Ninety-eight of the 800 units for the proposed Transit Village development will be designated as affordable housing (AH), but how those units are spread throughout the town’s potential new hub was the center of debate at the Planning Board’s meeting on August 17.
Attorney Linda Weber of Brown & Keener, an urban design and planning firm based in Philadelphia, presented a report reviewing ordinances passed at the August 1 meeting of the Town Council. Based on her analysis planning board members then reviewed whether the language in the proposed ordinances was consistent with the township’s master plan. Weber’s recommendations were approved by a favorable 8-0 vote, with Mayor Hsueh recusing himself.
The Planning Board is set to vote on the ordinances on Wednesday, September 7. The West Windsor Council is expected to consider the Planning Board’s comments and hold a final vote at a September 19 public hearing.
Scrutiny over the word “clustering” stirred rounds of comments. “I’m a little concerned about the term,” said Weber. “I don’t think by face value that it leads to intent on requiring integration of affordable housing units. If the affordable housing units are clustered in one area of the building, is there still that stigma of affordable housing? The way it is presented and by use of the word cluster it is inconsistent with the housing plan for development,” Weber said.
The idea that affordable housing units would be situated in just one part of the transit village raised eyebrows as well as concerns.
Said Weber: “The question becomes what is integration? The master plan specifically requires that affordable housing be integrated throughout the entire development. This is something akin to a traditional downtown where an apartment is right next to a townhouse, which is right next to an estate. The idea was for people of all ages, all social and economic brackets, to live together side by side. The board has agreed and decided by policy in its housing plan outline that affordable units should continue to be integrated in a development,” she said.
Steve Goldin, CEO of Intercap Holdings, did not attend the meeting but explained in a telephone interview that clustering may mean more than just units being bunched-up.
“There’s a semantics issue here. I think we now realize that in the planning profession there is a term of art called clustering — it has a very specific meaning that probably is different than what the lay person would refer to. When I say clustering I’m thinking of grouped. But clustering may have a different meaning in the planning world than in New Jersey. So if that’s the issue we’ll just use a different word.”
The plan calls for buildings to sit above retail and in front of parking decks so people will not see the parking decks. An agreed upon minimum percentage of 12.2 percent affordable housing was established between InterCap and the Fair Share Housing Center, which had pushed for 20 percent as the minimum.
All the speculation is just that until a site plan is turned in for review. Goldin said the pattern of conditions submitted shows about five buildings in total. “We don’t know whether the final site plan submission will be four, five, six, seven, or even nine buildings,” he said.
“Once we had to have rental affordable units that created a problem because if the project was all for sale, just condos, it’s not an issue to sell the market units and affordable units. Or if it was all rental it would not be a problem because we could stay and manage them.”
But if an affordable housing advocacy group such as a nonprofit managed those affordable units, while another company managed the market-rate units, then that would create disarray, especially if they were not clustered.
“In order to get to 12.2 percent the settlement had to be rectified with respect to fair share housing,” he said. Goldin asserts that the township’s own affordable housing spokesman, Mike Piazza, said the affordable housing units should be clustered so they can be managed properly.
“Let’s say there’s three stories of rentals above retail. What you want to do is have the whole first floors of several buildings be affordable housing and then you’re selling the other floors and condos above them. If the apartments were spread out across each floor or interspersed throughout how do you manage that?”
Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh agrees with Goldin on potential management conflicts, saying that managers would be perplexed trying to walk around several buildings and point out which ones they are in charge of.
The mayor says facilitating the job of nonprofits as eventual managers of the affordable housing would reap returns on investment. While there has been much discussion of the for-rent or for-sale status of potential units, Hsueh says if all the affordable housing units were for sale there would be more responsibility on the township. He cited two cases of for-sale units in town where the owners could not afford to pay the mortgages, resulting in foreclosure.
“Who had to pay to take them over — the township. Then we had to hire somebody to clean out the houses, and then we had to run through the bureaucratic process of bidding and legal procedures,” he said.
At the meeting Hsueh said that the original proposal from InterCap called for all of the affordable housing units to be situated in one of the eight proposed buildings. This idea was immediately rejected to preserve the goals of inclusion and acceptance in West Windsor and to prevent a stigma for future residents of the development.
Weber suggested that the Board recommend that the Council eliminate a clause with the word clusters and let the term integration stand alone in the settlement. Her proposed new sentence was to read “market rate units and affordable housing units are to be integrated together in housing areas.”
Parking was another issue raised. Intercap’s proposed parking ratio of 1.4375 spaces per housing unit also came under scrutiny as the planning board considered a recommendation going back to 1.5 spaces per unit.
Councilwoman Geevers said she questioned Gerry Muller, special counsel on redevelopment and the planning board attorney, about the reduction in the number of parking spaces, and he told her it was an economic consideration.
In her recommendation Weber said she understood the focus of the project, being a transit-oriented development, with shared parking as clearly the intent of this type of development. However she says there is nothing in place at this point that formalizes the shared parking initiative.
Weber’s report referenced the consultants’ report from this spring that “stated caution should be taken in any reduction below 1.5 spaces per unit” because that number has become typical in TOD developments.
Mayor Hsueh and Business Administrator Robert Hary insisted the smaller ratio is not a big issue and each resident of the transit village would likely be assured their own parking spots and have to pay more for another one. Metered parking is also in the plans, although it is not seen as a revenue-generating move.
While Hsueh believes in both the interest of securing the InterCap deal and encouraging West Windsor residents to join in a more pedestrian and bicycle-friendly community, Goldin explained the rationale behind the parking plan:
“In every other transit village around the country the actual car usage is 1.35 spaces for unit. We’ve proposed 11 percent more than actual usage. They want 1.5 and we just feel that’s excessive. We’re simply trying to build fewer parking spaces because more are not necessary,” he says.
