By Kristine Snodgrass, Staff Writer
Somerset County freeholders will be sending a letter to the Montgomery Township Committee requesting a proposal on the county’s involvement in the Skillman Village property, freeholder Director Peter Palmer said.
Earlier this week, Committeeman Mark Caliguire approached Mr. Palmer about the county possibly purchasing the 260-acre property as open space. Mr. Palmer expressed his interest and intention to bring it up at the freeholders’ work session Tuesday night.
Instead, the issue was brought up by Mayor Cecilia Birge and Committeewoman Louise Wilson during public comment.
The township has received criticism in recent months after developers failed to submit proposals for the 40-acre mixed-use portion of the site, which was considered crucial for the township to recoup some of the $20 million spent on the property.
The recent proposal first came to light after a press release by Republican committee candidate Kacey Dyer proposed the purchase, suggesting that if the county purchased the land as open space it would allow the township to get out from under its debt load.
Mr. Palmer said the county could either buy the land outright or assist the township by paying them “some money for land that they will own, particularly a smaller piece of a property.”
At this point, the freeholders were unsure as to what the township wanted, he said.
”(Mayor Birge) was asking us for a commitment but it was not clear to us exactly what she wanted us to commit to,” Mr. Palmer said.
The future of the proposal will continue to be discussed, he said.
”The concept of having a park in the southern region of the county is something we’d be interested in,” he said.
Mayor Birge, who is a Democratic candidate for county freeholder in the upcoming election, said the township will pursue the opportunity. She and North Plainfield Councilman Douglas Singleterry are challenging Mr. Palmer and incumbent Robert Zaborowski. There are currently no Democrats on the all-Republican freeholder board.
”If the county is generally interested in this, and willing to loosen its purse strings, it’s obviously something the committee will take very seriously,” she said.
She characterized the timing of the proposal as “transparently political.”
”Frankly, this may well be nothing more than an effort to get votes,” she said.
Seeing this as an opportunity to seek additional grant money from the county, she said she doesn’t want the land to be taken rashly out of the control of the township.
”A simple solution like selling the entire park to the county with no strings attached sounds like a quick fix, but it could bring potentially devastating impact to our community,” she said.
A portion of the township’s affordable housing obligation is planned for the mixed-use portion of the site, she said. The development, referred to as the “village within a park,” is envisioned to include fine dining, bike paths, health care facilities, a 24-hour clinic, a public park and a veterans’ memorial as well as 271 housing units, she said.
If it is not developed, the township will have to fulfill that affordable housing requirement elsewhere, on private land, meaning more population density and more school-aged children, she said.
Mr. Caliguire, who also attended the meeting, said the development was intended to pay for cleanup and demolition, not to become “an end goal in and of itself.” Housing in that area would be undesirable, he said.
”You don’t redevelop a rural part of the township with dense housing in order to solve one problem,” he said. “You don’t create another problem to solve a problem.”
Mr. Caliguire, the lone Republican on the committee, added that with the economy in its current state, developers are uninterested in the project, he said, leaving the township with the debt for the unforeseeable future.
”If they do move forward, we may end up with a lot more development than anybody wants,” he said.
Committeewoman Louise Wilson, who said she was at the meeting to support the mayor, said the intent always was for 80 percent of the land to be parkland, and a partnership with the county would be “terrific.”
”Mayor Birge went up there to explore exactly that kind of thing,” she said, “but also to say, don’t throw this kind of chum in the water in a campaign-season ploy and then have the offer expire on Nov. 5.”
The committee will pursue any opportunity for a partnership with the county “aggressively and vigorously,” she said, but she has reservations about control of the property. “I think it’s important that Montgomery Township not simply hand over control of 100 percent of that property without having very intensive discussions and agreements on which land uses are permitted,” she said.
Mayor Birge said residents may see her as a “mother hen” for the village-in-a-park concept.
”If I am a mother hen in that regard, it’s because that vision has been carefully vetted through a community based process,” she said.

