In what one council member called a “vote to kill redevelopment,” a 4-1 majority of West Windsor council members adjourned any further meetings on redevelopment until RMJM Hillier delivers the draft of the redevelopment plan to township officials.##M:[more]##
Officials are anticipating Hillier will have a draft to the township by Monday, October 13. A review is expected to happen as early as Monday, October 20, or Tuesday, October 21, said the mayor.
The decision on September 15 effectively canceled the council’s meeting scheduled for September 22, during which Council President Charles Morgan had hoped to go into further discussion over the traffic concepts proposed by township traffic consultant Gary Davies earlier this month. At that meeting, Davies and John Madden reviewed InterCap Holdings’ proposal for redevelopment and made their own recommendations.
Morgan and Councilwoman Heidi Kleinman had also hoped the council could make decisions regarding the land use set-up in the 350-acre Princeton Junction train station redevelopment area, decisions they said were crucial to Hillier’s ability to complete the draft plan.
However, the rest of the council members said they needed to see the draft in order to make any further decisions regarding redevelopment, and that the council’s numerous discussions on the issue over the last year, including the four-and-a-half-hour meeting on September 8, should have provided Hillier with enough information to draft the plan. “I just sense the community is ready to move forward, and we’ve got to take it to the next level, and that is to have the draft redevelopment plan in our hands by October,” said Councilwoman Linda Geevers.
Morgan was more emphatic on having the meeting, saying a vote to adjourn the special meetings until after a redevelopment plan is drafted would kill redevelopment because so many huge issues remain open. For example, he said, there was “a strong inclination” that all of the affordable housing units called for in InterCap’s plans would be located on NJ Transit property, and all of the market-rate units would be located on the InterCap property, which conflicts with township policy that affordable housing not be segregated, but mixed in with the market-rate units.
This prompted Steve Goldin, the CEO of InterCap Holdings, who insists housing will not work on NJ Transit property because the land cannot be sold, to send Anklowitz a text message during the meeting. Anklowitz announced he had received a text from Goldin, saying that 50 percent of the COAH units are actually located on the InterCap site, contrary to what Morgan had said earlier. “I’m offended that he would send me this in the middle of a council meeting,” Anklowitz said. “This is ridiculous. We need to get our plan together, and we need to do what we need to do. I’m not interested in having private conversations with Mr. Goldin.”
Morgan said he was also wary that Hillier would actually finish the job, especially since the contract the council approved with Hillier called for Hillier to have a draft of the redevelopment plan completed by the end of August, with its first presentation to council in September, followed by a presentation at the Planning Board in October, and a final presentation back at council in November.
“They’re going to come up with a draft plan, and they are going to wash their hands with it no matter how well or not well-received that document is in this community,” he said. “I personally do not want to preside over another process where we do not do our homework,” he added, referring to the previous process with Hillier’s original plans, which included 1,”000 housing units, that caused an uproar in the community. “There were some concepts that were simply unacceptable to a large number of people, or we didn’t understand them. It was a failure of communication. It was a failure to do homework.”
Discussion on the matter was sparked by Councilman Will Anklowitz, who made a motion early in the meeting during council comments, saying he wanted to adjourn all special council meetings on redevelopment until the plan is submitted. He said he wanted the resolution to call on Hillier to prepare and submit the plan to the mayor’s office, where it would be reviewed for “completeness” and sent to the clerk’s office to be put on the agenda for October 27 for review. Councilwoman Linda Geevers immediately seconded the move.
Anklowitz said the reason he was prompted to make the motion was because the community believes that decisions were made regarding traffic at the site during the September 8 meeting. During that meeting, council did go through a list of recommendations for the site drafted by Gary Davies and appeared to reach a consensus. Those recommendations included the ideas that two intersections were needed in the redevelopment area at both Alexander and Washington roads (possibly one of them at Alexander’s intersection with Old Bear Brook Road), that there needed to be two crossings over the Dinky, and that two roads should traverse the site.
But, says Anklowitz, “there are at least three council members who aren’t saying anything at all.” He said in the days following the meeting, he was speaking with a constituent, and “for 40 minutes, the constituent brought up one good point after another on redevelopment, and I felt like a broken record,” because he did not have a plan to point to in responding, Anklowitz said.
“If that plan was here, then I could make sure the wording was somewhat specific to cover the issues,” he said. “If the plan was here, we could actually move forward with having the hearings we’re supposed to be having.”
Further, “these meetings are not helping us in getting any further without have a redevelopment plan in front of us,” he said. “I don’t expect it to be perfect. I don’t expect to not have to make some changes when it gets here, but at least the plan will set out that if you have this much office and this much retail, you need this much road.” He said that otherwise, the process is endlessly continuing. “It just needs to move to the next step.”
Geevers echoed the sentiment. “I think the public is very frustrated and feels we’re going in circles with meeting after meeting,” she said. “Some of these meetings seem more like a site plan review, instead of zoning. It is a mini master plan for the area.”
The scale and scope of the redevelopment is the most important issue to residents, who are worried about their taxes and about spending money on plans that may be “too grandiose,” but the only way to address the issue is to see the plan and reach some consensus, she said. “The scale and scope, if we are to move forward, has to be substantially smaller.”
“We have some basic goals, and if we just keep this simple, and we don’t make this too grandiose, I think we’ll get there,” Geevers added. Further, Geevers said having these extra meetings is not listed in the latest contract with Hillier.
Councilman George Borek also agreed with Geevers and Anklowitz. “I don’t think anyone can question, at this point, that the concerns are the housing element, the commercial, etc., but in order for us to vet this process in the days to come, if we had a plan, then we could go to the NJ Transit and go to everyone else and say, ‘OK, Here is what we have,’” he said. “Let’s have a plan so we can start dissecting it, looking at it, having professionals look at it. Last week we were kind of spinning our wheels in the mud. We need to move this.”
Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh also agreed that it would be better for the township to have a draft redevelopment plan, so officials can pick out the important issues on which to focus. He said from his own personal and professional experience, when he works on big projects and planning documents, “usually we come up with a draft plan, knowing it’s not final and knowing it’s subject to a lot of discussions and deliberations,” he said. “Usually, we take it from there so there will be something all of the deliberations and discussions can be based on.”
Kleinman, however, said the September 8 meeting focused only on Davies’ memo and review of the redevelopment area, and that Madden’s had not yet been discussed by council at all. “We have not talked about the location of uses on the property,” she said. “The September 22 meeting is not really a new meeting — it’s an extension of the (September 8) meeting. Hillier has consistently asked us to make recommendations of what we want.”
Morgan said he was “confident” that Hillier would not finish the deal. “They’re tired; they don’t like the $50,”000 that is left,” he said. “They don’t like the fact that the meetings that are doing real good homework are happening, and they do not want to attend because it’s not in their contract.” He then said that if the vote passed, he would urge council to pass a second motion indicating that if Hillier does not finish the process, that it would put more money in the budget “to pay for somebody to write that plan because I don’t think anybody here is going to be able to write this plan. So we’re talking about another huge bill.”
He said Hillier already breached the contract by not having a draft plan to the council by the original deadline in August. “I think we should be holding their feet to the fire on that, and I do not think we should be letting them off easy, and this motion lets them off easy, and we’re going to be stuck with the mess. I cannot support it.”
Township Attorney Michael Herbert said this would not be the case. “The submission of a draft plan is just the first stage,” he explained. “The contract says that once it’s submitted, then Hillier will be here to go over it with council for at least two sessions, and then after that process is over, it goes to the Planning Board. Hillier will be at the Planning Board, and then it will come back to the Township Council.”
“Who’s going to rewrite the plan when we find it has significant failings?” Morgan responded.
Geevers said the council signed the contract, and if it didn’t want a draft, it should have been changed. “I didn’t want a draft. I wanted a final draft,” Geevers said. “That’s why I abstained.” She said she heard Eric Jaffe from Hillier at the last meeting say “they’re pretty much ready to go.”
Still, Kleinman said, “it’s a land use plan, and if they haven’t been given any direction on land use, I’m not sure what the redevelopment plan is. Otherwise, it’s just their guess about what, in some future time, we may think is appropriate. Until you set down where things should go, I’m not sure you can have a quality discussion about anything. Density does vary depending on where you put things.”
Morgan said that perhaps Hillier missed the August deadline because “they are seeing an evolution in discussions here that is informing them about directions that we may be going. It’s hard to believe that they can write a plan that predicts what we haven’t decided.”
When Geevers suggested perhaps amending the motion to including just the September 22 meeting and having Hillier still submit the plan by October 27, Anklowitz asked for a recess. Anklowitz and Geevers could be seen off to the side of the room, discussing the matter.
When council reopened the meeting, council asked Madden whether he thought, in his professional opinion, Hillier could draft the plan if council did not hold the September 22 meeting.
Madden said he was under the impression that the purpose of the meeting on September 22 was to detail the circulation plan that Davies had presented on September 8. What Davies was prepared to do was discuss issues like the road alignments and lane widths, and the information was going to be turned over to Jaffe, of Hillier. Jaffe was going to use that circulation plan with the land use base Madden had presented in writing the draft redevelopment plan, Madden said. He said he was not expecting to talk about land use at the meeting.
“It sounds like a meeting for the sake of another meeting, and it’s just more delay,” Anklowitz said. “We’re ready to get this plan here, and get to work on it.”
Said Madden: “I would think the best thing is to get to that plan as quickly as possible. Hillier’s got all the information he needs. Hillier can come to you with his plan based on all the things he’s heard, and then at that point, I think you’ll have something to really chew on.” Madden said he feels the information that came out of the September 8 meeting gave Hillier the insights it needed. “I think they know exactly which way to go at this point.”
After Madden’s comments, the council took a vote, 4-1, with Morgan voting against the move. In the week since the vote was taken, Hsueh has said that Hillier professionals have indicated to him that Hillier will actually be done with the draft by Monday, October 13, at which time it will be available for the public to review at the municipal building.
The meeting should be scheduled even earlier, perhaps for Monday, October 20, or Tuesday, October 21. Meanwhile, the interagency taskforce on traffic circulation and redevelopment was scheduled to meet on September 25, after press time.
