PACKET EDITORIAL, March 20
We’re about to find out whether good news comes in threes.
In the past couple of months, both the Princeton Regional Board of Education and the Princeton Public Library have taken decisive action that would measurably improve the level and quality of services they provide. Now, the Princeton Borough Council has the opportunity to do likewise.
The school board, after years of neglect, has put together a plan to upgrade and expand Princeton High School, the John Witherspoon Middle School and all of the district’s elementary schools. It is an ambitious plan, to be sure: $78.2 million worth of ambition. And it still must receive voter approval in referendum. But the point is that the school board finally stopped talking about the dilapidated state of our public schools and decided to do something about it.
The same thing happened with the library. Its board of trustees spent years talking about the library’s future: Should it stay downtown or move? Should it expand upward or outward? Should it have self-contained parking or be a stand-alone structure? Should its expansion incorporate a commercial or residential component or be limited to the library itself? Who would pay for the new library? How much? Finally, last month, the board decided the time had come to turn talk into action, settling on a plan to keep the library where it is and spend $18 million to expand it.
Is everyone happy with every detail of the decisions the school board and the library board made? No. Even the members of the boards themselves didn’t get everything they wanted, and it remains to be seen whether the public will support these endeavors through their tax dollars for the schools or their voluntary contributions to the library. But both boards deserve to be commended for biting the bullet (and their tongues), and making real, honest-to-goodness decisions after years and years of talk.
Now it’s the Borough Council’s turn. The subject of a downtown garage in Princeton has been kicked around for as long as anyone can remember, and members of the borough’s governing body have been discussing the matter ad nauseum for several years. Like the schools and the library, the garage is one of those issues on which everyone seems to have a slightly different opinion, and it has been easy to get bogged down in debating every detail, from financing to aesthetics, rather than make a decision.
Well, the time has come to make a decision. Last week, two consulting firms hired to develop architectural and feasibility studies for a garage The Williams Group and Desman Associates presented three proposals to the Borough Council, each calling for a new garage that would span the existing Park & Shop and Tulane Street surface lots. Each plan offered a different mix of residential, commercial, retail and open space; they ranged in size from a capacity of 500 to 511 to 554 cars, and in cost from $13 million to $22 million. All would pay for themselves, the consultants said, through revenues derived from rents and parking fees.
Mayor Marvin Reed believes the case has plainly been made for a downtown garage, and that the Borough Council now has sufficient information to make a commitment, at least in principle, to construction of a new garage at the location specified by the consultants. He would like to have that commitment in hand by April 19, when the library is scheduled to present its expansion plans to the Princeton Regional Planning Board, so that planning for both the library and the garage can proceed in tandem.
We strongly support Mayor Reed’s position, and we urge the Borough Council to make the commitment he is seeking. The specifics can wait; the school board and the library board haven’t firmed up the financing plans or approved detailed architects’ drawings at this stage of their projects, and there is no need for the Borough Council to rush to judgment about the size, cost or preferred mixture of uses of the garage.
But the time is right for the council to follow the example of the school board and the library board. Make it a clean sweep for progress. Make a commitment to a downtown parking garage. And make it now.