Variant views offered on future of hospital site

Princeton HealthCare System and Princeton Future present their vision for Witherspoon facility.

By: David Campbell
   Princeton HealthCare System and Princeton Future presented competing visions Thursday night of how the University Medical Center at Princeton on Witherspoon Street should be redeveloped.
   PHCS and the nonprofit citizens’ planning group appeared before the Princeton Regional Planning Board, which is weighing possible Master Plan amendments leading to rezoning of the hospital’s land for reuse and redevelopment.
   By press time Thursday night, Yina Moore, Planning Board member and chairwoman of Princeton Future’s neighborhood preservation task force, was discussing in detail six possible design concepts outlined earlier by Michael Mostoller, chairman of the organization’s planning and design task force. The board had not yet given input on the PHCS or Princeton Future presentations. Other community groups also were poised to address the board.
   PHCS is working with architect J. Robert Hillier of West Windsor-based Hillier Architecture to devise a plan that would then serve as a blueprint for potential developers. On Thursday night, Mr. Hillier presented the board with design concepts that have evolved with input from residents at two PHCS neighborhood meetings — and which were strikingly different in vision from Princeton Future’s.
   The community planning group’s six options included tearing down the main eight-story hospital facility, except under one option; breaking up the hospital "super block;" and building from 111 to 306 residential units in varying design layouts of townhouses, courtyards, senior and garden apartments, limited commercial development and public parkland.
   Mr. Hillier’s vision for the property, by contrast, emphasized largely reusing the existing hospital buildings.
   He said the goals of design ideas floated by PHCS, the hospital’s corporate parent, were providing affordable housing; reducing traffic to one-half or one-third of what it is today; providing adequate parking in the existing hospital garage and reducing parking on neighborhood streets; and generating more than $3 million in property-tax revenue, noting that today the hospital generates none. He said the project will promote ethnic, economic and age diversity.
   Mr. Hillier proposed reusing the main eight-story hospital building for a maximum of about 280 resident-owned units that would be marketed to buyers 55 and older. He said the unit count would go down with more two-bedroom units — which he said seniors have said they favor — noting that if the building entirely was made of two-bedroom units, it would have 167 units.
   Also proposed were some office and limited neighborhood retail developments, as well as a fitness center and day-care center on the ground floor. The concept included adding new stories to an existing one-story section and tearing down the two Medical Arts buildings on Witherspoon Street to create a public park.
   The architect also discussed the possibility of using the hospital site for some form of continuing-care retirement community, and he proposed building up to 23 townhouses, condos, duplexes or flats of up to three stories tall on PHCS’s Franklin Avenue parking lot. Such development would be allowed under the existing R-4 zoning for the lot, he said.
   Prior to the start of Thursday’s meeting, Ms. Moore protested having been asked by Allen Porter, the board’s attorney, to recuse herself, which she did, because she would be presenting on behalf of Princeton Future.
   Hendricks Davis, who also spoke for Princeton Future on Thursday, asked why members of the board who sat on the Princeton Health Care Task Force, which disbanded after presenting a report with recommendations on the hospital lands in February, were not similarly asked to recuse themselves.
   Mr. Davis also raised concern about what he said were 11 meetings by the task force with no public record of what was discussed and with whom, and he suggested that, perhaps, talks were held with individuals who he said might seek to influence their decisions on the board.
   Mr. Porter said board members who sit on advisory bodies like the task force do not have to recuse themselves. One of the reasons he cited for advising Ms. Moore as he had was to avoid the "confusion factor" of her presenting for a private group whose work is ongoing and studying the same issue, then sitting on the board to deliberate.
   In his presentation for Princeton Future, Mr. Davis outline a number of priorities voiced by community members who gave input in the Witherspoon Street Corridor Study undertaken by the nonprofit group. They included preserving and restoring the residential neighborhood; promoting mixed income, occupancy and housing types including affordable housing; avoiding large structures; not becoming part of Princeton’s downtown; saving existing buildings; encouraging public space; and improving safety and walkability.
   Thursday night was the second of three public hearings scheduled. The first was held April 21, and a third is planned for June 16.