Washington Twp.’s square not parallel with Middletown’s
With all due respect to Mayor David Fried and the project in Washington Township, Mercer County, there are few, if any similarities, to the travesty proposed for Middletown. I checked into the township’s Web site and this is what I found.
Washington Town Center prides itself on being the first town center designed by the municipality with the interests of the municipality in mind. The Middletown mall is designed by a private developer with the developer in mind.
Washington Square is 400 acres with 250,000 feet of office/commercial/retail. The Middletown project crams more than four times the amount of office/commercial/retail into about one-third of the space, or 137 acres.
According to the township’s own Web site, "open space" in Washington Town-ship means open space, and includes public gardens, parks, lakes and a village square in addition to an abandoned rail bed converted into a bike trail. Mountain Hill Development has been fighting tooth-and-nail with the township to allow it to call retention basins and parking lot foliage open space. The only real open space is a 4-acre village square that includes a bandstand in the middle of the complex. This is the one of the last open pieces of property in a town that is "85 percent built out."
The Washington Township project includes the construction of a pedestrian bridge across the highway, connecting it with the municipal building. The Middletown project does not.
The mayor of Washington Township asks how we cannot support the Azzolina/Scaduto plan. Well, Mayor Fried, we don’t want the traffic generated by a megamall that you very wisely limited in your own community by keeping the size of commercial/retail substantially lower than that proposed for the Middletown megamall. The Concerned Citizens of Middletown invite you to drive on Route 35 in the middle of the afternoon to live, firsthand, with the traffic. Also, on your road trip/tour up and down Route 35, assess the amount of open retail space that is available presently. Why build more when we can’t fill what we have already?
But, thank you for your concern for what’s going on here in Middletown. If you want to find out more about the scope of the Azzolina/Scaduto plan and its impact on Middletown, log on to our Web page at www.notowncenter.com.
Linda Gumina
President
Concerned Citizens of Middletown