By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Municipal officials want Princeton University to share details of what university administrators are thinking about the future growth of the university, at a time when the school has said it intends to add 500 more undergraduates over the next decade.
The town is seeking to arrange a meeting between university representatives and a committee of the town’s Planning Board to “show us where they are” with a campus plan that the school is crafting to guide that growth, Council President Lance Liverman said Monday. He said the school is still about a year away from finalizing the planning document, but municipal officials want to get engaged sooner rather than later.
He said the town does not want to “wait until the plan’s over,” but rather would look for where the two sides of Nassau Street can “work together.” University vice president and secretary Robert K. Durkee said Wednesday the meeting would be open to the public and occur sometime before mid to late July, to avoid the time when people go away on vacation.
The topic about the campus plan came up May 6 at a meeting between Mayor Liz Lempert, Mr. Liverman and their counterparts at the university, including Mr. Durkee. The two sides hold private meetings on an ongoing basis.
Mr. Liverman said the issue of any possible rezoning changes the school might seek never came up last week nor did the future of the Butler tract, the former housing complex along Harrison Street. He said the school has no immediate plans to build on that site, although Nassau Hall has said the future use of the property likely would be residential in nature.
Princeton intends to grow its enrollment through a phased approach mirroring “almost exactly” the one the school used about a decade ago when the undergraduate population expanded to reach its current 5,200 students, Mr. Durkee said. To accommodate that growth, the school will need to find land for a new residential college and other related facilities.
University President Christopher L. Eisgruber recently said in an interview with the Princeton Alumni Weekly, the alumni magazine, that the school would not expand the footprint of the campus across Lake Carnegie or develop the Springdale golf course. to accommodate more undergraduates.
