the township more than $23 million in annual tax revenues, township officials acknowledge.
Sarnoff President James Carnes stopped short of saying he definitely would build the campus in another municipality if the board reduces the amount of allowable development on the company's 335-acre property. But he said the company's vision for the campus as a center of technology
would mean about 21 percent of the site would be developed. The board is considering a draft master plan proposal to reduce allowable development from 30 to 15 percent."The proposed 50 percent reduction in (floor-area ratio) will make our vision impossible," Carnes said. "We feel like we need to build this technology campus to move forward in our business. If we don't see it happening here, we have to evaluate where it could happen."
If Sarnoff were to build out to its current limitations of 30 percent, it would generate almost $18 million in tax revenue each year based on current dollars, but that figure would be cut in half if the ratio were reduced to 15 percent, according to statistics compiled by the township tax assessor. Slightly less than $14 million would be generated under Sarnoff's current
proposal.The draft master plan, now under review by the planning board, calls for cutting the amount of allowable development on 10 commercial properties in town. At full buildout, the reduction could cost the township $23 million in tax revenue in current dollars each year.
Carnes asked the board to approve a 21 percent floor area ratio. Original plans presented to the board in January called for 24 percent of development, but Sarnoff has reduced plans in response to residents' concerns, Carnes said.
"If you set the FAR any lower, the campus we're proposing will just not be possible," Carnes said. "We will wind up with another small office park with no room for other technology companies or our own ventures."
Planing board member Charles Morgan said Sarnoff's objection to the proposal might not be enough to convince board members to increase allowable development. "I heard the undercurrent of a threat that they might go elsewhere, but I don't know if that's enough to break the camel's back," Morgan said. "I don't know where they would go because other towns are also going with a reduced FAR."
"This isn't a trivial matter," Carnes said. "A successful business will have a positive impact on property taxes."
Sarnoff has eliminated about 500,000 square feet from its original proposal by reducing the number of floors on parking garages and several buildings. An office building on Washington Road and two buildings on Fisher Place also have been eliminated. The current proposal calls for a total of 3 million square feet of development to serve about 6,000 employees -- 4,000 fewer than suggested on the concept proposal presented to the township in January.
"We've taken comments from interested parties into account," Carnes said. "But under the draft master plan it could all go for nothing."
"The proposal is too drastic," said Chris Baker, a lawyer representing American Cyanamid, which leases its property off Route 1 to BASF. "If you reduce the FAR too drastically and you render companies uncompetitive, companies looking to develop on Route 1 will go to other towns."
Baker said his client likely would accept the same 21 percent of allowable development that Carnes is proposing. Both men told the board that reducing that percentage will not necessarily reduce traffic -- a central complaint from many residents.
"You'll see much more congestion, if you don't expand the Princeton Junction area or do other things," said Gary Davies, the board's traffic engineer. "FAR reductions in and of themselves are insufficient. We have to have a whole tool kit on this."
Residents have objected to the draft master plan's proposals for reducing traffic since the document was released a few weeks ago. Signs scattered around the township voice opposition to plans to widen Alexander Road and move the Alexander Road Bridge closer to the Princeton Junction Train Station.
For the second week in a row, residents of the Berrien City neighborhood flocked to Wednesday's planning board meeting because they feel the road changes will destroy their neighborhood and level some homes. Leaders have collected 200 signatures opposing the current proposal.
"There's such a sense of community, and I moved here for that," said Ella Hullfish, a Montgomery Street resident. "Everyone walks. There are home businesses that are going to be threatened. It's upsetting to me."
The board voted Wednesday to hold off on discussions about Princeton Junction and Edinburgh as residents work together to present suggestions to the board about the bridge realignment and road layout. The draft master plan is posted on the district's Web site at www.westwindsornj.org.
The board will hold another public hearing Wednesday.
Sandra Starr Foundation Conference Focuses on Impact of Region's Transformation
Princeton, N.J., April 29, 2001.
"Princeton is as much a small town as Greenwich Village is a village," Robert Geddes, the noted architect and founder of Princeton Future, declared yesterday at a conference on "Princeton: The Big Picture," sponsored by the Sandra Starr Foundation. The meeting addressed the changes sweeping the region and the urgent need for new understandings, new policies, and what
Congressman Rush Holt at the meeting called "new tools" if Princeton and its neighbors are to continue to be livable communities.Opening the conference, Paul Starr, the foundation's president, recalled the wry comment of a long-time Princetonian that Princton was the "Leichtenstein of New Jersey." But "the world closes in," Starr added, and the speakers that followed underlined that point.
Clogged transportation arteries were the problem that several speakers highlighted in their discussions of growth and sprawl. Robert Yaro, director of the New York-based Regional Plan Association, argued that New Jersey's economic development has depended on its relationship to New York City and that the transit connections between the two have reached the limit of their
capacity. There has been no expansion of the Hudson River crossings since a second level was added to the George Washington Bridge 40 years ago. Train service from New Jersey into New York has also basically reached its limit. A new rail tunnel-under consideration by the Port Authority-is a $6 billion project that has yet to be financed.Carlos Rodrigues, manager of special projects at New Jersey's Office of State Planning, pointed to the enormous gap between the future development implied by local zoning in Mercer County and the area's limited network of roads and public transportation. The state has adopted a plan that calls for emphasis on compact, mixed-use development around town centers. Nonetheless,
the local municalities continue to zone large tracts for single-use development, which implies continued reliance on automobiles for trips to work and shopping. The old model for the suburbs is no longer workable, Rodrigues argued, but local governments have yet to adjust their plans and
zoning.Van Zandt Williams, vice president for development of Princeton University and former chair of the Regional Planning Partnership, emphatically took up the same issue, arguing that we were just "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic" without changes in local zoning. Invited by moderator Ingrid Reed to pose the first question to the speakers,
Congressman Holt stood up in the audience and asked what "tools" citizens and communities need to respond to sprawl. He said that he was particularly interested in tools that federal legislation might provide. Yaro suggested that the government could provide funds for communities to do "build-out" analyses, which "fast-forward" to the likely outcome of local
zoning and other land-use regulation. He cited the example of a build-out analysis for a small town in Massachusetts that showed it had zoned for more commercial space than exists in Boston. When a community sees the implications for traffic, needed public services, and consequent tax levels, people often decide to support changes in plans and regulations.A second questioner, Mayor Phyllis Marchand of Princeton Township, noted, however, that when localities change zoning, they often face costly legal battles with developers. Yaro then identified a second tool that government could provide: legal support for local governments in land-use litigation. He cited the sharp decline in challenges to rezoning on Long Island when the
State of New York assumed responsibility for resisting lawsuits. Others at the conference argued, however, that progress would be difficult without changes in tax policy. Because local governments in New Jersey rely on property taxes, they have strong incentives to chase development and ignore the spillover effects on traffic and public services in neighboring
communities. In the Princeton area, for example, West Windsor has zoned land along Route 1 for millions of additional square feet of community space, ignoring the effects on other communities.Several speakers suggested the need for incentives for collaboration in regional planning. Yaro suggested, for example, that communities could become eligible to receive state funds if they made their zoning consistent with regional plans.
At the beginning of the conference, Paul Starr presented the foundation's Margen Penick Award, to Jean Mahoney, who has been a leader of the Sensible Transportation Options Partnership, a group active in resisting plans for the Millstone Bypass and demanding a broader regional approach to transportation needs.
In the discussion about the effects of regional growth on Princeton, at least one speaker offered a more positive perspective. Bill Lockwood, special programming director at McCarter Theater, described how McCarter had evolved from a "community auditorium" into a regional theater. Lockwood, who grew up in Princeton in the 1940s and 1950s, recalled that when he and his
family went to McCarter, they saw amateur theatricals and knew most of the other people in the audience. When he first went to work for McCarter in the 1960s, they were hoping to persuade 1,000 people to subscribe to a dramatic series.Today, Lockwood continued, McCarter has 13,000 subscribers, and there are evenings when he stands in the lobby of the theater and does not recognize a single face. That is because the theater now has a much wider public, drawn from 35,000 households and extending into a broader region beyond Princeton, which now accounts for less than a quarter of the audience.
New Jersey's state plan, according to Carlos Rodrigues, treats Princeton as a regional center. But not everyone in Princeton accepts that larger role for the town. One of the spakers at the conference, Yina Moore, a member of the Princeton Regional Planning Board, said the other communities in the area should "get a life." And Professor Geddes, describing the results of
the consultations organized by Princeton Future, said most Princeton residents still see the community as a small town. One of the challenges, he suggested, is to bring that nostalgic vision into line with the realities of the larger changes affecting the community.From Sandra Starr Foundation Web Site
Land Use Articles January - March 2002
|
|
|
|
|