By: Vic Monaco
With the possible exception of the former Minute Maid plant, the mill property on Bank Street is the only significant piece of developable property in Hightstown.
So it makes sense for local officials to do everything they can to ensure that the 12-acre tract gets the optimum development.
Toward that end, the borough OK’d a redevelopment ordinance in September 2004 that calls for a maximum of 80 residential units. Earlier in 2004, the borough had chosen Greystone Mill as the conditional developer of the land.
This spring Greystone, which has an agreement to buy the privately-owned land, presented a plan in accord with the ordinance. But a couple of weeks later, according to several borough leaders, Greystone raised the number of units from 80 to about 130. With that, the borough let its deal with Greystone expire.
Enter, last October, affable area developer Satish Mehta, who presented a plan with 100 units a number he subsequently reduced to 98. But again the borough was dealing with Greystone, as the firm was working with Mr. Mehta.
Councilman Patrick Thompson has been beating the drum since last fall for the borough to seek proposals from other developers. His main point: The borough set an 80-unit maximum for good reason and neither Greystone nor the partnership of Greystone and Mr. Mehta had come close.
Now, Borough Council has approved that move. Councilmen Walter Sikorski and David Schneider voted no, saying they want to first see a market research and marketability study the council commissioned Pete Sockler to do six months ago.
The delayed Sockler report has become the borough’s version of the transcripts of the Richard Nixon tapes. Mr. Sockler, a former member of the Planning Board, says he must do extra work each time the borough receives a revised development plan. Mr. Thompson claims Mr. Sockler was supposed to evaluate the feasibility of the borough’s redevelopment ordinance, not any specific developer’s plan.
Regardless, we hope Mr. Sockler and the borough remember that the council only agreed to pay him $10,000.
More importantly, we’re concerned with the months that have passed between the time Mr. Thompson first called for other proposals and this week’s decision to seek them.
Mayor Bob Patten says it doesn’t make sense to seek other proposals because it is Greystone that has a deal to buy the land. But Mr. Thompson says if a new developer with a more desirable plan can’t work out a sales agreement and the borough can’t facilitate such a deal, the borough could take the land by eminent domain.
We can’t say with any certainty if a new developer would have problems working out a purchase. We can’t say with any certainty if the current developer(s) might walk away and leave the borough with no interested parties.
We do feel certain that waiting so many months to do what Mr. Thompson has been suggesting for so many months pushes back by so many months any real movement on such an important project.
