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PRINCETON: AvalonBay hopes to resume construction this week on apartment complex

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
A representative for AvalonBay told the town Monday that the company hopes to resume construction of its apartment complex on Witherspoon Street this week, a municipal official said.
Construction-related work has been halted for about the past month, amid the discovery of chemicals and metals in piles of debris on the site. AvalonBay will have to have that material hauled away, a process due to start later this month, town engineer Robert V. Kiser said Monday.
Mr. Kiser said municipal land use engineer Jack West had spoken earlier in the day Monday with a representative for AvalonBay, who shared the news about hoping to resume construction sometime this week. “Construction has not resumed as of yet,” Mr. Kiser said.
But AvalonBay senior vice president Ronald S. Ladell said Monday that construction had resumed last week. The differing remarks suggested that town and AvalonBay officials appeared to be caught in a semantic difference over what each side means by construction.
In any event, the company is in the midst of building a 280-unit residential project at the site of the former Princeton Hospital.