PRINCETON: Princeton Future discusses master plan

By Victoria Hurley-Schubert, Staff Writer
   Likening the Witherspoon Street corridor to a jigsaw puzzle, Princeton Future began a dialogue about bringing pieces of the area together at a meeting on Saturday morning.
   Puzzle pieces included the public works area, the Valley Road School site, fields behind the board of education property, and parking and traffic at the northern gateway into the township.
   ”On Witherspoon Street we have very real problems,” said Marvin Reed, former borough mayor and member of the Center for New Urbanism. “How much traffic can Witherspoon Street absorb? We don’t have good zoning in place to guide development.”
   People get caught up in the design not good zoning issues, he added.
   Good zoning needs good planning that meets future needs, and this was an ongoing issue that was picked at all morning long, with many people inquiring and reinforcing the need for an improved master plan for the area.
   There is a joint master plan called “The Princeton Community Master Plan” that is on file in the planning office and available online. The plan includes land use, traffic and recreation recommendations, among other information, said Lee Solow, planning director for the Regional Planning Board.
   ”Generally, the master plan in general,” he said.
   The plan, which looks long-term into the Princetons’ future, is updated every six years, if not sooner. “We’re coming up on a another re-exam soon,” he said.
   ”We do have a master plan so it’s interesting to hear calls for a master plan, so that is an interesting gap,” said Kirsten Thoft, a Princeton Future member and architect in Princeton who attended Saturday’s meeting.
   Even developers and local officials fall into the gap.
   ”I think both towns really need to look at having a master plan because I spend my life in front of the borough zoning board and they are a terrific group of people and we try to do the best designs we can within the zoning context … It would be so much better if there was a master plan of what should really happen in this town over the next 10, 20 years,” said J. Robert Hillier, founder of Hillier Architecture, real estate consultant and developer.
   ”So the infrastructure can be put into place and the zoning can be much more visionary rather than mechanical and enable us to build a community. Once you have a master plan and you know what infrastructure you need, you can start to apply for funds to fix things up from state or county funds rather than figure out how to pay for it … once you’ve improved the street you can improve the buildings,” he said.
   Development of the community as a whole needs to be looked at, but the regional planning board doesn’t have time to plan; they just keep up with the applications from developers, said Bernie Miller, township committeeman and former mayor.
   ”As a community we do not plan, we react,” he said. “Our elected officials look at the zoning with the support of the planning staff and engineering staff; our planning board reacts to proposals put forth by developers, but we as a community have never engaged or put the resources into doing a community master plan that would put up on the board a series of pictorials that would show what we believe ought to happen in the different parts of our town and how they would integrate and come together.”
   The planning board doesn’t plan and the resources of the planning board are sorely limited, they’re limited to keeping up with the applications filed with the municipalities for development, reviewing those applications and preparing for the meetings of the planning board,” said Mr. Miller, citing a lack of resources that are causing the lack of pictorial planning that would define where the community is going in the next 20 to 30 years.
   ”As a result, we lurch from crisis to crisis … because we haven’t taken a look where we as a community want to go in the future, we haven’t put it back on paper. We haven’t had the back and forth between the community, the elected representatives and the professional staff,” he said.