By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
The town “eventually” will rezone the Alexander Street corridor that Princeton University is eyeing for residential mixed-use development at the southern entrance to the community from Route 1, said the leader of the Princeton Council on Monday.
Council President Jenny Crumiller, speaking at Mayor Liz Lempert’s press conference, gave no timetable for when the governing body will act to change the regulations of an area now zoned for service businesses that have gone away.
“I think that’s it’s probably going to be rezoned,” Crumiller said.
Rezoning lower Alexander was explored by university and then-township officials, pre-consolidation, but “put on hold,” Mayor Lempert said. Yet as Nassau Hall incrementally reshapes that part of town, including the recently completed arts and transit neighborhood, this might be the time for those discussions to resume.
“I think it’s something where there’s been a desire I think from some council people to say, look, it’s like we should bring that back and discuss now that the arts and transit project is built out and we have a better sense of what the impact of that is,” Mayor Lempert said.
Mayor Lempert said that in early January, the governing body would meet to set its priorities for 2018, with any rezoning taking a lot of time by the governing body and the municipal planning staff.
“I would not be surprised if somebody brought this up as something they would like to explore in 2018,” she said. “And I think it’s just a question of council needs to have the discussion and decide if this is something we have the capacity to put on the list and the interest to do now versus later.”
Mayor Lempert, married to a university professor, would have to recuse herself from any rezoning of the area.
“We will ask to begin a discussion about rezoning the Alexander corridor, but with no specific timetable,” said University Vice President and Secretary Robert K. Durkee by email, when asked Monday if the university planned to ask for a rezoning in 2018. The university has amassed properties along that stretch, including a former service station.
The timing of this comes with Nassau Hall having last week released a “planning framework” to guide its land use decisions in the coming years. Representatives of the university, including Durkee, were on hand at the council meeting Monday to present the report and field questions.
As it relates to Alexander Street, the report said, in part: “If rezoned for residential mixed-use, the corridor could be developed in a manner that included housing of various kinds, along with some mix of retail, office, innovation partnership and convening space, potentially a hotel and other uses of interest to the community and the university.”
“Such a redevelopment of this corridor,” the report continued, “could significantly enhance the streetscape and create an attractive gateway to town and campus.”
“And I think it’s one of those areas where you’d want whatever goes in there to meet community needs,” Mayor Lempert said in talking favorably of having another hotel.
She said the community loses “a lot of revenue” to hotels that carry the name Princeton but are located in another town. The municipality has the ability to charge a hotel tax.
“People come and they think that they’re staying in Princeton and they’re not,” Mayor Lempert said. “And they end up out on a highway and they can’t walk anyway and they’re miles and miles away from town and miles and miles away from the university.”
The municipality has two hotels, the Nassau Inn, in Palmer Square, and the Peacock Inn, on Bayard Lane.
Nassau Hall officials have spoken of, eventually, redeveloping the 101-acre Springdale golf course on the other side of Alexander to support the university’s “educational mission.” While that development is not going to happen in the near future, such a project would continue the further evolution of the Alexander Street corridor.
It was not clear if the projects that the university planning report referenced for Alexander Street are intended to complement whatever Nassau Hall does, long term, in building on Springdale.
“As you know,” Durkee said, “we have no plans at this point regarding development of the golf course.”
