By Lauren Otis, Staff Writer
Spring has sprung, and in recent days the outdoor café spaces in downtown Princeton have begun to fill with patrons.
Everywhere it seems except at Calico Grill, located off an alley behind 180 Nassau St.
The 12-seat outdoor dining area of Calico Grill is empty because Princeton Borough won’t issue the necessary paperwork to the recently opened restaurant until a tangled dispute over parking is resolved, said Alan and Marguerite Heap, longtime Griggstown residents who opened the restaurant about eight months ago and who also own and have operated Cox’s Market on 180 Nassau St. for five years.
When the borough surveyed the property for the Heaps’ outdoor dining permit, it discovered that a lease it had granted the previous property owner for three parking spaces behind the building had expired in 1963. The Heaps, who have been using the spaces behind their building for staff vehicles, catering vans, and for housing a garbage container, are now being told they must begin paying the borough $2,100 a spot annually. Mr. Heap said it was the understanding of their property owner, Hilton Realty Co., that the three spaces — and a fourth used by Pryde Brown for her photography business at 180 Nassau Street — were part of the property.
”This was assumed to be our land, our place for parking,” Mr. Heap said.
However, borough officials have told them a municipal lease agreement with Bob Cox, who founded Cox’s market 106 years ago — and sold his property to Hilton Realty — for use of the space had long since expired, Ms. Heap said.
”The borough has taken the stance, ‘you’ve had free parking for all these years,’” Ms. Heap said. “If we hadn’t applied for outside seating this wouldn’t have been an issue, and they wouldn’t have known for another 43 years,” she added.
”We purchased this business (Cox’s Market) knowing we had these spots back here,” Mr. Heap said.
With the outdoor dining permit caught up in the dispute and warm weather arrived, Mr. Heap estimates Calico Grill is losing $400 a day in breakfast and lunch business without the outdoor space, and another $400 a night from dinner patrons.
Mr. Heap said Hilton Realty officials tried to see whether, after so many years of use of the borough property for parking, there might be some legal basis for “squatters rights” for the continued free parking, but told him they found New Jersey doesn’t have such a provision with regard to boroughs and municipalities.
Jeffrey Sands, a partner at Princeton-based Hilton Realty Co., and Mark Hill, executive director of leasing at Hilton Realty, did not return numerous calls seeking comment on the matter.
The borough is now proposing leasing parking spots to the Heaps for $2,100 a spot annually, equivalent to what they would pay if they simply put money in a metered spot, they said. They proposed using smaller garbage receptacles, and having them emptied more regularly, said Mr. Heap, a solution OK with sanitation, fire and police officials, but the borough rejected the proposal, and is requiring them to build a special platform for a large trash container on one of the parking spots at their own expense.
Caught in what they feel is a Kafkaesque nightmare not of their own doing, the Heaps feel that borough officials, rather than being sympathetic to the financial and manpower pressures of a small business like theirs, have dumped responsibility for rectifying the problem in their laps. They say the intransigence of the borough reflects a larger lack of attentiveness to the needs of small business owners who are what makes the borough a unique shopping and dining destination in the first place, as opposed to deep-pocketed chain stores that have proliferated downtown.
Borough Administrator Robert Bruschi said that while the borough is sympathetic to the Heaps’ plight — “they were kind of a victim of their own application” — the fact remains that they have been obtaining free parking on borough property while others pay.
”Let’s face it, in this town everything boils down to parking,” Mr. Bruschi said. If the borough struck a special deal with the Heaps, then it would be inundated with similar requests from other merchants for special dispensations over parking, he said.
Additionally, “what they are doing now at that store is not what was being done before,” Mr. Bruschi said. Such operational changes mean that precedents applying to previous activities at the location no longer apply, he said.
”We are still willing to meet with them,” to find a solution, Mr. Bruschi said. Any resolution must receive Borough Council approval, he said.
”We have a couple concepts in line (to resolve the issue) that we want to bounce off the council,” he said, but declined to discuss them prior to their introduction before tonight’s council meeting.
”These things happen in an old town,” Mr. Bruschi said. He said whatever transpired, and whatever representations were made when Bob Cox sold the property to Hilton Realty, that is a private matter, and the borough would not be involved until it was put in the middle of the situation. “Trust me we don’t enjoy being in the middle of it,” he said.
About whether the borough should have some ability to accommodate the special needs of small businesses, Mr. Bruschi responded: “Maybe down the line there will be a mechanism for that, but until then we have to work within the rules that we have established, with zoning rules and land use rules and the like.”
Mr. Bruschi said the borough does attempt to accommodate property owners and businesses regarding borough property that turns out to have similar use and ownership issues, if the parties can produce some kind of past agreement, whether outdated or not. He said a number of other properties downtown have received such treatment when they provided documents supporting their contentions. “We said to them (the Heaps), if you guys can find any agreement we are good to go,” Mr. Bruschi said, however, “we cannot find that there was any written agreement.”
Ms. Heap countered that this is disingenuous because “they were the ones who told us the lease had expired in 1963.”
Kathie Morolda, owner of Cranbury Station Gallery on Palmer Square and president of the Borough Merchants for Princeton, said of the Heaps’ circumstance: “Being a small business owner is challenging and my heart goes out to them, but I just don’t know enough so I don’t feel I can comment.”
Ms. Morolda said her personal experience with the borough has been a positive one overall, and that she feels borough officials try to be attentive to the needs of small business owners downtown.
Pryde Brown, who has operated Pryde Brown Photographs in Princeton for 37 years, the past 10 at 180 Nassau St. next to Cox’s Market, said the parking issue involving her and the Heaps illustrated that the borough is paying “no serious attention to preserving mom and pop enterprises.” Ms. Brown’s own parking spot behind the building next to the Heaps’ is threatened because it is part of the same borough-owned plot.
”Having a parking space that I can count on is really essential because of the kind of work I do,” which involves loading and unloading photo equipment and coming and going to photo shoots, Ms. Brown said. She said the borough told her it could provide her a space and “you wouldn’t have to walk more than 15 blocks.”
Mr. Heap also noted that the borough’s offer of parking on the far side of Carnegie Lake didn’t take into consideration the realities of operating a catering business like Cox’s where food must be loaded into vans close by the business.
”It’s as if the borough government exists on some other plane than the problems of running a small business,” said Ms. Brown. “It’s about keeping small businesses that provide unusual opportunities for shopping, not about Banana Republic. I have nothing against Banana Republic, but you can go to a Banana Republic in any mall in America, but where can you come upon a small framing store like Cranbury Station Gallery that also deals in local artists’ work,” she said.
”The last thing I want to do is insult the borough,” said Ms. Brown. “It is more of a plea, that they’ve got to come around, and help, if we are to stay here.”
Ms. Heap added, “The fact that you overlooked a lease that expired 43 years ago should not punish those of us who are trying to provide a living for our children.”
”This is going to make or break us,” said Mr. Heap.
