ROBBINSVILLE: Foxmoor park preservation plan advances

By Joanne Degnan, Managing Editor
   ROBBINSVILLE — The Township Council introduced an ordinance Dec. 13 that would use $750,000 from its open space fund to purchase a 6-acre parcel in Foxmoor that the municipality already owns in order to preserve it as open space.
   The transaction, which essentially is moving funds from one account to another, will provide the township with an infusion of cash to reduce the debt service on the new municipal office space it is having built on Route 33 in Town Center.
   Opposition from Foxmoor residents derailed the township’s original plan to sell the township-owned parcel in their neighborhood at 1201 Washington Blvd. to a developer, complete with preliminary approvals for a three-story, 48,000-square-foot office building so one floor could be leased to the town for new municipal offices.
   Mayor Dave Fried changed his mind about pursuing that project last March after the public outcry and has been working with Foxmoor residents to permanently preserve the Washington Boulevard parcel as a park.
   Municipal offices, instead, are going to be inside a new Town Center building where Roma Bank has sold the top floor to the township as condominium office space for $2,009,250, excluding final fit-out costs that are expected to raise the total cost to about $3 million. The building is expected to open in 2014.
   Under the ordinance, the $750,000 from the Open Space Trust Account for the preservation of the Foxmoor property will be deposited in the township’s general fund to make the office space the town is buying less expense to finance.
   The ordinance says the funds also can be used toward the fit-out costs, which are expenses related to interior partitioning, floors, ceilings, electric and mechanicals.
   ”This will allow us to change our debt service from what we were originally going to do, which was a 20-year bond, to a 15-year bond that will actually save the township taxpayers about $257,000,” Mayor Fried said at the council meeting.
   ”This will save us a significant amount of time and obviously five years’ worth of payments so I really feel this is a good win-win situation all around,” he said.
   The ordinance, if adopted at the council’s next meeting Dec. 27, is the coda to a two-year saga that began when the township began making plans to auction the property on Washington Boulevard for development.
   Along the way, a group of Foxmoor residents launched petition drives, protested at public meetings and even filed a lawsuit without a lawyer to fight city hall and stop the project.
   Some of these same community activists who led that effort attended last week’s council meeting to express their appreciation to township officials who they said had listened to what they had to say and agreed to preserve the land.
   ”I am so thankful, and the residents are so thankful, that it has worked out this way,” said Foxmoor resident Jayme Race, the civil engineer who filed the pro se lawsuit without an attorney to thwart the auction of the property.
   Mr. Race withdrew the lawsuit several months later after the mayor announced at a packed town hall meeting he intended to preserve the land with open space funds so it is deed restricted and unable to be developed by a future mayor or council.
   Now Mr. Race is part of a 10-person steering committee working with the mayor’s blessing on design ideas for a “simple, natural park,” which, when finalized, will be submitted to the township for approval.
   Mr. Race told the mayor and council the steering committee is working with a landscape architect, a naturalist from the Mercer County Parks Commission and others to come up with a simple park design that would not disturb two wetland areas on the site. The group would like to see benches installed in the park so people can sit, read and enjoy watching nature, he said.
   The proposed mini park would be an ideal spot for the seniors living in the nearby Rose Hill assisted-living facility to visit, Mr. Race said.
   Mayor Fried thanked the group for taking the time to get involved and make known their concerns about the original plans to develop the property.
   ”We sometimes sit in a room and think something’s a good idea . . . but until you hear from the people it affects, you really don’t know how they’re feeling,” Mayor Fried said. “Sometimes what you thought was a great idea on paper turns out to not be such a great idea after all.”
   Township Councilman Dave Boyne asked CFO Deborah Bauer what impact the purchase would have on the township open space fund, which is supported by property taxpayers who pay 5 cents per $100 in assessed value for open space preservation. For a home assessed at $400,000, this works out to $200 a year.
   Ms. Bauer said there is about $6.9 million in the open space fund, and, since the Foxmoor property is being preserved in a $750,000 all-cash transaction, the fund will have a balance of about $6.15 million afterward.
   According to the ordinance, Martin Appraisal Services established the property’s fair market value as $960,000 as of Sept. 30.
   The property, which includes two lots and a “paper” street that was never built, was donated to the township years ago by a developer. A small modular trailer (now removed) on the site had housed the Police Department’s bike patrol and later the township tax offices until 2010.