LETTERS
To the editor:
As a concerned senior citizen, hoping that the right kind of continuing-care retirement community will come to Princeton, I am bewildered by what the reasoning can be behind the hesitation of the Planning Board and the Township Committee in rewriting an ordinance that will make that possible.
It seems that many committee members and many citizens, as well as the Site Plan Review Committee, who have all carefully examined the existing ordinance and the revised one, think it is seriously flawed. Letting that ordinance remain as is sets us up, as a community, for massive developments that no area of the township can bear without changing its character.
As I understand it, Alan Porter, the lawyer for the Planning Board, has told the Planning Board and the Township Committee that they have a perfect legal right to change this ordinance now. Is it that they don’t really believe him? Do some of them think this is “spot zoning” because the Regent’s Mead application is hovering over them? This is an ordinance that will be applicable for any possible CCRC site in Princeton. Does Alan Porter think this would be judged “spot zoning” if taken to court? Can’t we straighten out this point?
Regent’s Mead is quoted as saying they had an “invitation” from Princeton to buy this land and build a CCRC. This is hard to believe. Do any committee members think this is true and that, therefore, as a community, we owe them something? That they, the builders, now have the right to make a tidy profit here?
If one looks into the history of CCRCs, those with good reputation, that have integrated happily into communities and over a long period served that community well, they are all nonprofit. They are in the business because of the crying need, not to make a lot of money. They try to keep the costs within the pocketbooks of what’s feasible for the seniors of that community. Those costs are up-front and cover whatever your future medical costs turn out to be. (And they also pay their proportionate share of ratable taxes to the community.) At the start, when you apply, you know whether you can afford it and that the burden will not fall on your children if worst comes to worst. Surely this assurance is of primary importance to Princeton’s senior citizens. Regent’s Mead and Windrows are not giving it to us.
Ideally we should have had all along an ordinance that promoted the nonprofit CCRC — but, failing that, can’t we now at least rewrite the existing one in a way that doesn’t permit this massive a development anywhere in the township? We all want a CCRC that fits our needs and fits our town.
Mary Bundy
Great Road
Princeton
To the editor:
The following letter has been sent to the mayor and members of the Princeton Township Committee, and the chairman and members of the Regional Planning Board of Princeton:
I am not a “neighbor” of the proposed Regent’s Mead continuing-care retirement community site. But I am a township citizen with an enduring respect for our “diabase Ridge.” For years our family has savored its natural character — “homegrown,” as geologists have told me.
Why did we spend taxpayers’ dollars and endless hours to prepare and uphold the 1980 Master Plan or its recommended ordinance changes to protect the Ridge from excessive development and consequent blasting and soil disturbance for new sewer, water and power lines?
In the rainy 1970s, homeowners in Princeton and Montgomery townships had suffered damaging flooding and erosion from two brooks to the north of the Ridge and from three more to its south, not to mention those along the Millstone River.
We were bound to comply with the imminent state laws regarding land use, master planning and storm runoff controls, as well as the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission’s 208 plan. The complete NRI — Natural Resources Inventory (text and maps) — had also come to hand.
Since the latest Township Master Plan was old (1968), we set about the 1980 plan, adopted unanimously by the board. Full notice had already been given to the press and public long before. The plan included, among others, the Land Use, Housing, Circulation and Conservation elements, as called for by the state.
Changes to lot sizes, floor-to-lot-area ratios and building height limits on the Ridge were ordinanced by Township Committee later.
In our planning and because of poor soil and bedrock conditions encountered by previous builders on the Ridge or in its OR zone, we did consider site construction costs, which obviously would have to be passed on to future occupants. All of us looked forward to the sites suitable for various building densities as identified by the NRI maps. We failed to foresee how quickly they would evaporate.
Elizabeth L. Hutter
Van Dyke Road
Princeton
To the editor:
The following letter was sent to Princeton Township Mayor Phyllis Marchand:
Of all the bizarre and strange things that have happened in (and to) Princeton since our arrival in 1952, the Regent’s Mead proposal is by far the most peculiar from the standpoint of town planning, protection of the dwindling open space in our town and the preservation of existing neighborhoods.
As a senior citizen, I am naturally deeply concerned that our needs as long-time Princeton residents who have invested ourselves, our financial and emotional resources here have not been met with CCRC facilities within our physical and financial reach. However, the Regent’s Mead project is so foreign to the fabric and texture of our community, so utterly outside the financial reach of many, that I marvel it could have ever been considered in the first place.
I urge you and your committee to bend every effort to put the usual political considerations aside, considerations that have often in Princeton Township’s history allowed greed to dictate what happens here. There must come a time when elected officials have the integrity to say no to projects that are so badly conceived, so basically wrong for everyone except the developer.
Lilian Grosz
Pretty Brook Road
Princeton