The wedding date was set and the invitations mailed out for a destination wedding in West Windsor. Jeff Hamer and Judy Goetz were hosting their niece’s wedding ceremony in the spacious backyard of their South Post Road residence. The niece and her entourage would be flying up from Texas for the July 18 wedding.
Goetz had it all planned out, until she was out riding her bike and a neighbor asked if she had seen the Mercer County Park concert schedule. Also in town on the evening of July 18: pop rock band R5, due to perform at Festival Grounds, the new entertainment venue opening this summer. Festival Grounds features a 200,000-square-foot amphitheater with a 2,200-square-foot, state-of-the-art stage), situated roughly a quarter mile away from the South Post Road houses.
Wary of a potential schedule conflict, Goetz attended the January 28 Mercer County Park Commission meeting to ask if any major events were scheduled for July 18.
In an E-mail follow-up a couple of days later, recreation director Jim Haggerty told Goetz there would be a triathlon event in the morning, but no afternoon event scheduled for July 18.
Assured that the park’s entertainment venue would be quiet that day, Goetz went ahead planning for the wedding ceremony in her backyard, before discovering months later a pop-rock concert was scheduled at 6 p.m. on the same day.
“By accident I find out there’s a concert. This is what it’s like to live in my house,” Goetz says. “I had to call my niece and say ‘I’m sorry you can’t have the wedding with a big concert across the street.’”
When Goetz’s calls to the parks commission went unreturned, she and Hamer went before the Mercer County Freeholders at their April 21 meeting in Trenton to present their story.
“The freeholders seemed pretty responsive,” Goetz says. “They did want it on the record, that for the future, if someone gets clearance for a big event, the parks commission must honor that date.”
Haggerty, whom both Goetz and Hamer describe as a nice individual, called Goetz the day after the freeholder meeting to apologize for the mistake.
“Mr. Haggerty was very apologetic. He claimed to have messed up. In reality that doesn’t help,” Hamer says. “We don’t know if anyone is going to do anything, because it’s the County’s project. They want to see it succeed. Whether they care about the residents near the park is up in the air.”
Goetz and neighbor Teresa Lourenco received a chilly response at the county parks commission meeting April 29.
“I felt we were treated unfairly,” Goetz says. “I was hoping if one of the residents had a big event and cleared it with the commission, we wouldn’t have a repeat. The commission said it was a mistake, but they made it very clear that they would not clear a date for a resident’s event. The commissioners said over and over again they cannot be concerned with 17 households while also running a park.”
As for her niece’s wedding, the backyard ceremony will be relocated indoors to the Cranbury Inn, where the reception had been originally scheduled.
“What happened with the July 18 event was a mistake on our behalf. We made an error and we’ve apologized for that,” says Kevin Bannon, the parks commission executive director. “The fact that she was having that event, it wasn’t put on the master calendar. We feel badly about that.”
When asked if there would be any change in policy, Bannon said no, reiterating that a mistake was made.
Says Bannon: “When we had a chance to grab an international event, we were really pleased. R5 is a pop group aimed toward teenagers, and the fact we could grab an them was a coup for us.”
For Hamer, this has been the most disappointing development following years of increased park activity.
“The overall picture is the neighborhood has gone down because of the noise, the lights, and the traffic,” Hamer says. “It was a wonderful street to live on. And then they started to increase the amount of events across the street and down by the marina.”
Hamer, who grew up in Hamilton, moved into his house on South Post Road more than 20 years ago. He worked at New Jersey Network (NJN) as an executive producer and budget manager for 27 years. He now runs an accounting service.
At NJN Hamer met Goetz, who had worked as an administrator there since high school. She grew up in Ewing, attending Notre Dame High School. Her parents owned and operated Flemington Tire.
Goetz has two adult sons from a previous marriage, and both live in Brooklyn. One is a freelance editor, and the other is a field engineer who worked on the World Trade Center PATH station project.
There are 17 households along South Post Road that face the park’s entertainment venue on the other side of the road. The new performing arts stage and the subsequent concern over more musical events is the most recent flashpoint for these residents, who are also located across from sporting fields with lighting. From their backyards, the residents are also greeted with a 45-acre solar array built in 2013 on Mercer County Community College land.
“I can hear event noise from inside my house, with the windows shut,” Hamer says. “A lot of the neighbors seem to be concerned with property values. The feeling is, who wants to live across the street from this?”
A food truck festival on Saturday, April 18, brought in fleets of parked cars and one unsavory guest. A baseball field adjacent to the Festival Grounds has been removed, and the open space that backs onto South Post Road was used for parking.
“We’re sitting on our porch, listening to our music, cars parked everywhere,” Goetz says. “I look over to the side and there’s someone urinating right in our forsythia bushes.”
Hamer yelled at the trespasser, who scampered away. Trash from the event blew into their yard afterwards, says Goetz, who is concerned with future offenders taking a quick jump into her bushes.
According to Bannon, the parks commission executive director, there is usually enough parking space behind the Park Ranger Headquarters. Two other sporting events on the day of the food truck festival led to roughly 16,000 attendees, double the expected number. The commission also plans to build a fence along the South Post Road field to prevent future parkers from accessing the road.
“We’ve gone back and forth and made a lot of concessions for the residents of South Post Road,” Bannon says. “We don’t allow parking on their road. We put a park ranger to stop cars from going down the road. Whenever we have a concert, we make sure they don’t exceed state sound codes. We’ve tried to work well with them.”
Bannon notes that from April to October, there are only five additional events for 2015. The new events, all night concerts, increase the total number of night concerts from six in 2014 to 11 this year. These five events include three national acts under the County’s agreement with Anschutz Entertainment Group, one of which is R5, the group performing on the same day as the wedding. The Barenaked Ladies performs July 2, and Lee Brice arrives August 13.
“It takes a while to plan the summer. This is the first time planning for the three concerts,” Bannon says. “For some it took up until April 1. We’ve turned away a lot of acts. We have a 10:30 p.m. curfew.”
The increasing number of events confirms concerns that expanded programming would result after the park commission replaced a temporary stage with a larger permanent stage at Festival Grounds. To some residents, this contradicts a statement Bannon made at the January 27 West Windsor Council meeting, when he stated the park is not interested in becoming “a major rock concert destination.” (The News, February 7, 2014
In December, 2012, when Festival Grounds was still in its planning stages, an E-mail written by Bannon and addressed to Lourenco noted there are less than five events per year with music after 9 p.m.
“There are no plans to have more music events,” Bannon wrote.
In addition to Bannon’s previous statements, Hamer says Bannon met with a group of South Post Road residents last summer to discuss any concerns.
“Mr. Bannon said ‘give us a chance,’ and now we see what that means. They can put more things here, more traffic,” Hamer says. “I understand the parks commission has a job to do, but if the people who are in charge lived here, it’d be a different story.
Says Hamer, “Every year there has been an increase in different kinds of things. All of them have bands and loud music. Let’s put it this way, there are not less events now. I suspect there are going to be as many as they can put in there.”
Of course, while Hamer and Goetz begrudge the nuisances that to them are becoming more constant, the fate of the wedding ceremony is the big upset.
“We never would have gone to anybody if the venue change didn’t affect my niece’s wedding,” Hamer says. “She’s devastated. She’ll have to learn to live with disappointment. There won’t be a garden party, as they say.”
