The citizens organization Save the Dinky Inc. announced Friday that it filed an appeal in Superior Court of a Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) ruling authorizing New Jersey Transit (NJT) to extinguish historic site protection for the Princeton branch line station complex.
To mitigate the loss, the DEP ruling would require New Jersey Transit to promote public awareness of the station’s history through signage and interpretative displays.
The DEP ruling was announced in a letter from Rich Boornazian, DEP assistant commissioner for environmental and natural resources to Paul Wyckoff, NJT’s chief for government and external affairs.
Anita Garoniak, president of Save the Dinky, said the DEP decision makes no sense.
”How can a road to a parking garage justify dismantling an historic, functioning and very much relied-upon railway station,” she asked. “The DEP is there to protect historic and environmental resources, but in this case it fell down on the job.”The transit agency was required to apply to state historic regulators because the Dinky station complex received federal and state historical protection in 1984.
In October 1984, after the site had received historic protection, NJT sold the station complex to Princeton University, while retaining the operating rights and an easement over the entire property for public transportation purposes.
NJT told the state Historic Sites Council that its contract with the university gives the university the absolute right to relocate the terminus southward to a place of its choosing and away from the historic platform and station buildings.
Representatives of Save the Dinky advised the council that it disagrees and things the only move permitted to the university was from the northern to the southern end of the historic platform, a move that was made sometime in the late 1980s.
The council was also advised that this issue is in litigation through a court case filed in the Chancery Division by Princeton attorney Bruce Afran. However, the council declined to defer its decision. If the appeals court upholds the DEP ruling, the station complex will soon be freed from historic site protection.
Princeton University, the owner of the buildings, is not subject to state or federal historic site regulation and is opposing a request that the Borough’s Historic Preservation Review Committee designate the station complex as a protected site under local ordinances.
In a related development, Ms. Garoniak presented a letter to Borough Mayor Yina Moore at its June 26 meeting urging the mayor and council not to take no for an answer to council’s request that New Jersey Transit hold a public hearing on the station relocation plan. In mid June, NJT wrote to Borough Mayor Moore rejecting the council’s request for a hearing.

