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PRINCETON: Demonstrators protest against AvalonBay

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
   A union-organized protest against developer AvalonBay on Wednesday sought to spotlight what critics call the apartment builder’s confrontational style.
   Representatives of 32BJ Service Employees International Union, a regional private sector service workers union that has butted heads with AvalonBay before, joined about 15 community members in front of the former Princeton hospital site on Witherspoon Street in Princeton that AvalonBay wants to tear down and turn into an apartment building.
   The local Planning Board rejected the project in December, a decision that led AvalonBay to sue in state Superior Court to have it overturned.
   Kevin Brown, director of the union, said the developer likes to do things the “Avalon way.” His union released a study about the report that spotlights AvalonBay’s activities.
   In a statement, William McLaughlin, AvalonBay Executive Vice President, said: “Our development and community record speaks for itself, despite 32BJ’s attempt to distort it for its own purposes. In the overwhelming majority of our developments in New Jersey and around the country, we have been welcomed as a preferred partner, and our relationships with local communities and government officials have been mutually beneficial.”