I think most people would agree that there’s a great deal of corruption in the federal government and in our largest institutions, especially judging from what has transpired in the last 15 years. Yet no one has yet proved this to be so, at least in court. I and many other people I know, however, do sense that the corruption is there. We go by what we see. But what about here in West Windsor? Well, maybe here it’s not corruption, but simply incompetence, or just plain bungling.
I refer to the planned development of the InterCap property. How did this come about? Years ago, the mayor and council deemed it necessary to rebuild the huge area around the train station, arguing that if government didn’t take charge, developers would come in and do what they want, which would not be in the best interest of the community. They even stated, repeatedly, that the majority of the town’s residents want redevelopment. They made this statement without ever conducting a referendum, or even a poll, yet they stated it as if it were fact. They even rejected many requests for a referendum and barged ahead anyway, asserting that government should make such a decision without a referendum.
To obtain the legal instrument necessary to conduct such an enormous project, they filed for, and won, a declaration that the area in question is an area of blight, in need of redevelopment. This designation opened a can of worms, removing the zoning designation of much of the downtown area, which had protected it from the development it is now slated for, as a parcel within the InterCap property. There was a court battle for this development, wherein Steve Goldin, the CEO of Intercap, took the town to court to satisfy his desires on what he wanted to get from the property. The details of this escapade are not pretty, though suffice it to say, our town government lost, Goldin won, and I must add, I personally resent both Goldin’s cost to our community and his whining disrespect for our community.
This is what we see: town government declares that government must take charge of development to not let a developer force development on us, and then provides the very legal tools by which a developer does in fact succeed in forcing his vision on our community. What are we to make of this? Was all this an exercise of governmental incompetence, bungling, or somewhere, something else?
I must add that I question whether government’s decision to have the downtown area declared an area of blight was even honest. It seems to me that the office research buildings in the area that became InterCap’s pet development project are perfectly usable, rentable, and on land producing tax revenue for the town. They also provided local work sites so that members of our community need not commute very far, with the enormous benefits that provides. I cannot find any definition of “legal blight” that could possibly describe such buildings, and I challenge the reader to do so. I can only conclude that a system that enables such an outcome has been corrupted.
We are thus about to experience the worst outcome that could have happened to our downtown area: just one more developer’s giant cracker-box project will replace historical, viable, and useful real estate; a defeated town government with $1 million of tax money wasted, and still no commuter parking facilities that would actually make sense.
Returning to the national level, let’s also recall that, in the mid-90’s merger of Citicorp and Travelers Group, it was a friendly presidential pen that brought down the Glass-Steagall Act, enabling such financial institutions to lay the groundwork for national financial disaster and much financial success for those at the top.
So instead of seeing what makes sense here in West Windsor, we see here the same thing that we see across the land. One way or another, a small number of very well-to-do people get their way, to the detriment of the people, at the people’s expense, and looming in the background, is a government that claims to be helping us, the people, but in truth, seems more often only capable of clearing the way for more selfish acts by those very few who keep enlarging their dominance of the nation’s power and wealth.
Thomas Tonon
Princeton Junction
