Thank you for the informative article on your May 16 issue. I also attended the presentation by Howard Hughes Corp. team on May 10. In my view the presentation showed the developer as a reputable, experienced, professional and well financed organization. This tract of land needs improvement and Howard Hughes Corp. seems to be the right organization to get the job done.
Some of the people in attendance at the meeting didn’t walk in with an open mind. This tract cannot be left as is for tax ratable reason or for aesthetic reasons.
But, the presentation failed to address residents’ concerns about traffic and school taxes.
As one of the audience members pointed out, the “multiples” used in their students enrollment projection is very outdated (2006). The other argument used by the consultants is that the high-density housing approach would lower the number of students per household.
We can probably show them that the condos and townhouses in our school district produced just as high enrollment numbers for our schools as the other developments.
The consultants for the traffic study emphasized the town center approach as the reason the traffic would not be as bad as other options for this tract. In our vicinity, we have newly created Plainsboro and Robbinsville town centers. Both are having just as bad traffic as before if not worse.
Hughes brags that about the 5,000 jobs would be created by this project. If the new jobs are created by the need for new schools, residents are paying the salaries and benefits for these new jobs.
According to the presentation, this is a 15-year project to be completed in three phases, five years for each phase. For such a long-term project, I was hoping for some forward-thinking statements to discuss the impact of new technologies such as ride sharing, driverless cars, virtual classrooms and their impact on the design of roads and schools of the future. I didn’t hear anything along those lines.
I would like to know the individuals behind this company. How big of a vested interest do they have in the success of this project?
I am a 30-year resident of this town. I always tell my friends that moving to West Windsor is one of the very few good decisions I made in my life. I want to be able to say the same when this tract of 650 plus acres of land is redeveloped.
— Joseph Sun, West Windsor
