Two professionals are making predictions for the number of school children that could potentially be brought into the school system as a result of a transit-oriented redevelopment project at the Princeton Junction train station.##M:[more]##
On April 10. West Windsor’s Redevelopment Finance Committee asked David Listokin — co-director of the Center for Urban Policy Research of Rutgers University, who is considered to be a leading authority on community and fiscal impact analysis — to discuss how many school children could be expected to be brought in by transient-oriented development.
The committee also asked the WW-P district’s own “de facto demographer,” Stan Katz, who has calculated and predicted enrollment figures for the board in the past, to discuss his predictions.
Listokin’s estimate was that .3 children would be generated per unit (or that 30 kids would come from every 100 homes), while Katz, using developments in town that are similar in nature to what could be seen at the train station, predicted that about .28 school-age children would be generated (or 28 per 100 homes). In this case, the amount of school children coming from the Windsor Haven development could be a good indicator of what could be seen at the train station, Katz said.
Given this information, Intercap Holdings CEO Steve Goldin, who has been releasing studies on redevelopment of his own and who attended the April 10 meeting, says he will not be releasing his own study regarding the number of school children, saying he agrees with Katz’s predictions. “We did a school child study, and it actually confirmed the numbers that Listokin had in his transit-oriented development report,” he said. And because both experts made similar estimates, “there’s no point in releasing the study because we’re going to accept Stan Katz’s number at .28.”
Listokin first shared with the committee state statistics from the residential demographic multipliers report — Who Lives in New Jersey Housing? — which he wrote as part of his Urban Policy Research. This report listed how many school-age children were generated by various types of housing around the state. For example, statistics showed that market-rate single-family attached units with two bedrooms generated about .096 school-age children per unit.
The numbers of school-age children generated between 1990 and 2000 had “gone down dramatically” from the numbers recorded in the late 1970s and 1980s, Listokin said. “They’ve pretty much plateaued,” he added. In terms of affordable housing units, those numbers tend to be much higher, he said. For example, a three-bedroom market rate multifamily rental unit would produce about .702 school children per unit. An affordable unit of the same size generated, on average, 1.37 school children per unit.
Listokin, who compiled the data from census information and other statistics from 1990 to 2000, said it’s hard to determine how many children are brought in by affordable units compared with market rate units in a mixed-use development because there is no way to look at one development and determine which of the units were affordable and which were market-rate. And because the Council on Affordable Housing is in the middle of putting out its newly proposed regulations, “COAH is a moving target,” he said. “Of all the numbers we’ve developed, we have the least amount of information on affordable housing.”
“In the end, you have to acknowledge there are many things you don’t know,” he said.
Councilwoman Linda Geevers, also a member of the committee, asked whether Listokin evaluated the wealth of different areas as one of the factors. He said he looked at the price of housing units, but not the wealth of various regions. “It’s good to start with these numbers,” Listokin said. “Then, you look at the facts on the ground, and use your professional judgment” to come up with an estimate for West Windsor, he said.
Next, Listokin presented preliminary data specifically on about 10 transit-oriented developments around the state conducted two years ago. On average, those developments produced about 0.02 children per unit. However, Listokin pointed out that the sample came from mostly urban communities — five of the developments were located in West New York, two were located in New Brunswick, and others included South Orange, Metuchen, and Morristown — and mostly consisted of rental units.
Still, the transit-oriented developments produced a smaller number of children than the data would have predicted. While using the state numbers, the study would have projected that 285 more children would be added to the school system from 2,”200 in one of the transit-oriented developments, but it actually only generated 47.
Planning Board member Simon Pankove, who also sits on the committee, asked whether those transit-oriented developments featured a lot of amenities for children. Listokin said they couldn’t look at factors like that because the census didn’t describe those characteristics of the actual development. But he did say, “you have to look at what is the nature of a development,” like the type of amenities, as additional factors when determining how many school-age children would be generated. “Tot lots may very well attract more children.”
Listokin pointed out, though, that he “wouldn’t say that all would produce low children,” and that more research needs to be done specifically with regard to transit-oriented development. “The numbers tend to be lower, but we don’t have our arms wrapped fully around this to understand it,” he said.
He suggested officials look at other developments in West Windsor and Plainsboro, including the type of units, price, whether or not those developments have affordable housing, how many bedrooms each has, and how many school children each development yields. He then suggested that based on the Rutgers state numbers, the officials estimate how many school-age children they would have projected for each development, and match it up to how many were actually generated so they can get a “hold of the Rutgers numbers as they relate to West Windsor-Plainsboro.”
From his own calculations pertaining to West Windsor, Listokin said he took the 130 townhouse units in the Toll Brothers development, which had mostly two or three bedrooms, and used the Rutgers numbers to estimate how many students he thought would be generated. He estimated that roughly .3 children per unit would be generated. The actual number in this case was a little bit above .5. Then, he calculated the rental portion of the Toll Brothers development. Of the 635 rental units, 460 were market-rate, and 170 were affordable, he said, adding that the affordable units make up about 40 percent — a high number — of the housing in that development. He said he would have projected that about .3 children would be generated, when actual numbers were about .4 children.
But in the Colonnade development, consisting of 252 multifamily rental units — about 40 have one bedroom and 212 have two — he said he would have projected that about .1 students would be generated, when actually the number was only .08 per unit.
He said from what he understands, the transit-oriented development that is planned for West Windsor consists of mostly owned two-bedroom units and is proposed to contain 20 percent affordable units. Listokin said that given that two-bedroom owned units generally produce about .1 kids per unit, and that having 20 percent of those units be affordable would bump up the number to roughly .12 or .13 kids per unit. If those units were rental units, and it still consisted of an 80 percent market-rate and 20 percent affordable unit blend, he would say that the development would generate about .22 kids per unit.
Rounding out the numbers, he said he would project about a .15 to .25 potential rate for the amount of students that would be generated. Combining the average of those two numbers — .15 per unit for purely owned development, and .25 per unit for affordable — he said his rough estimate would be that the development as a whole would be projected to generate about .2 children per unit.
However, looking at West Windsor’s individual characteristics, “I think the actual yields would be higher than what we would have projected,” Listokin said. “I think that number should be high because you have a very good school system. I would be very comfortable that the yields would be that much higher.”
Therefore, a projection of .3 children per unit would be a “very reasonable” estimate, given that no other research was done. He also said that in West Windsor and Plainsboro, there won’t be much fall-out between school age children and the percentage of those children who actually go to public school, because given the district’s good reputation, many parents would not chose to send their children to private schools.
Councilman Charles Morgan, who also sits on the committee, said he thought it would be a poor decision to accept a range of .2 to .3 students per unit, and said he’d rather have data that showed the best case scenario and worst case scenario regarding the number of students that would be generated by any development at the train station. “I think as we make judgment calls, there are going to be some of us who want to look at the worst case scenario,” he said in referring to council’s work.
Ron Rumack, who serves both on the Parking Authority and on the committee, suggested the redevelopment finance committee also look at the age distribution of the children who would move in, because different age groups might come with different costs per pupil.
Katz said he thinks it’s a bad idea to analyze the data by the number of bedrooms in each unit because there are individual developments in both West Windsor and Plainsboro that completely vary from the norm. For example, he said, the Windsor Woods (formerly Meadow Lane) development contains 60 units of one and two bedroom apartments — 30 percent of which are affordable — and those units alone send 61 children to district schools. So, the district has never used the number of bedroom units as a factor because officials feel they will never get an accurate representation, he said.
In addition, he told the committee that officials will never be able to determine which students come from each unit in a development consisting of both market-rate and affordable units. “Not only can’t we break down between who’s in affordable and who isn’t, it’s illegal to even ask,” Katz said.
Katz also told the committee that using numbers from the state is practically useless because West Windsor has so many unique characteristics. He compared it to researchers gathering data on college students from around the country. If they sampled students from San Francisco, Richmond, Tulsa, Tampa, George Washington, and American Universities, it would be a broad range representing people from all over the country. But, comparing those general numbers to students as a whole at Harvard would yield drastic results, he explained.
“Virtually all statistics are descriptive,” Katz said. “Very few statistics are predictive,” he added. “What you describe is always more general than what you’re trying to predict.”
Further, the Rutger’s statistics, Katz said, “are useful for the state; they are worthless for us. We would have such low confidence in using the state average, we would have to use something else.”
Instead, Katz gave the committee updated statistics on the numbers of school children generated, sorted by individual developments in Plainsboro and West Windsor. He suggested looking at a development that is closest in comparison to what West Windsor expects to be built at the train station to predict the number of school children that would be generated. He pointed to Windsor Haven, a development of condominiums and townhouses that has 186 market-rate units and 37 affordable — or 20 percent — that sends about .28 students per unit to school. Out of the 186 units, 52 students were enrolled in the school system as of October 15, 2007. He said he used the example because it is located near the tracks, not across the other side of Route 1, and it contained the proportion of market-rate and affordable condominium/townhouse units (80-20) expected in the redevelopment.
“I think this .28 for Windsor Haven is a good baseline for a transit-oriented development,” Katz said. “If you had 100 percent affordable housing, you would want to raise that number.”
As the state goes further into “fiscal disrepair,” the good school systems start getting more of a demand, and “anything being built in West Windsor now will be in demand,” Katz pointed out.
Katz also told the committee that the number of school children generated by the project will also have to be weighed with other developments coming on line in both townships. The school district has to plan where it will have the room for those children as it moves students around. He said when the Plainsboro Village Center was built, the school board was told it would be marketed to senior citizens and that it was not expected to bring any children into the school system, but the 38 units that have already been built already put 19 kids into the school system. “We actually had to move kids assigned to Town Center to Wicoff,” he said. He said the situation is back to normal now.
Morgan asked whether suggesting to council that the plan exclude child-friendly amenities like pools, a daycare center, and tot lots. Goldin, said he had already removed the daycare center proposal from his plans.
Katz said that regardless, “people move into West Windsor for the schools. Real estate agents market it for the schools.”
Resident Bill Benfer said his perception was that there has been a “change in the dynamics of ownership,” in that people used to stay in town well beyond their children graduation from high school, but now they are moving out and more families with children have been moving in. He said he’s seen at least five families move out on his son’s street, and seven families move out on his own street.
Katz was adamant in dispelling this notion, which he called the “suburban legend.” He said that the school enrollment, which is currently 9,”700, has already peaked without the Toll Brothers development, and in future years the school district is expecting a decline in enrollment to level out between 8,”200 and 8,”300 kids in a few years from now. “People don’t want to hear this because they believe people move out after their kids graduate,” he said. “That’s not true.”
And it all comes down to timing, he said. “If we’re wrong about the .28 number, even if it turned out to be .35, it won’t matter if it happens 10 years from now,” Katz said, referring to his earlier predictions that a redevelopment as proposed by Hillier would generate .35 kids per unit, or 35 kids per 100 units.
The town and district would be “in trouble” if it happened in three years, because it would coincide with the Akselrad development, which is expected to bring school children in, and the rest of the Toll Brothers development, he said. “Phasing is the whole thing,” he added.
One of his biggest concerns, Katz said, was the impact building the first housing units in as early as three years would have on the kindergarten through third grade schools, which is where a lot of the overcrowding and rearranging took place when the Plainsboro Village Center was built. He said if the kids come in too soon, the district may have to look at moving some children around, even if it means they wouldn’t be able to attend an elementary school in their own town — placement the school district currently assures parents of students in those K-3 grades.
Windsor Drive resident Bob Akens asked whether the high pricing of a house in West Windsor would make a difference in trying to determine the amount of school children, and whether the new COAH regulations will impact the process as well. “From the district’s perspective, price is irrelevant,” Katz responded. “Price has never been relevant. I don’t know where you would put price in a model for (determining) school children.”
Morgan asked Katz what information was the most important for the committee to include in its document on all of its recommendations to the council, including regarding the number of school children generated by a project. “The piece that you need to talk about is K-3 schools — it’s critical,” Katz said. “You have got to use everything you possibly can to say to people the number of kids in the district isn’t going to rise forever. You need to accent that or emphasize that, or your whole phasing discussion will fall apart.”
