Pact entails purchase of a conservation easement, for $500,000, from Alex Hanson, owner of 67 acres.
By John Tredrea
Pennington Borough has agreed to pool resources with Mercer County and the nonprofit Delaware & Raritan Greenway to preserve, as open space, a 67-acre tract of Hopewell Township land located just north of the borough.
The Borough Council voted unanimously Monday night in favor of an enabling ordinance after conferring about the land deal with Jack Koeppel, chairman of Pennington’s Open Space Committee.
As outlined by Mr. Koeppel, the deal entails purchase of a conservation easement, for $500,000, from Alex Hanson, owner of the 67 acres.
The land is located between North Main Street and Baldwin Lake.
Pennington will contribute $200,000. Of that amount, $180,000 will be taken from a $400,000 grant the borough received from the state Green Acres program. Twenty thousand dollars will come from borough revenues collected through its open space tax. Mercer County has agreed to contribute $200,000 and the D&R Greenway $100,000, Mr. Koeppel said. He added that, if the deal goes through, this will be first time the borough has tapped into the $400,000 it received from Green Acres.
"We hope to close" on the purchase of the easement before the end of the year, Mr. Koeppel said. If the deal goes through as expected, the only possible change to the land would be construction of a residence near the one existing residence, located near the center of the tract, where Mr. Hanson lives. If the second house is built, it could not be rented. Woodlands on the northern part of the tract would be left intact. Also unchanged would be the agricultural use of several fields on the southern portion.
What would change is that the public would have access to a trail on the northern portion of the tract. The trail, which would follow an existing unpaved maintenance road, would run from North Main Street to a point near Baldwin Lake. At that point, a hiker could pick up trails, leading toward Stony Brook and Kunkel Park in Pennington, on tracts that already have been preserved as open space.
Mr. Koeppel said the Hanson family is being very generous, because the land has been appraised at nearly double the amount that will be paid for the conservation easement. Two appraisals, required by state law for the deal to go through, put the value of the land at $962,000 and $878,000, Mr. Koeppel said.
"What the Hanson family is giving is amazing," Mr. Koeppel declared.
Councilman Weed Tucker noted that the only money for the purchase of the easement that will come out of the borough’s tax base will be the $20,000 from open space revenues.
"This is fantastic," he said.
Mayor Jim Loper said the Open Space Committee had done "a super job" in making it happen. The mayor noted that the borough collects about $21,000 in open space revenues annually.
The only public access on the tract will be on the trail. All the 67 acres still will be owned by Mr. Hanson, meaning he still will pay property taxes on it.
If the purchase of the conservation easement goes through as expected, Pennington will still have $220,000 of the $400,000 granted to the borough by the state’s Green Acres program.
Mr. Koeppel and John Jackson, also of the Open Space Committee, say their group is investigating other tracts for possible open space acquisitions, a primary goal being the encirclement of as much of the borough as possible with a so-called Green Belt of open space.