Princeton University reiterated it has no short-term plan to develop the Springdale Golf Club, even though Nassau Hall said it anticipates eventually using the 101-acre property to support the school’s academic mission.
University architect Ronald McCoy, speaking at a Princeton Regional Chamber of Commerce event at the golf course clubhouse, addressed area business leaders on April 20 about the university’s campus plan.
The plan is a framework to guide decision-makers at Princeton to grow and develop the campus. McCoy said the plan states “there will be no development on Springdale over the next 10 years.”
The university owns the land and has a licensing agreement that runs through 2036 with the Springdale Golf Club, Clubhouse Drive. The deal has an early termination clause the university could exercise. As recently as last year, Nassau Hall called it “likely” the golf course would be used to support the university’s mission of teaching and research.
“We recognize that we want to preserve our opportunities to develop Springdale in the future to support the academic mission of the institution,” McCoy said. “So that’s a very important point.”
McCoy said the university is “very much aware of the beautiful natural conditions of the Springdale area and the historic conditions.” He said the area was the scene of “very important Revolutionary War history.”
“So all those things would be preserved if and when we decide to develop the Springdale lands,” he said.
Springdale Golf Club President Kevin Tylus, who attended McCoy’s talk, said afterward that the club and the university have a “great relationship” and that the two parties have a “very open dialogue.” He said the university intends to install a golf training facility at the course.
“At any time after 2023, the university has the option to give the club a three-year notice of its intent to terminate or decline to renew the agreement,” university spokesman Michael Hotchkiss said on April 23. “As we have said, no projects anticipated in the 2026 campus plan would change the use of Springdale, but the university anticipates using the site for its academic and educational mission at some point in the future.”
Regarding the possibility of the golf course being developed, Mayor Liz Lempert said on April 20 that she thought it was an issue “a future governing body will be grappling with.”
“There’s been no effort I know of to think about rezoning the area,” she said.
In the past 10 years, the university has been redeveloping that section of the municipality. Work included the arts and transit project with a new train station, restaurants and buildings for the university’s arts program.
The campus plan suggested a mixed-use development along Alexander Street, including the possibility of a hotel. Any such project would require Princeton’s governing body to rezone the area.
In his remarks at the chamber event, McCoy touched on the “broad geographic scope” of a campus plan that considered all university property “that encompass the academic mission of the university.”
McCoy reiterated what the university has said about the campus plan, that it is a framework to help guide development in the near term and up to 30 years from now.
“We wanted to make sure we were looking at all the lands, so we would have the perspective of the future as we made short-term decisions,” McCoy said. “We didn’t want a situation where we would build something now and realize that, in the long term, it was not properly placed or that we had missed an opportunity to anticipate the future.”