By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
The town is looking for $2.4 million from the federal government to give a facelift to a stretch of Nassau Street, in an ambitious project changing the look of the street and making it safer for pedestrians.
The town will apply next month through the state Department of Transportation for the federal dollars to pay for replacing the entire stretch of sidewalk, on the town side of Nassau, from Route 206 to Moore Street, municipal engineer Deanna Stockton said Thursday. The money also would pay for new paper boxes, bike racks, trash cans and trees and improvements to where pedestrians cross intersections of Tulane and Bank streets and John Street Alley.
There is no timeline for when the municipality expects to learn the fate of its application.
Town officials this year have been taking a fresh look at the town’s signature thoroughfare, one that a Princeton official said this week needs some fixing up.
“It’s been a project that I’ve been long interested in, and I think that we have some real needs on Nassau Street to make our streetscape more attractive and more accessible and safe for pedestrians,” Councilwoman Jo S. Butler said Thursday.
In June, the town played host to a workshop to get input on how the public would like to see Nassau look. Ms. Butler said there is wide support within the community to renovate the street, even though the town could not afford to accomplish such a project by itself.
She said the federal money is the “only way” that the entire project could be undertaken. But she left open the possibility for the town to do “parts of it” without spending as much money, like paying for bike corrals, or an area to park bikes.
Nassau Street has a long history, the once-dirt road that is seen as the dividing line between Princeton University and the rest of the community. The street is also a stretch of the Old Lincoln Highway that runs from New York to California.
Ms. Butler said that while the street is a source of pride within the community, it does not hold up in comparison to downtowns in other parts of the country.
“But when you take a step back and travel to other municipalities,” Ms. Butler said, “you see other towns doing a better job of working on the infrastructure where they’re trying to promote commerce and pedestrian traffic.”
Mayor Liz Lempert has said that repairs are needed, with last improvements believed to have happened around 30 years ago.
The town has another community meeting scheduled on Nassau Street for Nov.22 at 7 p.m. in the main meeting room in the Witherspoon Hall municipal building.
