Retailers said to show interest, starting with a Domino’s Pizza
By Greg Forester, Staff Writer
WEST WINDSOR — The end of a decades-long eyesore in West Windsor may finally be approaching.
The president of the company that owns the Ellsworth Center, which has been vacant since the late 1980s, said Monday that the center’s retail space has been generating significant interest from potential tenants. But some bureaucratic hurdles remain before the center can begin accepting tenants, he added.
Pereira Investments Inc. President Jacinto Rodrigues said the township is requiring the company to reapply for all building permits and other paperwork as the company begins to repair the 25,000 square-foot shopping center.
The center is adjacent to the Northeast Corridor railroad tracks and the Route 571 and Cranbury Road intersection.
”The building department has taken the position that everything has been revoked and we have to apply from scratch,” said Mr. Rodrigues. “They haven’t been making our life very easy.”
A Domino’s Pizza store has signed one lease, but Mr. Rodrigues said no more would be signed at this time.
”I don’t want to sign any more leases until I have the permits in my hands,” he said. “But we have had a lot of interest from potential tenants and we finally got a building permit to clean some of the buildings and do some repairs on the outside.”
If all goes well with the permitting process and work begins in a timely manner to repair some of the retail space, the pizza store could move into the center in 30 to 45 days, Mr. Rodrigues said.
The Ellsworth Center has enough space for 10 to 20 small stores, but it has long sat empty and become a hangout for local kids and a parking lot for commuters desperate for parking close to the nearby Princeton Junction train station.
The latest permit-caused delay comes after the property sat abandoned because of another set of stipulations imposed on the developer by the Planning Board at the time of final site plan approval in 1988.
The conditions required Pereira to assist with improvements to the Route 571-Cranbury Road intersection and build a 50-foot buffer between the center and a nearby residential area, according to Planning Board Chairman Marvin Gardner.
Those conditions required the developer to obtain permissions from county and state officials and prevented him from getting any tenants into the center until the township lifted them in January, according to Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh.
”The reason they didn’t do anything was because of unreasonable conditions put on them by the township,” said Mayor Hsueh. “They are actually moving ahead right now.”
The lifting of the original set of stipulations grew from concern on the part of the township of the continued existence of a large, abandoned development in the center of town that could become a haven for criminal activity, according to Planning Board officials.
”I was deeply concerned and we wanted it remedied as expeditiously as possible,” Mr. Gardner said.
Mr. Rodrigues echoed Mr. Gardner’s stance on a timely end to the abandoned condition of the center, citing different reasons.
”We have now been paying taxes on the property for 10 to 15 years,” Mr. Rodrigues said.