Council President Charles Morgan pulled his proposal to adopt a redevelopment plan solely for the part of the Princeton Junction train station redevelopment area where parking garages will be built from the agenda during the council’s October 27 meeting.##M:[more]##
Instead, council sent the matter to the Parking Authority and the township finance committee for their recommendations.
Council members applauded the decision. Councilwoman Linda Geevers said she felt the township should stay the course of working on the redevelopment plan drafted by Hillier, citing the money already spent on consultant fees and work that has been done by township professionals in coordination with other county and state agencies, including the state Department of Transportation and New Jersey Transit.
“Parking certainly is a top priority, and trying to figure out how the roads should go and the infrastructure is a priority, and always has been,” she said. “I’m worried that if we try to break off a piece of that, that we’re never going to have a comprehensive plan. I think we should stay the course, and finish our work, and get it wrapped up, if at all possible, by the end of this year, and get it to the planning board for their review.”
“At some point, you have to keep moving this forward,” Geevers added. “I’m just worried about slowing the progress and going in circles with these kinds of conversations.”
Councilman Will Anklowitz and Councilwoman Heidi Kleinman also thanked Morgan for removing the topic from the agenda.
Morgan had said he felt that West Windsor officials were trying to do too much all at once in the redevelopment plan proposed by RMJM Hillier, and that was getting in the way of more parking for West Windsor residents. He had proposed, rather, that officials write the plan in “bite-sized, easy-to-digest chunks,” and that it begin with parking for residents. He had made the announcement a week prior, after council took its first look at Hillier’s draft plan during the October 21 presentation. He drafted the resolution after saying he had talked to Nexus, a firm specializing in the construction of parking garages around Central New Jersey. He said Nexus officials told him that once construction is begun, it will only take a year to build the parking garage.
Morgan also said that Nexus told him that the parking garage in Hamilton was built at no-cost to the Hamilton taxpayers, and that if the West Windsor Parking Authority is given the authority to do it immediately, it could have the engineering for a parking deck done within two months, approval from the state two months later, and the entire garage built in a year.
After removing the resolution from the agenda, Morgan said: “As great of an idea as I thought it was, I thought it would sell itself. Clearly the community did not understand it. We need to have everyone understand why it is good. And if it isn’t good, and I’ve missed something, then to move on to the recommendation of the parking authority and finance committee would make sense.”
