Cranbury Township officials passed a resolution to approve a partnership between the town and homebuilder Toll Brothers that will reconstruct issue plagued Petty Road and improve the road drainage.
On Feb. 25 at the Cranbury Township Committee meeting, Mayor James Taylor, Committeeman Mike Ferrante, Committeeman Glenn Johnson, and Committeeman Matt Scott voted to pass the resolution. Deputy Mayor Dan Mulligan was absent for the meeting.
Toll Brothers is scheduled to construct a 174-unit age restricted housing project at the Protinick property at the corner of Dey and Petty roads.
“In 2016 we entered into a settlement agreement with the Toll Brothers as part of our affordable housing obligation,” Mayor Taylor said. “What it did was it agreed that Toll Bros would purchase the Protnick property and build 174 age restricted homes on the property on Dey road. In return two things would happen one we would get a contribution to our affordable housing plan for $3 million and two we would support their earlier efforts to get sewer., which we thought would be a connection to Plainsboro Road.”
Township officials said what has since happened is Toll has looked at the sewer system and looked at Plainsboro, when looking at Plainsboro they realize the system does not go into Cranbury.
“They want to move quickly as they can with the development so they looked at Cranbury’s sewer system and saw that we had the available capacity and decided if they would ask us if they could run the sewer line from Dey to Petty road and down to the connection to Plainsboro Road.” Taylor said.
Toll Brothers went to township officials to discuss the new plan.
“We said if you do that you are going to have to dig up Petty Road to put in the sewer system and once you dig up the road there is no more road, because there is no way to patch petty road in the condition it is in. So we entered into discussions with them on how they would go about fixing it. We estimated it would be a $2 million repair on our end,” Taylor said.
Toll Brothers had determined that due to the agreement to get sewer in Cranbury and the township supporting that process, the homebuilder will lay the sewer down on Petty Road and then it will then go ahead and fix the drainage and reconstruct Petty Road at its expense.
“The only thing we have to do in return is contribute $250,000 to that cost,” he said. “We now get Petty Road reconstructed and drainage fixed. The nice thing about this is we get Toll to adhere to our plans. The engineer went through what our plan specifications were, and what our paving depth should be so everything is in accordance with our town plan. Toll Brothers referred to our engineer and our attorney.”
Township officials said Toll Brothers is concerned about disrupting the school schedule for the children in town for the buses that go down Petty Road. The homebuilder has offered to do the road repair and sewer line during the summer months.
“We are looking at a full reconstruction of Petty Road and sewer line in the summer of 2021 or 2022 based on Toll Brother’s estimates. So I think it is a fair deal for everyone,” Taylor said.
Petty Road residents have been vocal in the past about the road being in bad shape. The road is an old country road in a part of town where large homes were built.
“This is a win, win,” Committeeman Scott said.