Marketing Princeton and municipal impediments for businesses seeking to operate in Princeton were just a few of the points raised by members of the business community, council, and local organizations at a panel discussion about an economic development vision for Princeton.
The discussion took place at First Baptist Church in Princeton on Aug. 7 as part of a little more than a week of summer programming for the 2021 Joint Effort Witherspoon-Jackson Community Princeton Safe Streets Summer Program.
The summer program which had started for 2021 on July 31 concluded on Aug. 8.
The panel discussion featured Councilwoman Michelle Pirone Lambros, Architect Joshua Zinder of Joshua Zinder Architecture + Design, Architect Bob Hillier of Studio Hillier, Businessman Jim Levine, who is also the former interim executive director of the Arts Council of Princeton and Jo Butler, chair of Princeton Coalition for Responsible Development.
“While during the COVID-19 pandemic, we scrambled to coordinate between the municipality to support the businesses to get reopened and outdoor dining and curbside pickup going,” Lambros said. “What was highlighted there was that even though we work well together there needs to be more coordination. We brought on board at the urging of the Economic Development Committee a consultant. The consultant has been working with the steering committee to talk about economic revitalization.”
Residents would like to see more services and products that are for them, which is one of the items being talked about with the economic revitalization plan, she claimed.
“They would like to have more convenient shopping, they like the mix of restaurants, so we are talking about these centers of commerce and how the residential development around the centers – you have the central business district, you have the Witherspoon-Jackson area – that are really going to boom,” Lambros said. “What people want is smart growth. Residents want that great mix of tenants, they want to have walkability, want to live close, want to be able to walk or bike, and want to have access to more transit.”
Marketing Princeton to draw more people to municipality was raised by Hillier, who suggested that Princeton should be attracting more people from the immediate area.
“It is interesting to me that 2 million people visit Princeton every year and they are visiting the park across the street from the rest of the town, the campus,” he said. “Princeton has been a sleepy college town and it does not market itself at all. So what we are working with now is how to market it and that means setting some themes.”
Advertising the culture in Princeton is seen as another way to attract more visitors to Princeton.
“What about the people who are 20 to 30 miles away, they do not really think about Princeton that much as to what it is, which I think is the cultural center of New Jersey,” Hillier said. “What Princeton has is a wonderful Lewis Center for the Arts, a wonderful theater in McCarter, a wonderful art museum on the campus and symphony orchestra. We have a lot of culture here and we do not advertise or market it.”
If you could get people to spend a morning at a museum, have lunch and do a little shopping, all of a sudden Princeton would find that the municipality would not have the vacancies that are being suffered right now, he added.
Hillier also pointed to getting a better population base in the Witherspoon-Jackson area as way to help the economic development vision by providing more affordable housing.
Mentioning a natural tension between what residents want and what visitors want, Levine added to the discussion that the specific tension he highlighted would be ongoing.
“The things that attract tourists are not going to attract residents. Residents would love Woolworths back because you could find everything, but that would not be good for tourists at all,” he said. “I think it is really a balance of those two things. Although I do think the council has been very responsive to the business needs. I do not think the sky is falling.”
Levine said the municipality is building on good things.
“I think the residents are generally happy,” he said. “I think the redevelopment of the Princeton Shopping Center will be a better hub. I do not think it will be at all for tourists.”
The discussion would pivot to the topic of municipal impediments for businesses coming into Princeton.
“For example, signage. I mean it takes people through the approval process that we currently have to get through an approved signage package, it takes three to four months, and that is just to put your name on the front door,” Zinder said. “You can compare any municipality throughout the state and we are by far the most logistical heavy when it comes to approvals. I’ll say through the Economic Development Committee and Princeton Merchants Association and other organizations it has gotten better.”
Zinder applauded the affordable housing solutions.
“I have said for a long time I do not understand why we still have Monument Hall, the former Princeton Borough Hall. The property could easily fit 250 units on it,” he said. “We are putting 80 senior units up on Thanet and that means they are going to need to get buses and to drive around.
“If you put your seniors right downtown they can walk to everything. The businesses would love it because you have people coming and spending money there. You can have market rate and affordable micro units like Bob (Hillier) is advocating for right downtown.”
Additionally, Zinder pointed to the buildable area downtown as an impediment.
“Our buildable area is half of what it should be for downtown. Increased FAR (floor area ratio) would increase density,” he said. “FAR compares the size of your building to the size of the lot and the average one for the business district is 3.4. I have had five clients come to me and my office in the last six months and wanted to build buildings in the downtown. Adding onto buildings or building new buildings downtown to bring economic development downtown. Because of this FAR they feel it is too great of a leap to make.”
Referencing the tension between residential and visitors spotlighted by Levine, Butler agreed that there is such a tension.
“I live roughly near Hibben Road and Mercer Street and our neighborhood is a Princeton Theological Seminary neighborhood. Our neighborhood was the first neighborhood declared as an area in need of redevelopment,” she said. The seminary I think is the one that initiated the conversation for properties around our neighborhood. The problem was that after 18 months of discussion about the area we never had a plan.”
They talked about the traffic and all sorts of topics.
“We addressed a lot when they finally showed us the buildings people went crazy. So it went on a hiatus,” Butler added. “The seminary pulled back to take the summer off, then the pandemic set in, and then the next thing we knew the seminary was offering for sale some of the properties. We as neighbors were working with the seminary to redevelop the property. We did not realize parts of it could be sold off and they would still carry the area in need of redevelopment designation.”
Butler noted that Princeton Coalition for Responsible Development, an organization she chairs, started out as concern for the immediate neighborhood.
“We realized that there are common themes that have emerged throughout town. Whether that is parking or stormwater or etc.,” she said. “If we knew then what we know now we would have approached this differently.”