By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
A task force wants to move fast to send the Princeton Council a proposed ordinance to rezone the former University Medical Center of Princeton.
The group, meeting for the first time Thursday, tinkered with the current zoning to prohibit a swimming pool, either outdoor or indoor. The Task Force, made up of Mayor Liz Lempert, Council President Bernard Miller and others, also will look to include zoning criteria for a development project that reuses the hospital building and criteria if the site is demolished.
If the council approves of the task force’s work, the proposed ordinance would go to the Planning Board for review and then back to the council for a final up or down vote. Two more task force meetings are scheduled, for Tuesday between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. and Thursday between 12 to 2 p.m., in the municipal building on Witherspoon Street.
The task force was formed in the wake of the Planning Board voting last month to reject developer AvalonBay’s proposed 280-unit apartment building at the site. The task force is aiming to get the council an ordinance perhaps before the end of the month or by the beginning of February.
Two representatives from the Princeton HealthCare Systems attorney Mark A. Solomon and vice president for government and community affairs Pam Hersh attended the meeting and addressed the task force.
When the meeting was opened to the public, Mr. Solomon asked why is there a need to get something done in a hurry.
”I’m also trying to understand the timing question a little bit. I know you want to move quickly,” he said. “However quickly you move, we would like you to get it right.”
Mr. Solomon said he did not know if AvalonBay would appeal the Planning Board’s decision to state Superior Court. The board first has to memorialize the rejection of AvalonBay’s project, and then the developer has 45 days to appeal.
If AvalonBay declines to appeal, Mr. Solomon said “that means we’re going back to the marketplace.”
”And it only took us two and half years to get someone to come. I don’t see that we’re going to be showing up tomorrow with a new buyer with a new plan.”
Yet the hospital needs to realize revenue from selling the Witherspoon Street hospital site.
Ms. Hersh said the four banks involving in financing the new hospital did “a lot of studies” and anticipated a certain dollar value in all of the hospital’s real estate part of their equation in making out the loans.
”It certainly would not be helpful, it would be disastrous if suddenly this site went from X value down to much far less,” she said. “Already we’re having problems with the fact that, as Mark said, because of the market, it’s half about of what they initially anticipated.”
Only a handful of residents attended the afternoon meeting.
”I think the desire of the entire community is that the whole site be returned to a neighborhood appearance and feel,” said Daniel A. Harris, a trustee of Princeton Citizens for Sustainable Neighborhoods, the group that fought AvalonBay.
The task force declined to tinker with the affordable housing component for any development on site. Twenty percent of all units must be “affordable,” although what is classified as affordable varies by different regions in the state.
To meet that requirement, AvalonBay proposed 56 affordable units out of the overall 280.
Ms. Hersh told the task force that when the hospital was being marketed, more than 100 developers were interested. But she said the “affordable requirement was one that scared away about 90 percent of them.”
”But we felt it was a priority for the community, so we obviously stuck with it,” she said.
