Princeton is willing to contribute financially toward refurbishing an old gym at the Valley Road School, a move that officials said is unrelated to its continuing interest to acquire part of the buil
By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Princeton is willing to contribute financially toward refurbishing an old gym at the Valley Road School, a move that officials said is unrelated to its continuing interest to acquire part of the building from the Board of Education.
The town’s contribution would come from a Mercer County grant that the former borough and township were awarded in 2006 for installing an artificial turf field at Greenway Meadows Park. That field project was abandoned, although the town is trying to get permission to change how the $767,660 grant is spent.
Instead of a turf field, the town wants to replace a rectangular wading pool at Mary Moss Park, located at the corner of John and Lytle streets, with an interactive “sprayground,” and pay for a feasibility and design study of needed renovations at Community Park South. In June, the municipal recreation board voted to support redirecting the grant money to those two projects; only afterward did the town administration want the gym added as a third.
The county, however, still needs to approve the request. The town is in the midst of going through that process, as Princeton Council on Tuesday passed a resolution that supports reallocating the grant for those three projects.
”Princeton would need to make a formal change in the grant application and submit it to the county planning department for review. If the planning department approves the proposal, it would draw up a new contract for Princeton officials to sign,” said county spokesman Michael Boonin in an email Wednesday. “The signed contract would then go to the county Freeholder Board for final approval.”
The gym, one that the school district uses for storage, is located in the renovated section of the school, Mayor Liz Lempert said Tuesday.
”And the idea would be to use some of this money to fix it up again so it could be used,” she said.
”Quite frankly, I would expect we’re never going to get to that,” town administrator Robert W. Bruschi said Tuesday. “But we wanted to have three items that we could, in case everything else comes in way under budget, we would like to be able to utilize the county funds and maximize those the best we can.”
Princeton officials stressed that the first two projects take precedence over the gym and doubted that any money would be left over. The council resolution from Tuesday reads, in part, that grant money for the gym refurbishment would be available only after the two other projects have been “100 percent funded.”
Officials also said they did not add the gym project as a way to sweeten any potential negotiations with the school board about acquiring part of the building.
”There’s a space. We cooperate. We’re constantly sharing spaces,” said Councilwoman Jo S. Butler on Wednesday in describing relations between the town and the school district.
From the district’s side of things, school officials would like to repurpose that gym for local recreation and district athletic programs, said school board president Timothy Quinn on Wednesday.
Any grant money would pay for only part of the gym project, not the full amount, town officials said. Aside from having recreation department programs there, another possible use of the gym would be as a temporary “respite center” in another emergency, like the way the Princeton Public Library was after superstorm Sandy.
This comes amid the town interested in acquiring some portion of the former school for expanding the firehouse located next door. The school board, having earlier this year rejected another suitor’s proposal for a community center, only is making available that part of the building fronting Witherspoon Street. Mr. Quinn said the district has not seen a formal proposal yet from the municipality.
”It’s all sort of theoretical at this point,” he said.
For his part, Mr. Quinn said a scenario in which the town gets to expand the firehouse and the district gets to repurpose the gym for recreation uses and a respite center “would be in the community’s best interest.”
As part of that, the district also want to address its storage needs, he said.