Foxmoor office building plan abandoned; open space eyed instead
By Joanne Degnan, Managing Editor
ROBBINSVILLE — Mayor Dave Fried told a packed room of more than 100 Foxmoor residents last week he’s abandoning a controversial plan to put an office building in their neighborhood. Instead, the 6-acre parcel will be left as open space.
Jayme Race, the Kettering Court resident who sued the town to derail the proposal, was among those who applauded the news at the March 13 Town Hall meeting. Mr. Race, a professional engineer who filed his pro se lawsuit without an attorney, said he’d notify the court this week that he’s dropping the matter.
”Withdrawing the complaint is in the best interest of both Robbinsville Township and the court because this matter has been resolved and the Foxmoor residents are extremely happy with the outcome,” Mr. Race said Monday.
The township-owned property at 1201Washington Blvd. received preliminary Planning Board approval in July 2011 for a 48,000-square-foot office building with 192 parking spaces. The move infuriated Foxmoor residents, some of whom went door-to-door collecting more than 800 signatures on petitions against the plan.
”Our original thought was that this might be a good place to put in an office building and have the township take the top floor and then perhaps have some office use on the second and first floor,” Mayor Fried told the residents at the meeting.
”It seemed to us like a good idea. And like every good idea, until you share it with a lot of other people … you find out it’s a really bad idea,” Mr. Fried said.
Since the overwhelming majority of Foxmoor residents want the land left as open space, Mr. Fried said he would ask the Township Council to approve using open space funds to purchase the parcel so it can be protected from development.
The crowd warmly applauded the news, but there were a few who questioned why the town would spend its open space tax dollars to buy land it already owns.
”If the town owns the property, why does it have to buy it with the Open Space Fund if we already own it — other than to maybe help out with the municipal budget,” David Wilson, of Meadowbrook Road, asked the mayor.
Mr. Fried said the parcel’s current zoning still allows an office building or other commercial use there, which means that even if he walks away from the project, it could still be revived in the future by another mayor or council.
”Once we move it over to open space it will be nearly impossible to develop,” Mr. Fried said. “It’s like taking money from your savings account and moving it into your checking account. It’s really municipal dollars on both sides.
”So yes, we could probably use that money to then, potentially, maybe, put our municipal building someplace else,” Mr. Fried said at another point in the evening. “But will it cause a tax increase? No.”
Mr. Fried said an appraisal of the land must be done before the Township Council can vote on appropriating open space funds for the purchase. The mayor estimated the process would take about 12 months.
In the meantime, the modest building on the site, which was formerly used as a police substation and then a tax office, is being offered for sale on an online government auction site. If there are no bidders, the building will be torn down because the floors inside are collapsing, Mr. Fried said.
The building was once a Sharbell sales office until the developer sold it for $1 in 2004 to the Robbinsville PBA, which briefly used it as a substation for its bike patrols. A year later, the town moved its tax and finance offices into the building because the Route 130 municipal building had flooded and was uninhabitable due to extensive mold.
In the fall of 2010, the tax and finance offices were moved to 1 Washington Blvd. where other municipal offices are leasing 8,000 square feet of space, and the township began making plans to sell the now-vacant Foxmoor property. The first scheduled auction in the fall of 2010 was cancelled because the auctioneer recommended that an engineering site plan be completed first in order to resolve uncertainties about wetlands and rights-of-way.
On Nov. 29, 2010 the Township Council held a special meeting and awarded a professional services contract to ACT Engineers to develop the site plan so the land could be sold. The firm was eventually paid $38,812 for the engineering work.
The auction never occurred, however, because once the Planning Board granted a preliminary site plan approval — a move designed to fetch a higher price at auction — the Foxmoor community began organizing against it.
The new decision to preserve the Foxmoor land, along with the bulldozing of the 87-year-old mold-damaged municipal building earlier this month, leaves the township once again without a permanent solution for its municipal office space needs. However, the mayor said a new plan may be on the horizon.
”I guess everything happens for a reason,” Mr. Fried said. “We were scrambling, trying to figure out if we weren’t going to go with Foxmoor, where could we go. As it turned out, because this was in the paper, another business in town came to us with a really unique, good idea that may actually help spur some development, be great for us, and be cost-effective.”
Mr. Fried declined to identify the business or elaborate on the specifics.
”I’m not ready to put it out there because we are still trying to work out the details,” Mr. Fried said.
As for the old municipal building property on Route 130, the mayor said it would be better suited for a combination police station/court building because there is not enough parking there for a municipal building. The current police station and a temporary trailer used as the municipal court and Township Council chambers, are located across the parking lot from where the municipal building stood.
The mayor emphasized the combination police/court building was a long-range goal, not something the town would be doing immediately.
”We’re not in any rush to do that, but the reality is that we are setting it aside because our court right now is in trailers … so at some point we’re going to have to build a new police station/court,” Mr. Fried said.
”I can tell you, but I can’t mention whom, we’re taking a hard look at partnering with another town to do a shared service police/court,” Mr. Fried said.
”We have another town using our court now, there’s some people who need facilities, so it might make sense,” Mr. Fried said. “There’s also a lot of grant money to do inter-local arrangements so it might be a way for us to finance the project.”
Hightstown Borough has been using the court facilities in Robbinsville since its own building was damaged by floodwaters after Hurricane Irene last August. Mr. Fried would not elaborate on whether Hightstown was the potential partner.

