InterCap Holdings, which owns 170,”000 square feet of office space on 25 acres on Washington Road adjacent to the train station, is one interested party eager to see the transit village proposal succeed. And now InterCap CEO Steven Goldin, a West Windsor resident, is spending some of his own money to help the concept move forward.##M:[more]##
On October 3, Goldin hosted a meeting of the New Jersey chapter of the Congress of the New Urbanism — of which he is co-chair — at the Princeton Public Library. That meeting addressed recent New Jersey court cases that, Goldin says, “will discourage some communities from using the redevelopment process. Meanwhile, the Municipal Land Use Law is in need of comprehensive updating with tools to promote innovative forms of smart growth, transit-orientated development, and traditional neighborhood design.”
Goldin says he is also ready to proceed with a series of initiatives designed to educate West Windsor residents about transit oriented developments and to elicit their views about what they would like to see in their town center.
“Our goal is to help a broader section of West Windsor residents understand the opportunities,” says Goldin, noting that the charrettes attracted 500 residents at most while the population of the township is around 23,”000. “We want to help people visualize what the opportunity is.”
In the coming weeks and months Goldin plans to “provide resources for professional services” that West Windsor’s $330,”000 charrette process was not able to afford. Among Goldin’s initiatives:
A “photo-realistic” video rendering of the transit village envisioned by the Hillier charrettes. “We’re not trying to endorse any one plan,” says Goldin, “but this will allow people to move through the project as if it were already built. The whole conceptual plan is difficult for people to know what it really might feel like.”
A public opinion survey — Opinion Research and Gallup are being asked to submit proposals — to determine what West Windsor residents would value most in a town center.
A financial study of the costs associated with a parking deck at the train station. Opponents of the transit village have suggested that the town build its own parking structure reserved for West Windsor residents. Goldin says that the study will show that such a project will be prohibitively expensive.
A study of school children demographics within transit villages served by high achieving school districts such as West Windsor-Plainsboro. One reason the transit village planning process got derailed last spring was that the Hillier concept included provisions for 1,”000 new units of housing. While the architect insisted that such housing would not be attractive to families with school age children, opponents of the transit village argued that it would, and that the resulting influx of schoolchildren would make the project a burden on taxpayers.
Goldin says that objective data can help determine how many school children can be expected. There are roughly 100 transit villages now in place throughout the country. By finding ones with school districts that are comparable to West Windsor’s, an “apples to apples” comparison could be made.
“As all this information comes out,” says Goldin, “we think it will change some thinking.”
