James Barnshaw of Princeton
Granted that Mr. Hillier’s proposal for 158 condos on the Princeton Ridge (northwest side of Bunn Drive) has a beautiful design for the wrong location, we must ask: How much acreage of the Ridge will Mr. Hillier’s development destroy with buildings and impervious cover?
No one seems to agree — not Mr. Hillier nor Princeton Township Committee nor Lee Solow (Princeton Township planner).
Township Committee is rushing with breakneck speed to pass a bad ordinance about acreage-disruption while it lowers the age restriction from 62-plus to 55-plus.
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection stipulates that, in high-density developments like Mr. Hillier’s, not more than 30 percent of the tract can be dug up or ruined. Mr. Hillier has said he will raze 26 percent, but his “conceptual plan” seems more grandiose than that. And Township Committee is reviewing an ordinance that violates the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection stipulation by stating that “at least 8.5 acres of the tract [must remain] in an undisturbed state.”
So Township would allow 50 percent of the tract (out of 17.5 acres) to be uprooted? Further, Mr. Solow has said that 60 percent can be developed (Township meeting, Nov. 26).
Why are Township officials so eager to ignore environmental safeguards for land that many of us believe should not be exploited at all? Is the idea of “Sustainable Princeton” introduced by Mayor Marchand barely a month ago just a fiction?
Many seniors have spoken at the public hearings on Nov. 12 and 26 to say that they would never choose to live in a development that destroyed environmentally fragile territory. Township Committee members have not responded to these expressions of outrage, and Mr. Solow has neutralized the vulnerability of the Ridge by claiming that “most of the Office / Research Zone is developed.”
The real truth is that, while some of the Ridge has patently been fragmented by building, there remain nearly 70 heavily-wooded acres still in private hands that are undeveloped—-necessary open space in the right location. The high-density Hillier development would be out of character in its surroundings.
The fact that Township officials are so profligate in permitting an excess of destroyed forest and so avid to deny the pertinence of state stipulations should give every citizen reason to doubt their wisdom.
Township Committee must pause to reconsider. No virtue can accrue to the passing of an imperfect ordinance about whose true acreage-disruption the principals are still, after three months of negotiations, uncertain. We expect better from township officials. If a pause for intelligent deliberations carries debate about the ordinance into 2008, Township Committee will gain praise for judicious deliberation.
James Barnshaw, MD
Terhune Road
Princeton
