As the township prepares for its long-awaited redevelopment charrettes to begin, the man West Windsor has hired to spearhead the planning process, architect J. Robert Hillier, shares his views on the area’s needs and how his company aims to help the township meet them.##M:[more]##
Five months ago, he stood before the township, said, “Call Me Bob,” and gave a presentation that led the administration to choose the Hillier Group to create the mini master plan that will govern all future development around the Princeton Junction train station.
All involved have been consistent in saying that this project belongs not to the administration and not to Hillier but to its stakeholders. The charrettes are meant to ensure that the town’s residents and business owners decide its future.
Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh outlined guiding principles for the redevelopment, including transparency, equity, and sustainablilty. But fear of failure to accomplish those goals has permeated debates about the project, and those fears have been heightened for those who have watched Hamilton Township’s plans to build a transit village fall apart at the hands of a contentious council.
For all the emphasis West Windsor has placed on having its planning process be public, open, and transparent, critics continue to suggest that design decisions have already been made. Councilman Charles Morgan has said the charrette process may be a “charade.”
Hsueh organized an unprecedented televised press conference, “West Windsor, Live & Unscripted,” taped on Monday, February 12. The hour-long program will run repeatedly at times to be announced on Comcast cable channel 27. Hsueh says the event is meant to inform the public and and to promote attendance at the charrettes.
Hillier has also joined in the campaign to keep the public engaged. On February 9, the architect spoke with the News for an hour on the role he and his firm will play in the future of West Windsor:
The charrettes are designed to make planning the redevelopment a team effort. Those involved will include residents, business owners, township administrators, and The Hillier Group. What is your role in drafting this mini master plan?
My role is to help guide the design. That’s what happens once we have the input from residents and put their ideas on paper.
During the charrettes, my main job is to be able to draw out of the public what they think this should be and what it shouldn’t be and then be able to explain what we’ve designed. We don’t take an order, go back to the office and draw it up. We take the ideas, and use them to create options.
In the second round, if the public starts to like a certain direction, or to dislike another, and my job then is to elicit out of everybody their reasons. To take what they’re trying to do and make it work.
At this point in the process, if someone says, ‘could you put the road here?’ I’ll go ahead and take a marker, and draw it in, and see if we can make it work.
During your first presentation, you were specific about some things you thought should be part of the plan. Can you put those ideas aside to let residents who don’t have your expertise create a different plan?
Oh, sure. When you’re in a job interview and someone says, `what do you think?’ You’ve got to answer with specifics. I think you’re referring to how I was critical of the NJ Transit [2004 Vision Study]. I saw a problem with the configuration of the parking structures and the size of the area for passenger drop-off. I said let’s push those parking garages out of the way so it becomes a celebratory piazza that feels open and welcoming. I picked up a marker and drew something quickly that I just happen to think would work better.
During the charrettes, if residents appear committed to ideas that you do not believe will benefit the township, do you have the leverage to steer them away from a plan that would not ?
I don’t have any leverage. I have a lot of experience and perspectives that I can advise them on the pros and cons of what they’re suggesting. I will do that, but we will come back with designs that achieve what they want. We’re going to come back with a sustainable plan. And by sustainable I don’t mean just environmentally sustainable, but also financially sustainable, and culturally sustainable. By cultural sustainability, I mean, it’s got to work. There has to be a place where people want to go.
Is there something about this project that makes it more special to you than others you’ve worked on?
For one, it’s in our own backyard. It’s also special because this is the busiest train station between New York and Philadelphia. Every day 7,”000 people commute from the Princeton Junction station. There are only 3,”500 parking spaces. That means there are 3,”500 people that are driving to the station, dropping someone off and driving away. That’s 7,”000 one-way trips, and it happens twice a day. That’s 14,”000 trips to the train station that we’ll be able to eliminate if we increase the parking. That is a bonanza of opportunity. We need to create a garage that solves that problem, and doesn’t look like a parking garage.
What we’re here to do is solve problems. We have a problem here and we want to solve it in a way that’ going to work for the next 50 to 100 years.
The Princeton Junction station is the most popular station on the Northeast Corridor. The train has got to deliver more rail service and move it faster. The technology is there, it’s on its way. The Amtrak Acela train from Philadelphia to New York is comparable to the bullet train in Japan. Between two cities as far apart from each other as New York and Philadelphia, with the same number of stops between them, the trip is half as long, and the fare is half as much. In addition to that, The frequency of trains is five times as great. Imagine if you could have people moving on faster trains. It’s coming, and we are going to build something here that anticipates that.
Imagine, a person living at the station will be able to be in New York in 30 minutes.
If you look ahead to the year 2050 this mega-region is going to experience a huge population growth. You can’t just go out and eat up more land. There just isn’t enough. Where do you put that density? Put it around transportation hubs. It’s called a village. In the traditional sense, the definition of a village is a concentration of people, surrounded by forests or farmlands. West Windsor used to be the seven villages. Those have disappeared and been overrun by suburbia. We get to build a town center that gives West Windsor an identity.
While the charrettes have yet to start, township officials discussing the Princeton Junction Overlay Ordinance repeatedly referenced Palmer Square in Princeton. Could such a development work in West Windsor?
In our presentation, we did an overlay of Palmer Square on the redevelopment area. It could be similar, but you’d have a lot more parking here.
Did you know it’s not much further from the Dinky station than the redevelopment area is from the Princeton Junction station?
We could support that type of development. Do you know what 7,”000 people walking by a retailer every day means? That’s a killer number, one with which we could attract excellent tenants. In airports, you can’t believe the rent merchants pay for those spaces because of all the foot traffic that passes every day. We’ve got the same kind of numbers here.
Many residents have a strong interest in having the design be environmentally sustainable. Will that concern be addressed?
The first thing we’ve done is set a line in the sand that says half the land should remain green, that’s a goal for us.
There can be a park system that will engage the buffer zones around the wetlands. I see jogging paths, bicycle trails, and things that will let people use the land. That’s the first part.
We can also use sod roofs and photovoltaic awnings. They cut the amount of stormwater that hits the system in half. It’s a terrific technology and it’s advancing so fast. We achieve environmental sustainability, by getting as many LEED certified buildings as we can. Maybe the town could limit it to just LEED certified developers.
You get a lot of points towards that when you’re within a half mile of a train station, when you’re re-using land that was previously occupied, instead of building on open space, and when you provide sheltered parking. The developers won’t have to do much, most of them probably already build according to the standards.
Our company is one of the founding members of the green building council.
Have you ever worked in a township where residents have such a pervasive fear that things are being decided in back-room deals? How do you keep the project moving forward in the face of so much distrust?
By being as open and transparent as possible. There is a lot of political distrust here, and I don’t want any of that to get in the way of this being the wonderful thing that it could be. We’re not walking to the mayor’s drum, or the council’s drum. The public is our client, we’re walking to their drum. We’re going to take what the public wants and make it a beautiful design. I know there will be disagreements on the plan, but I don’t think anybody wants it to stay the way it is.
Is housing a necessary part of the redevelopment?
Yes. If there is no housing, then all we’re building is a shopping center. We see the housing here as being very attractive to young and old empty-nesters, young professionals without children, and people who are retired or whose kids have left home. There has been considerable data about transit villages that shows it doesn’t attract a lot of kids. It shows that moms don’t feel comfortable with locomotives whizzing by near to where their children play.
Stan Katz gave an excellent presentation to council last week. He indicated the school system could actually take a reasonable load of kids. I think most of the kids that live there will come from the affordable housing. They tend to come out of that more than the market rate housing of this type.
It’s important that the housing that is built is tax revenue positive, and be able to reduce the burden on tax payers. To do that, we have to design it is such a way that will not create so many kids.
At the same time, it will have to have enough people for the place to have a life. In a way Palmer Square does that and it doesn’t have one kid. Not one. The good news is that West Windsor has a phenomenal education system, and people will move into anything to get their kids in the schools.
The units are going to be pricey. This type of complex is not cheap to build. It’s a different kind of construction and it’s in a location where everyone wants to be. There will be a market pressure for prices to be up there. The speed with which it is developed is critical. With the eventual vacancy rate, the schools will be able to accommodate a great deal as long as it’s past 2010. You can’t say they’ll sell out in a year.
In your original presentation, you said you believed the project could be done in five to six years. That would have the units being delivered by 2014-15, a time at which Katz said the district could take on students generated from up to 2,”000 units.
When I said five to six years, I meant there would be enough time to build a village and a center. The housing and office facilities are meant to keep growing out after the five years. Realistically, it will be a 10 to 15-year buildout. Every seven years we go through recessions, so we’ll have to get through that, which will slow it down. We can have critical mass in five to six years, and you could do with 800 homes.
If residents want to see developments like this that work well, where should they look?
Palmer Square is a good model, even though it’s 70 years old now. There are two places in Virginia, that could be a lesson. Reston is good, and Columbia not so good. There is Celebration in Florida, Disney’s development, but it’s too canned, it’s too perfect, it’s too Disney. Manayunk in Philadelphia is a good place to see. It’s an old neighborhood that was made a new hot spot.
There are also some places in Europe that are phenomenal models. In Europe, privacy is a state of mind. Here we think of privacy in terms of, ‘give me lots of land, and surround me with it.’ I think we’re starting to learn the difference here, and that is a very interesting thing that’s going on. Baby boomers are feeling burdened by their big houses, they’re tired of mowing their lawns, and they want to downscale to a place where there is some action. Put enough people in a spot, and there’s action.
When I was growing up I was all about Mickey Rooney living on a tree lined street, and for my wife, it was “Leave it to Beaver,” living on a tree lined street. My daughter, Jordan, is growing up now and she sees “Friends,” “Frasier,” and “Seinfeld,” and the attitude is that apartment living is what’s cool. There has to be enough social critical mass for the place to have vibrancy.
In your presentation, you mentioned families being able to give up one of their cars when they move to a transit village. How can we be sure of that?
I think people will want to give up their car when they realize they’re not using it so much. Think about taking a car to get a quart of milk. You run out to the WaWa, you spend seven dollars of gas to get there to get a quart of milk. I think this is an opportunity for us to end the love affair with having two cars.
I think there will be people who drive into this place. We have to provide enough parking at mid-day for people to do that. Palmer Square is charging an arm and a leg for parking, and how many times have you driven by there and seen that the deck was full?
The developer of Forrestal Village tried to recreate downtown Princeton but with more parking. He said looking back, where he went wrong was not making it car-friendly. How does West Windsor avoid the same problem?
I had a South Jersey developer visit me. He had heard about Forestal Village and I took him to see it. We walked around all the walkways where cars aren’t allowed, and it was deadly. There was nobody there. It was like a scene from a nuclear attack.
Then we went to Palmer Square. While there, I discovered, quite by accident, that the cars parked on the street—the opening of doors, slamming of doors, the starting of engines, the mothers putting their children into car seats— creates activity on the street which is stimulating. The car adds personality to the environment.
I think the developer was right. The other thing he missed on is that nobody lived there, and nobody could get there without getting in a car and driving there.
Register Online
The first of three charrettes will be held Thursday, February 22, at 7 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency in Carnegie Center. Attendees need not be residents. Those who wish to attend are encouraged, but not required, to register online at wwallaboard.org.
The website, launched in a joint effort by the Hillier Group and the township, is meant to help inform the public on the charrette process, the planning firm’s progress, and all other facets of the redevelopment project.
The second workshop will be held Saturday, March 17, at High School South, from 9:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. The third is Thursday, April 19, from 7 to 10 p.m. at Grover Middle School.
