By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
The public school district plans to sit down this month with Princeton University to get a better handle on what Nassau Hall has in mind for the Butler tract, a roughly 36-acre site in the eastern part of town that the university intends to make a residential development.
Nassau Hall does not have a timetable for when it would start building there, in what it has said would be small-scale housing for graduate students, staff, faculty and post-docs. The property used to contain barracks-style residences that the university since has demolished, with the site empty except for trees — for now.
More long term, the university has said it is looking to have some 300 residential units, plus meet whatever affordable housing requirement that the town sets. At the moment, the town mandates developers include affordable housing into their projects at a 20-percent rate, so the potential is for roughly 360 units overall.
But the school district, already finding itself in an enrollment pinch from large residential developments, said it would seek information from the university.
“As for the development of the Butler tract, I am meeting this month with representatives of the university to get more insight into the timing of the development and the type of housing they are considering,” Superintendent of Schools and Princeton alumnus Stephen C. Cochrane said this week. “We are engaged right now in long-term facility planning so we can factor the Butler tract into that planning process.”
The timing of this comes in the midst of the school district planning a bond referendum, likely sometime in 2018, for various facilities improvements of its buildings.
“We’ll look forward to meeting with Steve and would be happy to hear from anyone else who is interested in our thinking about the site,” said university vice president and secretary Robert K. Durkee on Thursday.
Nassau Hall gave an update to the community last week for neighbors who live around the property located along Harrison Street, Hartley Avenue and Sycamore Road. University and municipal officials agree the Butler property will be rezoned. Rezoning the property, to permit residential development only, will move in stages starting next year.
“There’s going to be so many hearings on this, that we will get input from the whole community before this is done. This is just the start,” town administrator Marc D. Dashield said Monday. “It’s going to be council’s and the Planning Board’s decision on what the zoning is ultimately going to be.”
“Any rezoning would go before the Planning Board,” Mayor Liz Lempert said Monday in pointing out that school board member Fern Spruill also sits on the planning board.
Although no one from the school district was there for the neighborhood meeting Nov.30, the town downplayed its significance.
“But I think that the point of this meeting was to have some community input over an aspect of the campus plan that we’ve heard a lot of feedback about,” Mayor Lempert said. “And so I think that we definitely want to be consulting with the schools.”
Erica Chayes Wida contributed reporting to this article.
