Major parcels have already been preserved, Planning Board is told.
By: David Campbell
An attorney for the Institute for Advanced Study told the Princeton Regional Planning Board Thursday night the institute has already conserved a significant portion of its lands and has no intention of selling a remaining parcel that Revolutionary War enthusiasts and a state official would like to see conserved as part of Princeton Battlefield State Park.
"The institute’s intention is to develop what little land it has left as faculty housing," attorney Christopher Tarr told the board on Thursday.
Mr. Tarr made his comments after Jerald Hurwitz of the Princeton Battlefield Area Preservation Society and others told the board the land was "hallowed ground" where American soldiers fought at the Battle of Princeton and should not be developed.
Officials with the institute presented the Planning Board with a concept plan to build 15 single-family residences for faculty and emeritus professors on 24 acres adjacent to the battlefield park, to the west of the institute.
The institute’s preliminary proposal complies with all zoning requirements, which permit residential housing on the site, according to the township’s zoning office.
In a letter last week to the institute, Alvin Payne, acting director of the state Division of Parks and Forestry, called on the institute to work with the state’s Green Acres program and allow the state to purchase the land.
"This proposed development … would irreversibly destroy the archaeological resources of the site," Mr. Payne said in the letter. "I know the institute is looking to the future, however, we must never forget our past."
Mr. Hurwitz likened the institute’s proposed development to "building vacation houses on Omaha Beach." He asked the institute "in its good will" to postpone its application to give his group time to raise money to purchase the land.
"It’s ground on which American patriots fought and died," said Mr. Hurwitz, a Plainsboro Township resident. "We want to preserve this land for the American community and for the Princeton community."
But Mr. Tarr told the Planning Board that the institute has set aside significant portions of its land to conservation already and needs to use what little developable land remains for needed faculty housing.
According to institute spokeswoman Georgia Whidden, of the approximately 800 acres the institute owns, 589 acres are already protected under a permanent preservation agreement.
The institute acts as steward of the 589-acre Institute Woods, but it cannot use the land for development, Ms. Whidden said.
The institute sold an additional 32 acres of its land to the state in 1973, land which comprises around 38 percent of the 85-acre Princeton Battlefield State Park, the spokeswoman said.
Ms. Whidden said the institute has conserved almost 75 percent of its property, and said that at the time the battlefield park was created in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was never any mention of including the parcel now under discussion.
The institute’s remaining 211 acres are taken up by its campus or by wetlands or other undevelopable space, the spokeswoman said.
Mr. Hurwitz said Thursday that a portion of the land the institute sold to the state as parkland in 1973 around 13 acres where parking for the historic Clarke House is located today was slated for new faculty housing by the institute, a project he said his group helped stop.
The proposed new housing by architectural firm The Hillier Group would be used for some of the 25 faculty members and 13 emeritus faculty at the institute, Ms. Whidden said.
"The issue of providing housing for our faculty is an issue we’ve been concerned about for several decades," the spokeswoman said.
Access to the new houses would be provided by a new loop road that would extend Stone House Drive into the proposed development.
John Mills, curator of the park, said the development site played a pivotal role in George Washington’s victory over the British on Jan. 3, 1777.
Massachusetts Continental troops and Pennsylvania riflemen helped Gen. Washington re- verse a rout by the British by forming a right flank on the property to Washington’s left flank that drove the British troops into retreat, Mr. Mills said.