By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Former Princeton Mayor Richard Woodbridge has turned up the heat on the school district by warning of a lawsuit if the Valley Road School is left to deteriorate.
Mr. Woodbridge, part of an organization seeking to acquire the building to turn it into a community center, said there is a hole in the roof and other signs of neglect, issues that he had raised last year.
Mr. Woodbridge first aired the lawsuit threat at a Princeton Council meeting earlier this month.
In a phone interview, Mr. Woodbridge did not elaborate on who, exactly, would be the plaintiff or plaintiffs in a lawsuit that would seek a judge’s order to fix up the school.
The Princeton Board of Education had no comment.
”Our alternatives are moving in that direction for lack of movement by the other side,” Mr. Woodbridge said of a suit. “This is something I expect our group to explore more carefully in the coming months.”
Mr. Woodbridge, a 1957 graduate of what used to be a grade 1-8 school, is part of a nonprofit group known as the Valley Road School Community Center Inc., formed by the Valley Road School – The Adaptive Re-use Committee. Their aim is to preserve a part of the building t he piece that fronts on Witherspoon Street.
Kip Cherry, an alumna of the school and also president of the nonprofit group, said Monday that neither the former township nor the school district has maintained the building. She said the school district leased the property starting in the late 1970s to the town, which used it as a municipal building.
She felt the old school has value, from a practical purpose and a historic one. She said it was the first integrated public school and also the first regional school in the community. By reusing Valley Road, she said nonprofit groups serving the community would have office space at low rent.
Mr. Woodbridge maintained that the lawsuit option was not being used as a bargaining chip in the ongoing efforts by him and others to obtain the building. Rather, he said wants to see the school maintained and put to a public use.
”I think our group is getting increasingly frustrated by the lack of leadership of both the council and the school administration, and accordingly, believes that it’s necessary to be more aggressive to get some positive action on the building,” he said.
The school board had decided last year to hold off on any decisions about Valley Road School until after consolidation. Officials have plans to make part of the building available, the section fronting Witherspoon Street. The district plans to keep the part where it administrative offices are, along with the fields in the back of the building.
”I am familiar with Mr. Woodbridge’s comments before Princeton Council about 369 Witherspoon,” said Tim Quinn, school board president, in an email Friday. “I have no comment on any of Mr. Woodbridge’s remarks. The board’s process with regard to 369 Witherspoon is unchanged.”
Town officials are interested in the building for the possible expansion of the Witherspoon Street firehouse.
