Staff editorial
RCN’s decision to move to the heart of Lawrence Township, off Princeton Pike, bears the proverbial good news and bad news.
The haste with which the application was pushed through is not a concern to us. The application was reviewed thoroughly and evidently was prepared meticulously by the developer.
The application met all the regulations of the zoning code (two inconsequential changes were made in the zoning ordinance to accommodate the company) and would have been approved even if another month had been taken to review it. To lose a ratable of this size because of an avoidable one-month delay would have been be a disservice to taxpayers.
However, we sympathize with Lewisville Road residents upset about a major corporate office park behind their homes. Yet one can never expect a 79-acre lot zoned for office or research purposes to remain vacant in this part of the country wedged as we are between New York City and Philadelphia.
Several residents asked to have the land bought for farmland preservation purposes. There were two problems with that option.
The first is the low prices typically offered by government officials for land. Landowners hoping to get a return on their investments would much rather sell to a telecommunications giant than to the government.
Also, preservation is typically sought as a way to save money by reducing the number of houses that can be built and thus the number of children going to taxpayer-supported schools. No houses would have been nixed by preserving the land behind the Union Camp building. Mayor Greg Puliti has said the land was “out of reach” of preservation efforts.
To say that RCN will raise traffic issues would be an understatement of the grandest scale. RCN will create traffic — fill in your own word here … headaches, migraines, nightmares, catastrophes. Princeton Pike is not an enjoyable commute now. No matter how many lanes the road will be widened to, the situation is going to get a whole lot worse — even if most of the traffic will be located on the quarter-mile or so between the entrance and the I-95 ramp.
Lewisville Road is going to get busier, too. Commuters will figure out how to take Lewisville to Princeton Pike and make two rights, rather than merging left and then making a left turn into the office park. Lewisville is in terrible condition. A way to alleviate that problem should be worked out when the developer, Matrix Development Corp., comes back to gain final approval sometime in the next few months.
The dollar figures are good ones for residents — more than $3 million to the township and school district in property taxes each year and up to 2,000 new jobs. Those figures mean approximately 13 cents that could be dropped from the combined tax rate.
So while your opinion on RCN’s move depends on whether you live near it or drive past it, at least the township will be compensated for the — fill in your own word here…