Official says state is committed to arriving at a settlement before Gov.-elect Jim McGreevey takes office in January.
By: Steve Rauscher
MONTGOMERY The Township Committee is mulling a deal with the state to purchase more than 230 acres of the former North Princeton Developmental Center, according to Committeeman Don Matthews.
Representatives from both sides met last week, and Mr. Matthews said the state had named a price for the former home for epileptics.
"They made an offer and now we have to evaluate it," he said.
Mr. Matthews did not disclose the details of the offer.
Under its current zoning, the NPDC property is worth more than $4 million, Mr. Matthews said.
A spokesman for the state Department of the Treasury also refused to comment on the specifics of the offer, but said the state was committed to arriving at a settlement before Gov.-elect Jim McGreevey takes office in January.
"It was a productive meeting and we definitely made progress," said Francis Rapa, a spokesman for the department. "We are confident and hopeful that we can arrive at an agreement before the end of the year."
The township has had its eye on the NPDC property since well before it finally closed its doors in 1998, but until recently had been at odds with the state over the best use of the site’s miles of winding roads and 100 aging buildings.
Those familiar with NPDC also suspected that the site, which operated as a virtually self-sufficient village for most of the 20th century, had sustained extensive environmental damage.
Because of disagreements over the use of the site, and the uncertainty over the cost of cleaning up any environmental damage, the state and township have made little progress since negotiations began in earnest in 1995.
Township leaders had developed a plan in the mid-1990s to renovate many of NPDC’s existing buildings, turning the site into a town center with commercial ratables and some housing. But the state favored high-density housing that would bring in a higher price for the development rights to the site and help defray its cleanup costs. As negotiations dragged on, the buildings deteriorated and few are suitable for anything more than demolition now, Township Committee members have said.
Intense development in the center of a township already choked with traffic ran contrary to the sentiment of many Montgomery residents to preserve the township’s rural character, leading the township to abandon its original vision of the site for a new plan that would commit most of the area to open-space preservation.
In November, acting Gov. Donald DeFrancesco’s office released a statement committing the state to delivering the property to the township for open-space preservation, and ditching its own plans to see the site developed.
Township Committee members still were concerned, however, about the extent of environmental damage to the site and whether the state would accept responsibility for the cleanup. In the absence of concrete information, neither the township nor the state could settle on a price that reflected the cost of the cleanup.
Recently, though, the state Department of Environmental Protection has completed a remedial investigation report of the site, which says that the degree of groundwater contamination from the site’s landfill, fertilizer run-off and more than 20 underground storage tanks is less than had been expected.
Apart from elevated levels of polyaromatic hydrocarbons in the soil surrounding the site’s boiler and power house, DEP spokeswoman Rachel Hamilton said, the site was relatively clean.
"There are basically only minor soil and minor groundwater issues," she said. "(We’re) thrilled that this is the only damage that there is."
The new report, however, does not consider the asbestos fireproofing contained in most of the old buildings, which will have to be stripped away and hauled off the site when the buildings are demolished.
A Treasury Department spokesman would not comment on whether the state had a cleanup cost estimate on which it had based its offer to the township, but Mr. Matthews said the issue of who would be responsible for cleaning up the site formerly a sticking point appeared to be settled.
"The state has acknowledged that they have an obligation to clean it up," he said. "They seem to think it’s not going to cost much more than a million." He said the state put the estimate for removing the asbestos at a further $1.5 million.
The Township Committee met in executive session Monday morning to discuss the state’s offer. No date has been set for the next meeting with state representatives, Mr. Matthews said, but he expected to schedule one soon.