Three tracts total 105 acres
John Tredrea
The Hopewell Township Committee adopted, on March 16, three ordinances under which the township would help purchase three tracts of land, totaling about 105 acres, that would permanently be preserved as open space.
The committee’s vote on the ordinance pertaining to the largest tract — an 82-acre piece that straddles the eastern township’s border with Lawrence — was unanimous. The vote on other two tracts, 18 and three acres in size, was 4-1, with John Hart casting the “no” vote in both cases.
Most of the funding for all three purchases would come from parties other than the township under a scenario outlined for the committee by Edmund Stiles, president of the Friends of Hopewell Valley Open Space (FoHVOS) and the Delaware and Raritan Greenway and broker of most of the open space preservation projects that have occurred in Hopewell Valley during the past dozen years.
The open space purchase of the 82-acre tract, which Dr. Stiles said may fall through because a much higher offer from another bidder had surfaced recently, would include $70,000 from Hopewell Township, as authorized by the ordinance adopted March 16. Lawrence Township also would pay $70,000.
Other sources of funding would include $500,000 from the Delaware and Raritan Greenway, $188,000 from neighbors of the property and $192,000 from Mercer County, for a total of $922,000 for the purchase of residentially zoned land. The land could sustain construction of three houses, according to the results of soil percolation tests, Dr. Stiles said.
The move to buy this tract did not sit well with township resident Bill Schoelwer. During the public hearing that preceded the adoption vote on the ordinance, Mr. Schoelwer said, “This is a complete, horrible waste of the township’s money … nothing can be done with the land anyway.”
“Someone else is willing to pay a lot more for the land,” Dr. Stiles countered. “And we’re probably going to get beat out of the deal.”
Mayor Marylou Ferrara added that, as Dr. Stiles pointed out when the three ordinances were introduced by the committee March 2, the purchase price for all three tracts came from appraisals by state-certified firms. Under state law, such appraisals are required for purchases in which public money is used to buy land for open space. At least two appraisals must be done, independent of one another. If the appraisals done by the two firms are more than 10 percent apart, the matter is sent to the state, which has a series of procedures in place to resolve the matter, the mayor added.
The other two ordinances covered 18 acres along Jacob’s Creek, near Pennington-Titusville Road, and a three-acre lot near Crusher Road. Voting “no” on both, Mr. Hart was particularly critical of the three-acre acquisition. “This is a lousy deal,” he said. “It sets a bad precedent. This is not what was envisioned when we passed an open space tax.”
Echoing what Mr. Hart said during the March 2 meeting, resident Sheila Beyer said she had visited the three-acre lot, which she said is “covered with huge boulders.”
Mayor Ferrara and Committeemen Robert Higgins and Jon Edwards defended buying the three acres, which Dr. Stiles said are needed if an uninterrupted band of open space, several miles long, is to be preserved from an area near Hopewell Borough to the Stony Brook, near the township’s southern border.
“This is a good use of public money,” Mayor Ferrara said of the three-acre buy.
Intimating that it is possible to remove boulders from land, Mr. Higgins said: “People will build anywhere.”
Mr. Edwards said the three acres, though only a “small link” in the band of open space mentioned by Dr. Stiles, could become “a large problem in the years ahead” if the purchase is not made. “This very clearly is part of a vision , which we find very compelling, for the preservation of everything we hold dear in Hopewell Township,” Mr. Edwards said.
Under the ordinances adopted by the committee, the township would contribute $4,500 of the $93,000 for the three acres off Crusher Road. The county and FoHVOS would pay the rest, Dr. Stiles said. For the 18 acres near Jacob’s Creek, the township would pay 10 percent of the purchase price, which will not exceed $350,000, Dr. Stiles said. Here again, the FoHVOS and county would cover the balance.
Also during the March 16 meeting, Dr. Stiles said the National Park Service has become involved in the effort to establish networks of open space in Hopewell Valley, Princeton and Monmouth County. The idea endorsed by the Park Service is “to create a tourist destination that recognizes the importance of the Revolutionary War,” Dr. Stiles. Revolutionary battlefields that could be linked by the open space network are in Princeton Township and Monmouth.
Township resident Robert Beyer said officials should investigate trying to preserve lands in the southern township, between county Route 546 and I-95, as open space. Dr. Stiles said he is in contact with landowners in that area on the matter. However, both he and Committeeman Edwards noted that much of the land in that area is already developed. What’s left would be very expensive to buy, they said.
The largest undeveloped tract of township land south of county Route 546 is a 400-plus acre piece bought about a year ago by Merrill Lynch. The property runs along the west side of Scotch Road, opposite Merrill’s construction site for the 3.5-million-square-foot, 11,000-worker Scotch Road Office Park, the first several buildings of which are expected to open this year, acting Township Administrator Peter Raynor said.