By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Nassau Street is Princeton’s signature thoroughfare, one that local officials said this week needs a facelift.
The town earlier this year hired a consultant to help advise municipal officials on how to re-think the aesthetics of Nassau spanning Bayard Lane to Moore Street—the main business hub. The analysis will guide officials as they look at things like the material and color of sidewalks to where outdoor dining is situated, among other things.
Mayor Liz Lempert said Thursday that the last redesign of Nassau Street was either in the 1980s or early 1990s. She said the sidewalk needs repairs and that the sections that have been repaired don’t match what was there before.
“I mean, look at it,” Councilwoman Jo S. Butler said this week of Nassau Street. “If you take away Palmer Square, what’s left?”
Ms. Butler sits on a working group made up of municipal officials, staff and business and Princeton University representatives who are considering the aesthetics of Nassau. She said the street could look better “with some attention.”
“It just doesn’t have a good look,” she said.
She said that with municipal government concentrated on Witherspoon Street and not in former Borough Hall, she said the street has suffered from a “lack of oversight” from senior government officials. She said, for instance, that former borough administrator Robert Bruschi used to walk through the town and spot little problems and get them corrected.
The consultant that the town hired, Looney Ricks Kiss, is expected to issue a report that “essentially” would be a design guide for the basis of sidewalk improvements, Mayor Lempert said. The council awarded the firm a contract capped at just under $55,000.
Mayor Lempert and Ms. Butler said the report is not intended to be the basis for making the case for a special improvement district to manage the downtown. Other towns have created such entities, known as SIDS, which carry extra assessments or taxes on property owners to fund, among things, streetscape improvements.
The scope of the study is not expected to include the section of Nassau by the main Princeton University campus, Ms. Butler said. “That’s not our focus,” she said.
But in terms of where the money would come to pay for any improvements the report calls for, Ms. Butler said, “It really depends on where we land on what we want to do.”
Nassau is a state highway, so state government might be one avenue to find money. “There are possibilities for conversations,” Ms. Butler said.
The history of that street runs deep, also holding symbolic value.
Nassau Street, once a dirt road, is seen as the dividing line between the university and the rest of the community. As a state road, it is also a section of the “Old Lincoln Highway” that goes from New York to California.
Residents and the rest of the community will be able to learn more about what the town is thinking in a couple of weeks.
A community meeting is scheduled for June 18 in the Princeton Garden Theater, although the time of the meeting has not been determined, Mayor Lempert said.
But one Nassau Street businessman on Thursday expressed some skepticism.
“If you want to put more benches in, put more benches in,” said Henry Landau, of Landau’s. “Why do you need to do a study?”
