by Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
The Princeton Council has been presented with another proposal to buy land on Lytle Street to expand Mary Moss Park and leave room for affordable housing.
Officials must decide tonight whether to acquire two 30-foot lots from the current owner, developer Roman Barsky, use one of them to expand the park and leave the other for the possibility that Habitat for Humanity will build housing there. It is not been finalized, at this stage, how big the housing would be or if Habitat could come up with the money to build it.
“There obviously are going to be issues to be worked out with how much money they’d be expected to raise,” Mayor Liz Lempert told reporters in the afternoon. “There are a lot of details with, if this were to be built for affordable housing, how exactly would it be built, who would build it, how big it would be. A lot of those questions are things that would be decided at a later date.”
The other option is for council to step away entirely and allow Mr. Barsky use his land as he sees fit.
Officials are due to consider the issue at the council meeting tonight, Monday, starting at 7 p.m.
“The goal tonight is really to have council make a decision as to what path we’re going to go down,” Mayor Lempert said.
Habitat for Humanity representatives were due to attend the meeting and address the council. One of the lots contains a 19th-century house that some residents would prefer to see saved and converted into affordable housing. The town has said rehabilitating the house would cost too much for too little affordable housing.
“Renovating that building, at the end of the day when you looked at how much it was going to cost, you just couldn’t make it work if it was going to be affordable housing,” Mayor Lempert said. “A combination of the amount of work that needed to be done on it and also the size. The numbers didn’t add up.”
Residents who have lobbied the town to save the house came up with a compromise that enables the porch and other elements to be preserved, stored and then reused when and if the affordable housing is built. The house itself would be demolished for the park expansion.
