PACKET EDITORIAL, June 27
By: Packet Editorial
There was a time, back in the days when central New Jersey was predominantly farmland and life in and around Princeton was dominated by the university, that the streets and sidewalks pretty much rolled up around this time of year and didn’t unroll again until September.
Over on the university campus, most of the buildings were shuttered while a relative handful underwent maintenance, renovation or expansion projects. The only sign of life along the pathways that crisscrossed the university grounds was the occasional visitor to the Prospect gardens or the art museum, and the only thing seen moving on the playing fields was a lawnmower.
Things weren’t much different on the other side of Nassau Street. Stores that attracted hordes of students during the school year lay empty; some even closed for a week or two while their proprietors took a summer holiday. Downtown parking spaces that motorists would have died for a month earlier were readily available but only because there was practically nothing to do downtown after parking the car.
Times have changed.
The university doesn’t close down for the summer anymore. Instead, it hosts a nonstop array of conferences, seminars, forums, colloquiums, sports camps, outreach programs and other activities that keep the campus alive throughout June, July and August. Visitors from far and wide use the campus facilities for both educational and recreational programs, and they venture across Nassau Street in numbers sufficient to sustain a brisk downtown business.
Meanwhile, the towns around Princeton notably Montgomery, West Windsor and Plainsboro have grown by leaps and bounds, and Princeton itself has been transformed from a sleepy college town into a thriving regional center. The central business district now boasts a wide variety of retail stores, coffee shops, ice cream parlors, fast-food and fine-dining eateries and other attractions that keep customers coming even if it means standing in long lines all year round.
Moreover, the entire region now offers summer activities in abundance. There are farmers’ markets in Montgomery and West Windsor; a steady stream of educational offerings at the Princeton and Plainsboro public libraries; Princeton Summer Theater and Shakespeare in the Park; environmental programs at the Plainsboro Preserve and the Ron Rogers memorial arboretum in West Windsor; art exhibits and hands-on programs for kids at the Arts Council of Princeton, West Windsor’s new arts center and Montgomery’s 1860 House; open-air concerts in the Princeton Shopping Center.
And, of course, there are myriad recreational programs, ranging from Little League baseball to day camps to community swimming pools. There’s canoeing on the Delaware & Raritan Canal, fishing and bird-watching in numerous public parks, hiking and biking along a vast network of municipally owned and maintained trails.
All of the towns in the area the Princetons, Montgomery, West Windsor, Plainsboro, even tiny Rocky Hill have taken steps in recent years to preserve vast amounts of open space. Some offer active recreational facilities: soccer, baseball and softball fields, basketball and tennis courts, playgrounds and picnic areas. Others invite more passive recreation: walking trails, birding, wildflowers.
Whatever your pleasure, chances are the Princeton area has the wherewithal to indulge you this summer and this was by no means the case as recently as a few years ago. People complain a lot about "the price of progress" in this region: more traffic, bigger houses, higher taxes. But in the summer months, when life used to come to a virtual standstill, the region is now abuzz with activity. That’s one piece of the price tag of progress we should all be pleased to pay.