Concerned Citizens’ plan faulted on basis of finances and engineering.
By: Jennifer Potash
If the proposals for Princeton Borough downtown parking garage development were used in a certain credit card’s advertising campaign, the results might look like this:
From the Princeton Borough Council’s point of view: "The cost of a 500-space parking garage and public plaza $13.5 million. Never having to circle the block hunting for a parking space priceless."
Or from the perspective of Concerned Citizen of Princeton, the ad campaign would read: "The price of a 2½-level parking deck with two public plazas $2.5 million. Not having five-story buildings crowd the Princeton streetscape along Witherspoon and Spring streets priceless."
Both the Borough Council and Concerned Citizens want to preserve quality of life for borough residents but they have different definitions of what comprises quality of life.
The Borough Council, through its plan with developer Nassau HKT Associates, seeks to provide more downtown parking, additional downtown rental apartments, public gathering spaces and walkways and a food market. The plan calls for a 500-car garage, a five-story mixed-use building, a plaza on the former Park & Shop lot with another five-story mixed use building on the Tulane Street parking lot.
An alternative proposed by Concerned Citizens, a 2½-level parking deck with a large public plaza fronting Witherspoon Street and a smaller one facing Spring Street, provides more parking than the former Park & Shop lot and the present Tulane Street lot, the group says.
But that plan falls short of the needed parking spaces for downtown shoppers and Princeton Public Library patrons, Mayor Marvin Reed said. Also, the Concerned Citizens Plan, which lacks a revenue stream to pay for the plazas, could cost borough taxpayers between $200,000 and $400,000 every year, the mayor said.
"No matter how you slice it, a pared-down plan would cost considerably more and would require a taxpayer subsidy," Mayor Reed said. "When you eliminate the apartment buildings in the plan, you eliminate $500,000 in potential income."
That $500,000 stems from the land lease payments from the developer to the borough.
The Concerned Citizens’ engineering is also under attack. The borough’s garage consultant, Tim Haas, reviewed the plans and found the parking structure proposed by the group would yield only 119 spaces, not the 250 parking spaces claimed by the group.
Also, the construction costs would likely be $15,800 per space, not $10,000 per space claimed by Concerned Citizens, due to the requirement of a firewall and retaining wall plus the "premium associated with the garage being very small," Mr. Haas wrote in a memo to Borough Administrator Robert Bruschi.
Jim Firestone, a Vandeventer Avenue resident and president of Concerned Citizens, concedes his plan has unanswered questions and unresolved costs, but so does the borough’s proposal, he said.
"I’m not quite sure what the costs are in (the borough’s) plan either, because it doesn’t include the costs per pupil of all the schoolchildren added from those apartments," Mr. Firestone said.
While some individuals associated with Concerned Citizens have suggested a lawsuit could come if the borough doesn’t abandon the garage plan, Mr. Firestone said the group remains "flexible" toward downtown development.
"The vast majority do want Princeton-scale development downtown," as opposed to no development or the massive development proposed, he said.
Despite Mr. Firestone’s call for more discussion of Concerned Citizens’ plan, Mayor Reed said the analysis by Mr. Haas is "more or less it" for that discussion.
He noted that a great deal of careful study and lots of public participation over at least three years resulted in the borough’s plan.
The Borough Council, which approved the financing for the garage last month, is slated to vote on the developer’s agreement at a special meeting Jan. 21.
Mayor Reed said copies of the agreement, with all the attachments and exhibits, are available at the clerk’s office in Borough Hall and at the Princeton Public Library.

