Jane Buttars and Daniel A. Harris of Princeton
On May 2010, Princeton Township passed the RSC-2 Ordinance, permitting age-restricted housing on the Lowe Tract on the Princeton Ridge. People for Princeton Ridge, Inc., which has struggled for two years to achieve an environmentally responsible framework for any such development, believes that this ordinance is as sound as it is possible to get at this time.
Construction of clustered age-restricted housing, using four stories instead of three, with all parking underground (using the existing slope), will be limited to less than four contiguous acres; the remaining 17 acres will be permanently preserved forest, to become part of the projected Princeton Ridge Preserve along with the adjacent Ricciardi Tract and additional acreage to be purchased by the D&R Greenway; nonstructural stormwater management measures are to be state-of-the-art, minimally invasive.
PPR wishes to thank the dozens of individuals who, during the past two years of negotiations with Township Committee, volunteered their professional assistance and expertise — geologists and architects, arborists, hydrologists, specialists in municipal land-use law and loyal advisors. They have helped make the resulting ordinance is genuinely the product of community collaboration.
PPR remains deeply grateful to the hundreds, indeed thousands, of citizens who became the group Save Princeton Ridge (our parent organization) in the winter of 2007. To close and loyal advisors, PPR’s debt is enormous. PPR also thanks township staff for abetting an understanding of township codes. No acceptable ordinance would have been possible, of course, without the willingness of Township Committee members to recognize that improvements to the original were necessary.
Some of the lessons of this ordinance and its context are plain. Foresight in municipal land-use decisions is both elusive and increasingly mandated as the natural resources of our community dwindle; the claims of the environment and those of communal social needs do not need to be opposed if disputing participants seek guidance in sound ecological science.
The course of debate has involved a sometimes steep learning curve: the preserved forest will thus properly become for the next generation, as it should have been for ours, sooner, a source of educational understanding about the intersections of appropriate zoning, environmental constraints, and the paths to Princeton’s sustainable future.
Jane Buttars
Daniel A. Harris
People for Princeton Ridge, Inc.
Princeton
