The Hopewell Township Committee Tuesday night adopted a $2 million bond ordinance to help purchase a 240-acre tract off Carter Road and permanently preserve it as open space. A group of state and c
By John Tredrea, Special Writer
The Hopewell Township Committee Tuesday night adopted a $2 million bond ordinance to help purchase a 240-acre tract off Carter Road and permanently preserve it as open space.
A group of state and county agencies are partnering with nonprofits to buy the land.
Voting to adopt the measure were Mayor Vanessa Sandom, Deputy Mayor Allen Cannon and Committeemen Harvey Lester and Michael Markulec.
John Hart abstained, saying he hadn’t “been part of the negotiations” that led to the impending purchase of the tract and its preservation as open space. Those negotiations lasted many months. Mr. Hart joined the committee last month, replacing Jim Burd, who resigned.
The land can be preserved under a $7.5 million deal between the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, Mercer County, Hopewell Township, the Hopewell Valley Citizens Group and seven other public and private partners have made with Equus Capital Partners, owners of the land.
The property, which straddles the former Western Electric campus, had been approved for 800,000 square feet of commercial office space and proposed for a high-density residential housing development.
”The purchase will end concerns about traffic impacts from many thousands of daily commuter trips through the region if the land was developed as planned,” a spokesperson for the New Jersey Conservation Foundation said.
”In addition, it will help eliminate the need to vastly expand the small historic crossroads at Mt. Rose.”
The Mt. Rose neighborhood, at the intersection of Carter and Cherry Valley roads, is about a mile north of the 240-acre tract.
Three nonprofits, the Friends of Hopewell Valley Open Space, the D&R Greenway Land Trust and the Friends of Princeton Open Space will join the state’s Green Acres Program to bring additional resources to the project.
The 240 acres includes farmland, forests and tributaries of the Stony Brook, and is adjacent to other preserved farmland and open space owned by Hopewell Township and the Friends of Hopewell Valley Open Space.
”Preserving this land will fill a key link in the Lawrenceville-Hopewell Trail, a major regional trail system in Mercer County,” the New Jersey Conservation Foundation spokesperson said.
Western Electric developed the property in the 1950s as the first corporate park in the nation. Subsequent owners included AT&T, Lucent and Townsend. The current owner purchased the property for large-scale development, with plans to replace farms and green space with residential streets and neighborhoods.