It seems hard to believe, but not too long ago many people said they were offended by shopping centers along the road that had large parking lots between the stores and the highway. Although that was the logical way to arrange things so a shopper could just pull in, go shopping, and get away fast, some thought the appearance of all the cars in front of the stores was a blight and called for new designs.
This was at a time when most people lived either in the town or the country. What we refer to as “suburbs” weren’t as widespread as they are now. If you lived in the country and needed to shop, you drove into town and parked on the street or in a separate parking lot near the stores in the center of town. Groups of stores with a separate, dedicated parking lot — what we call a shopping center — didn’t exist.
When they did start to be developed — the first one around here was the Princeton Shopping Center on Harrison Street in 1956 — comments about the appearance of their parking lots began. Before that in Princeton and its surroundings, you bought groceries mostly at either the A&P or the Acme right on Nassau Street. There were also a few specialty shops like butchers and a fish store scattered around town. Parking was usually right in front of the store on the street — without parking meters.
One place in West Windsor that suffered — and supposedly benefited — from negative judgments about parking lots before it was built was Nassau Park, at the intersection of Route 1 and Quaker Road. That place was being planned during the early 1990s, and there was much comment about the supposedly improved “eye appeal” it would have because the parking would not show from the roads going by. This meant, of course, that the stores would surround the parking lots — instead of the parking surrounding the stores — and, inevitably, you would see the backs of the stores from the road instead of the parking lots.
In the case of Home Depot, a “big box” store that opened in 1995, the back of the store is connected to a succession of other stores that surround a large, square parking area ending with Sam’s Club, another big box. I’m not sure if many think that approach is more pleasing aesthetically than seeing the parking lot from the road, but it’s what we have and it doesn’t face on Route 1. That view is covered by trees.
I should mention, too, that this place received special notice in the real estate section of the New York Times on August 15, 1999, because of its new approach as a “power center” in compliance with West Windsor’s then-new design ordinance.
Another byproduct of the new parking lot designs is the sometimes awkward multiple-turn path one has to take to “escape” via the internal road now found in the whole shopping center, including the part called Nassau Park Pavilion, which was built a bit later. That’s the part where Wegmans is. There are STOP signs in locations that make sense only if people take turns when they come from the opposite direction and want to make a turn in front of another car. There are no lights to tell you otherwise.
The problem is, of course, that the internal road that goes from one side of the center to the other mainly goes to Quaker Road. It once had an exit from Nassau Park Boulevard that let you go north on Route 1, but that required an extra traffic light on Route 1 that was eventually discontinued. Now you can only go south at that exit, and few people leave the parking area that way. But even during heavy holiday shopping periods large areas of the parking lot remain empty because they are so far from the stores.
That’s particularly true of Wegmans, where you rarely find cars parked in the section farthest uphill from the store. And, speaking of Wegmans, I remember that when the store was nearing completion the company was getting anxious about receiving their occupancy permit from the township. They came to the Planning Board and said that they had shipments of very exotic products on the way from the Far East, and they had to be able to put them on sale as soon as they arrived so they wouldn’t spoil. The township got the message, and when the products arrived, the store was ready to open and sell the stuff.
But right after the first part of Nassau Park opened with Home Depot, the complaints started to come in thick and fast. “You can’t get into the place,” people said. “The traffic piles up on Province Line Road and even Route 1, and with the traffic lights only letting a few cars go by with every green, nobody can move!” Some people on the board of Friends of West Windsor Open Space (FOWWOS) went to see for themselves. They found that the public outcry was well based.
Drivers were using all kinds of tricks to get in. For example: going all the way into Princeton and coming out Quaker Road so they could make a left turn at the light into Nassau Park Boulevard; going into Lawrence first and coming out Province Line Road to get in; or simply making an illegal right turn from the center or left lane. Some drivers coming north on Quaker Bridge Road actually went north on Route 1 all the way to Meadow Road where they made a U-turn and came south on Route 1 until they reached Nassau Park Boulevard at its main entrance.
Whether or not the design was successful as a way of ridding the area of parking lots that were considered unsightly from the road, the opinions were mixed. But trading the supposed unsightliness for difficult circulation within the parking areas has still made it hard to find the best place to park and to actually get there for many stores. I have found that if I want to go to a place I seldom visit, I have to learn a new way to get there each time I go.
Part of the problem is that the parallel parking aisles have to fit within triangular outlines of the area. And, as for the stores, within the boundaries of Nassau Park Pavilion there are still places where the old-style strip mall is much in evidence — that is all along its northern edge. Here you will find many stores side-by-side in just two long, low buildings. But you can’t see them from the surrounding roads.
Contrast the situation at Nassau Park with that at one of the more old-fashioned places like MarketFair (1987), a little farther north on Route 1 — more than 40 businesses under one roof including a few restaurants and a movie theater. Most of the parking lot faces on Route 1, too, but there haven’t been many complaints. I guess we got used to it. The same goes for Windsor Green right next door, and the Square at West Windsor (2000) across Route 1. That’s where Lowe’s and Trader Joe’s are. These aren’t “strip malls” in the old sense, but the parking lots are in full view everywhere.
Once we have accepted the idea that parking is a necessary evil and the lots are part of the scenery for most shopping areas that border a highway, we can then consider what the buildings look like. There are all kinds here in the West Windsor and Plainsboro area — from single story or “big box” for stores to multistory with “fancy” architecture for business spaces like Carnegie Center.
But even with a single story a lot can be done to make the design interesting — or, at least, out of the ordinary. The recent reincarnation of what is now called Windsor Plaza on Princeton-Hightstown Road is a case in point. Originally this was where the Acme Market was, and most people referred to it as the Acme shopping center. Its simple roof design had a facade of plastic panels from one end to the other.
But since the Acme left these parts, the whole building has been reborn, complete with all sorts of nonfunctional architectural details on the roof that try to make it look as if people actually live upstairs — dormer windows, cupolas, towers, louvered air vents, and the like. It’s an old trick, but in this case it borders on the ridiculous. Nevertheless, there’s a nice looking apartment upstairs right over Mrs. Green’s. I wonder what the rent is.
