Cottage Club makes plea before state Supreme Court

Borough opposes effort to gain tax-exempt status

By: Courtney Gross
   The New Jersey Supreme Court heard arguments this week from the University Cottage Club on its appeal to become exempt from Princeton Borough’s tax rolls based on the argument that the building is a historic site and the club is a nonprofit organization.
   Since 2002, the private eating club — open to the public for 12 days a year — has been attempting to skirt the approximately $50,000 a year its pays to Princeton Borough by applying for tax-exempt status as a historic site.
   The State Department of Environmental Protection in 2003 denied the club that privilege, saying it did not provide a public service, which the Appellate Division of the Superior Court upheld in July.
   Having celebrated its centennial, the Prospect Avenue building is on the New Jersey Register of Historic Places and has also landed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is one of 10 private eating clubs on Prospect Avenue.
   The five-year dispute resulted in a statute approved by the Legislature in 2004 that requires tax-exempt historic sites be open to the public for 96 days a year.
   Because the club applied for the exemption prior to the statute’s passage, Cottage Club Attorney Thomas Olson said the new law does not apply.
   "The club’s position from the beginning has been that the statute requires two things — that you are nonprofit and that you are historic site," Mr. Olson said. But, he added, "it’s in the court’s hands."
   If the Supreme Court overturned the decision and sided with Cottage Club, the borough would be responsible for paying back taxes to the establishment from 2002. That cost would be more than $250,000.
   There is no timeline for the court to make its decision.