By John Tredrea, Special Writer
The neighbors came, and they hated it.
It was a presentation, held at Central High School on April 19, of conceptual designs to build a village on the Pennytown site and on nearby property, owned by Kooltronic.
The Pennytown tract, about 25 acres, is located between Routes 31 and 654. About 70 acres for the proposed new village would be on land owned by Kooltronic, located across Route 654 from Pennytown.
Two conceptual plans for the proposed village were produced by the planning firm of Clarke Caton Hintz, which the Township Committee hired after conferring with the township’s Marshall’s Corner-Pennytown Task Force, which recommended development of the new village.
Marshall’s Corner is a small neighborhood of houses across Route 612 from the northern end of the Pennytown site.
Under both concept plans, a total of 365 new housing units would be built in the new village. The mix of single-family detached houses, townhouses and apartments would include 70 affordable housing units, which would be applied toward the township’s state-mandated affordable housing obligation.
Under both plans, there would be stores on the Pennytown portion of the tract and a community center of some kind — perhaps a senior center, youth center or fitness center or a combination of those choices.
Planner Phil Caton said “traffic calming” measures would be needed on Route 654 if the village were built. One thing those measures could provide would be enabling people to cross Route 654 on foot safely in order to walk from one part of the village to the other. A traffic rotary on Route 654 could be one of the calming measures.
After Mr. Caton and one his colleagues, Mike Solomon, had summarized the conceptual plans, members of the township Planning Board made comments before the meeting was opened to what proved to be a withering blast of criticism from the public. About 60 people attended the meeting, many of them Marshall’s Corner residents.
Planning board member Jim Burd, who also is the township’s deputy mayor, said “traffic flows and speeds” and impact the new traffic would have on current Marshall’s Corner residents continued to be a concern for him.
Board member William Connolly praised the concept plans. “I hope we find a way to take steps to ensure that what we get is close to what we’ve seen here tonight.” Mr. Connolly and other township officials, including bond counsel Edward McManimon, have said that, because of advantages the proposed village would gain via the state’s redevelopment law, the township could recoup all the monies it spends on getting the village in place. That includes about $7 million the township paid for the Pennytown tract.
A Marshall’s Corner man called the concept plans “absolutely horrific.” He said the traffic impact of the village would be terrible and was incredulous at the idea of a rotary on Route 654 so close to Route 31. “Traffic will back up,” he said. “I can barely get out of my driveway now.”
Several other residents made similar comments:
Residents Mike Kiernan and Deidre Kennedy asked if there are sufficient groundwater resources to sustain the new village. That issue is sure to be addressed at upcoming sessions on the proposed village, which Mayor Michael Markulec said, during Monday night’s Township Committee meeting, are expected to be scheduled soon.
Madeleine Mansier, a leader of the effort to build a new senior service center in Hopewell Valley, criticized the plan for leaving open the possibility of putting the senior center in the same building as a youth center, or teen center. The seniors have said their center should be in a building of its own.
Planning Board member Karen Murphy stressed that the plans aired at the meeting were strictly preliminary. “This isn’t the final version,” she said.
At the outset of the meeting, Mr. Caton said a key purpose of the gathering was to get feedback from residents, so the plans could be fine-tuned to comply with residents’ concerns as much as possible.
Based on the public hearing at the meeting, it’s hard to see how any plan remotely similar to the concept plans could meet with anything but intense opposition from neighbors of the site of the proposed village.
