Bordentown City Planning Board and its Master Plan subcommittee look to design the city’s future.
By: Scott Morgan
BORDENTOWN CITY Mark Remsa made the point over and over again revising the city’s Master Plan is not about changing things around. It’s about enhancing what’s there.
As Mr. Remsa, director of economic development and regional planning for Burlington County, went through the overview of the city’s first Master Plan revision since 1993 last week, he outlined the future of Bordentown as a bustling center of tourism ensconced in natural beauty. Tourism, especially, he told audience and Planning Board members alike, "is an opportunity that awaits you."
The presentation, given by the city Planning Board to about a dozen city residents on May 19, was the first in what are expected to be several attempts throughout the year to solicit public input in how the city designs its future through land use. It was not, however, an outline of policy. Rather, Mr. Remsa said, it was an overview of the direction the Planning Board and its Master Plan subcommittee would like to take the city as it designs Bordentown’s future.
By law, municipalities must revisit their Master plans every six years; Bordentown has not revised its Master Plan in 11 years, though it was reviewed in the mid-1990s, according to Mayor John W. Collom. Usually, revisiting a Master Plan generates a set of revisions to zoning ordinances and changes to certain areas so that development can be sped up or slowed down.
Mr. Remsa’s presentation outlined how the city envisions keeping up (or, more accurately, catching up) with what Mayor Collom has referred to as a rapidly changing environment. By redefining and shifting existing commercial, residential and natural areas, Mr. Remsa said, the city could develop its unused and underused parcels, restore and maintain its historical sites and develop new businesses designed to draw seasonal visitors and generate jobs.
Mr. Remsa said the main idea for Bordentown’s future is not to stop development, but to tweak its existing residential and commercial zones to allow for more controlled and aesthetically pleasing pattern that allow for more contiguous areas of a kind or controlled growth within a zone. For example, a commercial/industrial zone could be adjusted to allow for cluster developments within its own borders, rather than just allowing all-out development across the zone.
Mr. Remsa emphasized that the city is planning redevelopment, not new development.
The best areas to consider for redevelopment, Mr. Remsa said, are along the waterfront (where officials are considering restaurants, bed and breakfast inns and a Delaware River Heritage Trail) and along the Route 130/206 corridor, where more attractive business fronts could be developed.
According to a draft of the Master Plan’s land use element, officials are also very concerned about parking how to develop lots for business traffic and how to keep it convenient at the same time. To encourage more downtown foot traffic, according to the draft, officials also outline plans to allow for apartments over businesses.
Mr. Remsa said the board, which developed the draft over the past several months, is aware of the amount of work such a course of action will take.
"Redevelopment is hard," he said. "Development of a cornfield is easy. That’s part of the problem with all the sprawl."
Bordentown City has "a very small amount" of undeveloped land and much of that is either too environmentally sensitive to build on or, as in the 106-acre Divine Word Seminary property on Park Street, privately owned land that the city cannot touch, said Mayor Collom.
Planning Board Chairman Sam Surtees encouraged an ongoing dialogue between citizens and the board over the coming months, so that officials better understand residents’ wishes.
Crosswicks Street resident Mary Beth Lonergan offered the board several suggestions, including the one which got the most attention, the rezoning of the Divine Word property.
The former seminary now serves as a retirement home for the order’s priests and, according to Mayor Collom, who recently met with seminary representatives to discuss the property’s future, the grounds are not likely to go up for sale anytime soon. But at the moment, the grounds are zoned for residential development, and, should the order decide to sell, the property "would be scoffed up before the ‘For Sale’ sign even got pounded into the ground," Mayor Collom said. In that event, he said, a developer could enter town with a plan to put several houses down and the city would have a hard time keeping it from happening.
Also, the mayor said, under current zoning, nothing is stopping Divine Word’s owners from building homes, should they decide they want to (which Mayor Collom said they’ve shown no interest in doing).
Ms. Lonergan offered a plan to zone the property for light industrial and commercial use in which the openness of the property would be maintained through campus-like development. Officials agreed it is best to prepare for the future of the property, but disagreed that it should consist of walk-in shops, which they said would draw foot traffic away from the Farnsworth Avenue downtown business core.
Planning Board member Michelle McHugh said she would like to see the grounds become a sculpture garden with businesses relating to art, such as cafés, on the grounds.
"There are lots of artists out there that would love to have a space here," she said.
But, Mayor Collom said, ideas such as these are speculative. Changes, he said, are very likely to be made detailing what uses that property can accept, but nothing yet has been decided.
"It’s not policy yet," he said of the Master Plan. "These are work sessions."
He added that the Planning Board will continue to look for public input through the rest of the year.