By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Princeton University plans to build more than 300 units of faculty and staff housing on 25 acres in the borough that includes the former Merwick Care Center.
The anticipated $80 million project was approved Thursday by the Princeton Regional Planning Board after a more than four-hour hearing that ended around midnight.
The development is part of a larger plan by the university to renew its housing stock, this coming after construction started during the summer on graduate student residences off Faculty and Alexander roads.
The Merwick/Stanworth development, scheduled to move in two phases, will consist of apartments, town houses and stacked flats, project architect Murphy Antoine testified at the hearing.
Phase one calls for 128 units at the nine-acre Merwick site in time for occupancy for the fall 2014 semester, according to a report by planning director Lee Solow. Phase two at the 16-acre Stanworth site calls for 198 units by fall 2016, his report said.
Sixty five of those units will be set aside for affordable housing, nine of which will be off site; the university is getting a five-unit credit for having rebuilt an affordable housing property the borough owns on Leigh Avenue. The university will have to market those units throughout Princeton’s affordable housing region that includes Mercer and two other counties, said Derek Bridger, borough zoning officer who also serves as its affordable housing coordinator.
Richard S. Goldman, attorney for the university, has asked for construction to start earlier than usual a request the Planning Board agreed to contingent on approval of the borough engineering staff. The university said last week that it intends to begin work early next year.
Plans call for demolishing the current university owned housing that holds 154 units on the Stanworth site.
Yet concerns were raised about the increased traffic generated by university employees driving to campus. Township Committeeman Bernard P. Miller suggested the university deny campus parking stickers to residents of the project, except for hardship cases.
Georges Jacquemart, the traffic engineer for the university, testified the project would generate less traffic than what was there before.

