Review process would override Hillier effort
By: Greg Forester
WEST WINDSOR With the West Windsor transit village project currently on hold, a West Windsor resident who owns property within the project’s redevelopment area says he wants to restart the planning process and is willing to hand the township $1.5 million to do it.
But township officials have voiced support for the current review process and question how the proposal would fit that process.
InterCap Holdings chairman and CEO Steve Goldin said his money could be used at the township’s discretion to hire professionals and fund a new round of public workshops that would fix the problems he saw, as a member of the public, during his involvement in the Hillier Architecture-sponsored process.
"My sense was that people didn’t have confidence in the process or in Hillier Architecture, for whatever reason," said Mr. Goldin, who lives on Stonewall Drive in West Windsor. "The public were not engaged in the process we went through."
He said while the money could be used at the township’s discretion, he would want a seat on an advisory committee he would like to see formed that would be representative of the public, municipal government, and various established organizations operating within West Windsor.
"All we would want is a seat at that table, and no vote," said Mr. Goldin.
Mr. Goldin’s company currently owns 25 acres of property in the redevelopment area, off Washington Road and north of the Princeton Junction train station.
Hillier Architecture had conducted public meetings and workshops for several months to try and come to a consensus on what West Windsor residents wanted in the transit village project.
The new process would better engage the public, using tools that Mr. Goldin said were missing from the Hillier meetings, including better visual resources such as highly realistic videos of what the project would look like.
These could include renderings of what the final project could look like in addition to traffic-flow visuals that could be adjusted with changes in the planning, something that Mr. Goldin said he didn’t see during the Hillier workshops.
"There was a lack of imagery in the beginning," said Mr. Goldin. "People would use electric devices to vote on the images, providing immediate feedback and really empowering the public in the process."
Mr. Goldin said the new process would address what he saw as a lack of resources that hurt the first round of workshops conducted by Hillier Architecture.
He had some involvement in the redevelopment near the Hamilton Township train station, where a company of his submitted a plan that followed guidelines created in the redevelopment designation of the area around that train station.
Mr. Goldin is also the chairman of the New Jersey arm of the Congress for the New Urbanism, and took courses given by the National Charrette Institute.
The transit village project has been on hold since a joint meeting of the Planning Board and the Township Council at which Mr. Hillier presented variations on the original plan, which called for 1,000 residential units in the project.
A slate of three council members won election to the Township Council running on a "Best 4 West Windsor" slate that ran on a platform that was against the inclusion of 1,000 units in the plan.
Mr. Goldin said the public process would determine the makeup of the project, but some residential units would be necessary for its viability.
"Mixed-use is definitely important," said Mr. Goldin.
While the makeup of the project has not been determined, InterCap Holdings has been in contact with a large company that did express interest in moving to the area near the Princeton Junction train station, Mr. Goldin said. He declined to name the company.
While Mr. Goldin said he wanted to start over with a clean slate with little or no Hillier Architecture involvement, West Windsor Township officials said this new process would have to fit in with the current redevelopment process.
"I made it clear in my conversation that he will have to bring this out in the open, to the public, somewhere within the current process," said Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh. "The Township Council will have to make a decision about any possible workshop process, and I expect Bob Hillier will have to be a part of that discussion," he said of the Hillier Architecture chairman.
Councilman Charles Morgan said Mr. Goldin is an "American property owner" and he therefore has rights, so his plans will have to be heard, although he didn’t know how the public would react to the process if it was funded with Mr. Goldin’s $1.5 million.
"My biggest issue with him is I don’t know how we can do what he wants without corrupting the results," said Mr. Morgan. "If the end result of such a process is what Steve Goldin wants, I don’t know how anyone wouldn’t believe there weren’t deals made behind the scene."
Despite these sentiments, Mr. Morgan said Mr. Goldin should engage the community, and he would support the plan if the community rose up and supported it.
However, Mr. Morgan did say he thought there was too much cynicism about the process in the public, and there was no more appetite for more charrettes.
With regards to Hillier Architecture’s involvement in the project, Mr. Morgan said the township did have a continuing contract with the firm and he did not want to see the firm withdraw from the project.
"I don’t want to be the leader in proposing Mr. Goldin’s plan and I don’t want to advocate for the end of Hillier either," said Mr. Morgan.
Mr. Morgan said he wants to pursue a referendum on the project, although a detailed public opinion survey, put together by a private survey company would be even better.
The survey idea would avoid the legal problems inherent in creating a referendum on the project, Mr. Morgan said.

