A special Princeton Planning Board meeting to continue testimony on an application to subdivide a vacant lot at 140 Hodge Road, which was to be held Oct. 24, has been called off.
Applicant Jarrad Michalesko was not ready to continue and requested an extension to Dec. 31 on the plan to create two lots on the 1.6-acre property. He began presenting testimony at the board’s Oct. 3 meeting, but ran out of time to complete it.
The vacant house that sat on the lot was destroyed by fire in July 2018. Michalesko bought the property in September 2018 for $1.1 million and demolished the house, which had been for sale for several years.
Michalesko is now seeking permission to create two new building lots, neither of which meet the required 125-ft. minimum lot width. Each lot would be 118 feet wide, or 7 feet less than the minimum requirement.
Meanwhile, Michalesko’s application itself has run into a firestorm of opposition from neighbors on Hodge Road. They object to the plan to create two lots that are non-conforming in lot width, but that otherwise exceed the minimum lot size of 20,000 square feet.
But there are other issues, as well.
In a July 2 report to the planning board, Princeton Planning Director Michael LaPlace wrote that 140 Hodge Road is located in the proposed Morven Tract Historic District.
An ordinance to create the Morven Tract Historic District was introduced by the former Princeton Borough Council in 2012, but was never enacted because of opposition from some property owners in the proposed historic district.
The Morven Tract Historic District derives its name from its former ownership by the Stockton family, which built Morven (next to Monument Hall, the former Princeton Borough municipal building).
Morven was built by Richard Stockton, who was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, on land that his grandfather acquired from William Penn in 1701. The land stayed in the family until it was subdivided and subsequently developed in the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries.
“The major issue to be addressed is the applicant’s request to create two new lots which do not meet the minimum width requirement in the R-1 zone and will be narrower than many of the lots in the proposed historic district along Hodge Road,” LaPlace wrote in the July 2 report.
Because the property is located in the proposed historic district, the application was referred to the Historic Preservation Commission for a courtesy review. In this instance, the commission could only offer advice because the district was never formally created.
In its July 9 report to the planning board, the Historic Preservation Commission expressed concern that “approving a minor subdivision could lead to the construction of two new single-family homes which would be out of character with the neighborhood and inappropriate for the established streetscape pattern along this section of Hodge Road.”
The Historic Preservation Commission also wrote that if the planning board approves the application, the two new houses must be served by the two existing driveway curb cuts on Hodge Road that accommodated the circular driveway of the house that was demolished.
The commission also recommended preserving the existing hedge behind the public sidewalk. The new houses should be sited to preserve the existing plantings.