Money to be used for two large tracts
By John Tredrea, Special Writer
Two ordinances that allow Hopewell Township to use money from its Open Space Trust Fund to purchase two large tracts of land and preserve them as open space were adopted by 4-0 votes of the Township Committee Monday night.
Voting in favor were Mayor Vanessa Sandom, Deputy Mayor Allen Cannon and Committeemen Harvey Lester and Jim Burd. Michael Markulec was absent.
One of the ordinances authorizes the township to use $1,919,500 of its open space money to purchase the 100-acre Else tract, located northwest of Alliger Park. The park is just west of the township’s Public Works building, off the north side of Route 546..
The other ordinance authorizes using $2,060,000 toward a group purchase of more than 200 acres that straddle Carter Road, a short distance south of the Mt. Rose neighborhood.
The Else tract, formerly one of the farms operated by the Else family, is adjacent to Alliger Park, township Administrator/Engineer Paul Pogorzelski said. A partially complete Veterans Memorial is in Alliger Park. Another former Else farm, off Route 31 just south of Route 654, already has been preserved as open space.
Mayor Vanessa Sandom and township attorney, Steve Goodell, said that adopting the ordinance on the property straddling Carter Road does not obligate the township to spend the money. It would be spent, they said, only if negotiations on the purchase of the 200-plus acres from Berwyn Properties Group are successful.
Negating with Berwyn on the deal is a team of prospective purchasers that include state and county agencies as well as nonprofits that work to preserve land as open space, Ms. Sandom said.
”The township would only spend this money if the whole deal goes through,” Mayor Sandom said Tuesday.
”This is as complicated and consequential a deal as was the purchase of the St. Michael’s tract,” she said.
That tract, which straddles the Hopewell Township/Hopewell Borough border, finally was preserved as open space after long negotiations with the Diocese of Trenton, former owner of the property, and a marathon fundraising campaign on behalf of the D&R Greenway Land Trust.
If the Else purchase goes through, township officials said, the land would be auctioned off. A term of the sale would be that the land could be used only for agriculture or preserved as open space.