Plans for the new student housing apartments on the Princeton Theological Seminary’s West Windsor campus have made their first rounds at the township’s Site Plan Review Advisory Board and are scheduled for their second SPRAB review in late September.##M:[more]##
Plans for the 65-acre site, located on the west side of Canal Pointe Boulevard, between Emmons Drive and Farber Road, include demolition of 25 two-story buildings with eight apartments each that are currently located on site to make way for three new buildings with 68 units each.
The current site includes the 25 apartment buildings, along with an 8,”375 square-foot daycare center and a 6,”500 square foot pool building, as well as several small maintenance buildings.
The seminary, which is looking to upgrade its outmoded student housing, wants to replace its housing with three buildings, each with 68 units. The first and second buildings would each have 32 one-bedroom units, 24 two-bedroom units, and twelve three-bedroom units. Building three would have 40 one-bedroom units and 28 two-bedroom units. The site plan also calls for the Witherspoon building, which has 40 units, to remain on site, bringing the new total of housing units to 244 — just four units more than the original site.
The proposal also includes a new 48,”000-square foot Student Resource Center, which would consolidate the services of the existing childcare and indoor pool facility, a 5,”100-square foot maintenance building, a grass athletic field, and a community garden.
For buildings one and two, 140 parking spaces would be provided for each, and for building three, 133 spaces would be provided.In addition to the seven spaces at the maintenance building, 11 spaces at the Student Resource Center and 50 spaces at the Witherspoon Street building, the total number of spaces for the site would be 481, plans specified.
According to a traffic study included in the site plans, overall access to and from the site will generally remain the same — via Farber Road and Emmons Drive, extending west from Canal Pointe Boulevard. The proposed site plan includes parking areas with access to Emmons Drive, Farber Road, and Loetscher Place. The one change is the elimination of the parking areas accessed directly from Canal Pointe Boulevard.
SPRAB members told PTS representatives to explore the potential for an alternate location for the resource center, soccer field, and swimming pool, “to make them a little more homogeneous, rather than spread out over the campus,” said Township Engineer Francis Guzik. There were other recommendations made, but PTS will have to come back to SPRAB in September before being able to head to the Planning Board for preliminary and final major site plan approval.
The project also satisfies some of the township’s affordable housing obligations under the state Council on Affordable Housing.
