West Windsor may see redevelopment action at the Princeton Junction train station as soon as next year, the township’s redevelopment attorney told council on October 26.
While it is no surprise that New Jersey Transit has been working on plans to construct a parking garage on the property it owns near the tracks, Redevelopment Attorney Ed McManimon said West Windsor is encouraging NJT to build a garage with a retail component — an important part of the development of the train station’s core area.
“The timeline is that New Jersey Transit is going to do something substantial in 2010,” McManimon told the council, responding to a question about specific redevelopment timelines. “We want to make sure it’s not just a garage, and I think we’ve convinced them.”
McManimon said the principal element that needs to be worked out is the traffic circulation for the site.
“Site control is the most critical issue,” said McManimon, pointing to three large, contiguous pieces of property owned by West Windsor, the West Windsor Parking Authority, and NJT. These pieces of property fall within the core of the redevelopment area, near the tracks. Officials have said the prime spot for the garage is parallel to the tracks located in what is currently the Alexander Road lot on NJT property. “In my view New Jersey Transit is the big player in the room. They want to build a very large garage on a large piece of surface parking.”
Because NJT has the ability to forgo any local zoning laws when it comes to building parking garages to serve transit needs, it does not need to follow the redevelopment plan, McManimon said. However, NJT has said it would give West Windsor a courtesy review of its plans for the garage.
During the planning stages, NJT will most likely send out a request for proposals to hire a private company to build the garage. West Windsor has asked NJT to include retail uses in that process.
“We asked them to make sure whoever ends up engaged with them wants to be part of that,” McManimon said, adding that NJT has been receptive to the idea. The focus is to make sure that the private company is “interested in much more than just a parking garage.”
Engaging retail uses along with the parking garage in that area, McManimon believes, is “the best way to ensure private property owners will want to develop their land.”
“We’re focused on trying to make sure what happens first happens right,” McManimon added. After the first RFP is sent out, NJT will most likely issue a second RFP for the rest of its property around its parking garage, branching out from the tracks on the south side.
Responding to questions from council, McManimon said that the rest of that NJT-owned property would be subject to redevelopment law. Because of this, the agency would be willing to work with West Windsor to incorporate the retail use into the garage to make the site work.
“The amount of property they have is more than twice the size of the site where the garage will go,” he said. It would be “totally against their interests” to ignore suggestions from West Windsor that may come out of the township’s courtesy review of their plans for the garage.
Councilman Charles Morgan asked whether NJT has changed its position on West Windsor’s plans to have two crossings over the Dinky line (NJT has opposed the idea of two crossings). “They’re pretty open-minded” to the progress compatible with the first phase of redevelopment, McManimon responded.
When pushed for clarification, McManimon said that “the ultimate answer is no, but I believe it is a phase.” He said that NJT will probably create the circulation suggestions for the area.
McManimon also said that because West Windsor has wanted to avoid the use of eminent domain, it needs “to create a dynamic that encourages private developers to want to develop.” Having the garage and retail uses on site could provide that dynamic.
NJT is anticipating sending out the request for proposals in January, although that timeline is not definite. According to NJT numbers, the net increase in parking spaces provided by a structure would be about 1,000, Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh reported during the meeting. Township officials are working to get additional parking for West Windsor residents only.
Hsueh emphasized that as redevelopment moves forward, the township will “not consider any development unless they present their plan and offer to pay for the infrastructure improvements. There will be no taxpayer money used here.”
Hsueh also said that the township’s first priority was to ensure that West Windsor has all the agreements and commitments in place with other agencies before moving forward with redevelopment.
Among those priorities is setting the traffic circulation for the site and the funding that comes with it. He pointed to the $19 million in funding toward the Vaughn Drive project the state DOT had pulled in 2007 because it felt the redevelopment process was not moving forward.
The total cost of the road project was estimated then to be $38 million, with the township contributing 50 percent of funding. Funding for the Millstone River Bridge replacement project, costing $8.1 million, and the funding for Penns Neck improvements, totaling nearly $200 million, were also dropped.
“With the economy the way it is today, the state is not going to give us $178 million for U.S. 1 and $19 million for Vaughn Drive,” Hsueh said, adding that the first step could be working out the traffic circulation issues with NJT. Township professionals have already held four technical meetings with NJT.
However, the six mayors of towns along the Route 1 corridor have agreed to meet with the DOT commissioner to talk about receiving funding for the Penns Neck/Route 1 improvements, Hsueh said.
The mayor also reported that testing has been done on the two brownfield sites, the township compost site, and the township bus depot, with funding from the Hazardous Site Remediation Fund from the state Department of Environmental Protection. Once the results come back, the township will move into the design of the cleanup plan. That phase can also be funded by the DEP, but any work after that may or may not be funded by the state because that funding depends on the use designated for the site.
Hsueh has said he wants to see surface parking on those sites, but surface parking or parking garages are not types of remediation that would be eligible for funding through the DEP.
With regard to Route 571, a hot topic lately, especially during the election, Hsueh reiterated that the Dreher Group, developers of the approved Rite Aid shopping center, where the Chicken Holiday had been located, already submitted its designs for the property last month and will be submitting its engineering plan so that construction on the first building can begin shortly.
