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ROBBINSVILLE: Fried proposes pools, parks in Town Center South

By Joanne Degnan, Managing Editor
   ROBBINSVILLE — Mayor Dave Fried unveiled plans last week to preserve nearly half the township-owned land in Town Center South for a new 20-acre park that would include swimming pools, a multipurpose athletic field and walking trails.
   The mayor displayed a poster-size diagram of the proposed park at his State of the Township address to the Mercer Regional Chamber of Commerce on March 22 at Poseidon Mediterranean Bar and Grill. The drawings, done by ACT Engineers, also showed a 20,000-square foot recreation building, picnic groves, community gardens, a play “spray-ground” and two pools, including one with waterslides.
   Mr. Fried described the park as a concept plan for a “public-private partnership” that would benefit Town Center businesses by drawing people downtown to the nearby restaurants and shops.
   ”We’re going to create a pool, and I think that’s something that the community has been looking for … and I believe we can do it without the use of taxpayer dollars,” Mr. Fried said. “This is something that will not only help control residential growth in the town, but something that will be a real asset to our town and the business community in Town Center.”
   After the speech, the mayor said he envisioned the proposed pools would operate similar to the Waterworks Family Aquatic Complex in West Windsor, which charges membership fees.
   Acting Business Administrator Joy Tozzi said Monday that the administration did not have a cost estimate for the project, but open space funds possibly could be used to develop all or part of the park.
   Collectively, there are 90 acres of vacant land and modest homes and businesses in the redevelopment area known as Town Center South along Route 33 between Washington Boulevard and Robbinsville-Edinburg Road. The proposed park would encompass about half of the 46-acre Kushner tract the town purchased for $12 million in 2007 to prevent the construction of 267 homes and an influx of schoolchildren to the township’s overcrowded public schools.
   Curbing residential growth and its impact on the school system and property taxes was a recurring theme of the mayor’s speech. Mr. Fried also used the business event to announce the town will be filing a lawsuit this week challenging the constitutionality of the state’s so-called conversion statute that allowed developers to convert their prior approvals for yet-to-be-built senior housing into homes for families of all ages.
   Sharbell, the developer of the original Town Center in Robbinsville, used the conversion statute in 2011 to change 150 unbuilt age-restricted townhouses for seniors, which were approved in 2006 as part of the Gordon-Simpson tract project, into 120 three-bedroom single-family homes and 30 affordable-housing units.
   Mr. Fried maintains the state conversion law usurped local planning decisions and is forcing Robbinsville to accept development that will overburden its schools and drive up property taxes.
   ”I truly have no idea what would possess the Legislature to pass such a bad law,” Mr. Fried said. “Now the only planned housing we had in our town for seniors in gone.”
   Township Attorney Mark Roselli, in a phone interview later that day, said the conversion law violates the due process and equal protection clauses of the state Constitution, and he would challenge it on those grounds in state Superior Court.
   Mr. Roselli said this lawsuit would be on a separate track from the Robbinsville Planning Board’s ongoing legal challenge of Superior Court Judge Linda Feinberg’s decision allowing Sharbell to proceed with its conversion plans on Gordon Road. The issue in the Planning Board’s litigation is whether the land use board correctly followed the law when it denied Sharbell’s application in 2011 while the new lawsuit focuses on the constitutionality of the conversion law itself.
   ”Judge Feinberg didn’t address the constitutionality of the law, only whether the Planning Board followed the law,” Mr. Roselli said.
   In his State of the Township address, Mr. Fried also addressed the issue of the 1.5-cent increase in the municipal tax rate that he has proposed in his 2012 budget, news that was discussed the week prior at the Township Council’s March 15 meeting. The increase in the tax rate will mean an average $58 rise in municipal taxes for a property assessed at the townshipwide average of $385,000.
   Mr. Fried blamed the tax increase on the rise in fixed costs, such as fuel and landfill tipping fees, and the wave of successful tax appeals that began in 2009 following a county-ordered property revaluation. Mr. Fried said a fairer system would be to only do a revaluation on individual properties as they are sold. This method would make the township less vulnerable to tax appeals and leave longtime residents less vulnerable to dramatic spikes in their property taxes, he said.
   The mayor also said the increased economic activity in the Matrix Business Park of late is a sign of better times ahead. The warehouses, which had a 50 percent occupancy rate in 2009, are now at a 92 percent occupancy rate, he said.
   Finding a tenant for the empty Thriftway supermarket, which closed last fall, continues to be a top priority, the mayor said. The supermarket had been the anchor tenant in the Foxmoor Shopping Center on Washington Boulevard.
   The township also will be using part of a $75,000 economic development grant to partner with Robbinsville businesses to launch a “buy local” campaign that will include placing door hangers on residents’ homes, encouraging them to patronize township businesses, Mr. Fried said.