But new road will take soccer field
By Matt Chiappardi, Special Writer
ROBBINSVILLE — The township will be paid $915,541 from the state to accommodate the planned widening of the New Jersey Turnpike this fall. In exchange, the township will have to give up about 5 acres of parkland to the Turnpike Authority and relocate one of its soccer pitches at Robbinsville Community Park, explained Jack West, the township’s director of community development.
And under the terms of the deal, $500,000 of the payment must be applied to open space preservation, Mr. West said at the Township Council’s Feb. 26 meeting. The rest will be used to relocate the soccer field, he added.
The 5 acres is comprised of two tracts of about 45 feet long each, Mr. West said. One is located near the historic Robbins House on Windsor Road, the other cuts into Robbinsville Community Park on West Manor Way, where the Robbinsville Soccer Association operates.
Township officials have not yet decided where to relocate the field, Mr. West said.
A handful of residents attended the meeting to ask questions about the parkland conveyance. Those questions and comments were forwarded to the Turnpike Authority, which is expected to respond to them in writing before the scheduled September start date for the project.
Most residents were looking for some clarification about the project’s details, and a few asked if the areas sold to the authority would have sound walls. Mr. West said they wouldn’t, but that the other residential areas affected — Washington Green, The Woods at Washington and the Sharon School— would have the barriers.
Roxandre Barb, of Patriot Drive, asked what impact the parkland conveyance would have on wildlife. Mr. West said the state Department of Environmental Protection had conducted a number of wildlife surveys and determined the impact to be minimal.
Joe Guarancia, of West Manor Way, suggested the township create sound barriers of its own by planting trees between the parkland and the highway. Mr. West said the cost of any such project would have to be paid for by the township.
The Turnpike Authority is scheduled to begin its $2 billion plan to widen a 25-mile stretch of the highway between Interchanges 6 and 9 this fall. That corridor, which runs right through the township, will be widened to 12 lanes, six in each direction, authority spokesman Joe Orlando previously said.
Residents who did not attend the Feb. 26 meeting can still ask questions or make comments to the authority by March 12 by mailing them to P.O. Box 5042, Woodbridge, N.J., 07095, or e-mailing them to [email protected].
In other business at the Feb. 26 meeting, Mr. West revealed a tentative plan to hook about two dozen homes along Buckley Lane and Robbinsville-Edinburg Road into the township’s sewer system.
The cost, he said, would be $850,000 and, for that reason he’s trying to bring the cost down as he drafts an alternative plan in four to six weeks.
The houses have not been part of wastewater management system since it was installed in the 1970s, and some homeowners complained that waste was seeping into their own septic systems while Robbinsville High School was being built nearby in 2003.
Since then, the township has been able to rezone the area to include sewers, explained Township Administrator Mary Caffrey. Getting state Department of Environmental Protection approval for the rezoning was a complex process taking nearly six years, because the township was compelled to preserve certain tracts of land in order to run sewer lines into the area, she added.

