Princeton Healthcare System’s plans for the new hospital on the 160-acre former FMC site will formally head to the Planning Board on Monday, July 7.##M:[more]##
Professionals hired by the hospital made a final two-hour presentation to Plainsboro’s Development Review Committee on June 18, in which they discussed changes to the site plans that have been made in response to input from township professionals and outstanding issues that needed to be addressed since the last presentation to the DRC in April.
Since that time, the Plainsboro Township Committee has approved an agreement that designates the hospital as the redeveloper of the site and sets the completion date for the hospital component at December 31, 2013. The project consists of a medical center component, which includes a hospital/medical office portion, a continuing care retirement facility, a general officer research center, a skilled nursing facility, and a public park to be built by the hospital.
In April, the plans submitted showed that the proposed location of the hospital would be on the northeast portion of the campus near Route 1. The hospital site itself lies on 48 acres, and the other portions of the site, including the continuing care retirement community and the research area, are expected to be built by other developers. The hospital component includes a two-story building, housed in the former FMC building where the diagnosis and treatment area will be located.
Patient rooms will provide views of the open space surrounding the campus. There will be two main entries to the campus, a right-in, right-out entrance coming from the south on Route 1 North to Plainsboro Road, where a jughandle with a traffic signal would direct visitors onto the campus. The Plainsboro Road entrance leads into a connector road that takes people into the visitor parking lot. The second entrance is coming from the north on Route 1 South to Scudders Mill Road.
Changes that had since been made to site plans included revisions to the bikeway paths, a reduction in parking on the site, improved landscaping, and the addition of the fiscal impact and traffic circulation reports. Remaining issues included the curbing of roadways, stamped pavement at pedestrian crosswalks, the housing plan, and the Plainsboro Road widening.
Hospital attorney Mark Solomon, with Pepper Hamilton, asked for a waiver for submitting the housing plan by June 23, as had been required for the upcoming Planning Board meeting. He cited the ongoing process with the state Council on Affordable Housing’s proposed amended third-round affordable housing regulations, which have yet to be adopted. He also said that the housing plan would be based on a plan adopted by the township, and that under the redevelopment agreement, it already specifically states the hospital will be responsible for addressing the municipality’s growth share as a result of the project.
He did say that hospital officials were anticipating that there will be a waiver or exemption for the hospital with regard to affordable housing generated, but the question remains whether the growth share obligation on the township will also be waived.
Hospital architect Robert Hillier said the first change to the plan was a reduction of the three lanes of parking across the main parking lot in front of the hospital. “We reduced that to two lanes,” he said. “As a result, we have enlarged the detention pond, and we’ve also shaped it differently so that the view from the patients’ rooms would see more water and less parking.” The “bed tower” housing the patient rooms is situated north of Plainsboro Road on the site, facing the parking lot to the south, which lies north of the detention pond. There was a suggestion by township professionals that the hospital locate all of the necessary wires among the trees lining Plainsboro Road, but Hillier said doing so comes out to a $13 million expense, and would be literally impossible to do. “It will destroy the character of the site and the road,” he said. He also mentioned that officials were not sure if that section of the road was part of the site.
The parking lot has also been reworked to include more landscaping and trees along the main internal road. As a result of the reduction in the lanes of the parking, there is an acre less of parking, going from 1,”702 parking spaces on site to 1,”578. Details for a bus stop have also been added to the plan, and walkways have been aligned with the building.
Hillier said there were three issues dealing with the esthetics of necessary structures on the building — the oxygen tanks, the boilers, and the stacks. He said the hospital is proposing to build a 32-foot high screen to block the view of the three stacks on top of the hospital building. He presented various types of material that the township could examine to determine how the screen could be constructed.
With regard to the two oxygen tanks, he showed how they, for the most part, would be out of sight from Route 1 and the internal roadway as a result of the way the site would be landscaped.
The same goes for the stacks, which would only be slightly visible from the south side of Route 1. There are options in dealing with the stacks themselves. One is to paint them silver gray so that they will reflect the sky. “If you have a bright blue sky day, you will see a bluish stack, and if you have a cloudy, wintry day, they’re gray, and the sky is gray,” Hillier said. Another option is to using the same color on the stacks as is used on the brick for the building.
DRC members pointed out that there seemed to be more trees shown in the revised plan, especially along the Millstone River. DRC member Thomas Hall also said he was surprised to see that the helipad depicted in the original plans was not on the updated version.
Solomon said that the original plan featured a helipad as a placeholder, but because of issues with the regulation of flight patterns, the hospital decided not to include it in the plan. He also said that the current hospital in Princeton also does not have a helipad. Hospital officials have had discussions with Princeton Forrestal Village about the possibility of locating a helipad on its property north of the site in the future, but that piece of land is not included in the redevelopment plan, nor did the redevelopment plan call for a helipad, he added.
“This is going to be a 21st century healthcare facility located in a heavily trafficked area in Central Jersey,” Hall said, adding that he would be surprised if the hospital needed one in the future. He also said that the plan for the hospital might not be as well-received if hospital officials decided at last minute they absolutely needed the helipad and needed to rush to find a spot on the site for it, as opposed to planning it through. The hospital currently does not have the designation as a trauma center.
The hospital’s officials said that aside from employees, they estimated about 25 ambulances, 25 non-emergency patient transfers, and 25 service trucks driving onto the site daily. Most ambulances would come between 8 a.m. and noon. Staff shift changes would ccur around 7 a.m. and 3:30 p.m.
Hospital officials also agreed to place curbs on the various sections of roads pointed out by township officials, but said they didn’t see that it necessary to widen Plainsboro Road as suggested. They did say that at the conclusion of construction, they would conduct an inspection and re-evaluate it.
Solomon said that placing stamped concrete sidewalks in the six pedestrian crossings on site would increase project costs significantly, as quotes have shown material costing at least $5,”000 for each crossing. “We think there are less expensive ways of doing so,” he said with regard to ensuring those crossings were safe, and suggested looking at other options.
As discussed in April, the hospital project would generate the need for some road improvements. The hospital’s experts highlighted more detail about these improvements, most of which the hospital will either fully fund and construct, or pay for its fair share of the volume on those roads.
