A development application is expected soon, but at least a million dollars must be raised.
By: Vic Monaco
The Princeton Academy of the Sacred Heart plans to file a site development plan for the former Our Lady of Princeton site with the township this month, after announcing it has an option to buy the property.
The private school, which has been using space at the site under a two-year lease, announced late Friday that it had acquired a purchase option that expires Sept. 30.
The school indicated it will exercise the option if it receives approval of its site plan from the Princeton Regional Planning Board by that time, and if its fundraising efforts continue to be successful.
“We want to try to get something in to them as soon as possible, if we can by the end of the week but we don’t know if we can make that,” Headmaster Olen Kalkus said Monday. “We hope to get on the July docket (of the Planning Board), but if it can be done sooner, that would be great.”
The Planning Board generally meets on the first and third Thursday of each month, meaning this month’s meetings are slated for Thursday and June 15.
The site plan, according to a press release from the school, will be formally submitted “by early June.” It will include “athletic fields and some additional parking but no other substantial changes to the exterior of the property.”
The school said it had raised nearly $2 million toward the potential purchase, and estimated it needs another $1 million before “moving to a formal purchase.”
School officials indicated they are “very close” to securing bank financing for a purchase and also announced their ability to obtain a $1 million challenge grant from a “major foundation” if the school can raise enough funds to close without any bank financing.
Mr. Kalkus said Monday that the total price of the property is $7.5 to $8 million, and that the purchase option was hammered out last week.
In mid-April, school officials told The Packet that $1.5 million had been raised for a possible down payment. But, at the same time, Joseph Del Duco, the attorney representing the owner and developer of the land, said “there’s definitely no contract or agreement to sell the property” and that construction of the controversial Regent’s Mead continuing-care retirement community at the site remained a “very, very high priority.”
The school’s announcement Friday came just hours after state Superior Court Judge Linda Feinberg upheld the Planning Board’s December decision to reject the Regent’s Mead application, based on a lack of jurisdiction.
Judge Linda Feinberg said the developer of Regent’s Mead can submit its plan to the Princeton Township Zoning Board of Adjustment.
Mr. Del Duco said Friday that the developer could appeal the judge’s decision but hadn’t decided what to do.
The academy opened in September 1999 with 38 students. It expects to have about 100 students in the fall and an enrollment of 235 within four years. The school is envisioned as a brother school to the nearby Stuart Country Day School of the Sacred Heart, an all-girls’ school.
The 43-acre site of the former Our Lady of Princeton convent is located at The Great Road and Drakes Corner Road.