The West Windsor Township Council will be holding a special meeting on Tuesday, October 21, at 7 p.m. at the Grover Middle School theater on Southfield Road to examine RMJM Hillier’s draft redevelopment plan for the 350-acre Princeton Junction train station area.##M:[more]##
Residents and everyone interested in the plan, however, will be able to see what Hillier is proposing prior to the meeting, with an open house scheduled for Friday, October 17, from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m at the municipal building. Hillier professionals will not be giving a presentation, nor will the council be discussing the plans during the open house, but the plan will be son display and available for examination in meeting room A.
As council prepares to take the next step in the process, some residents and officials have raised concerns yet again over the economics of the redevelopment project, particularly as it relates to state funding for infrastructure improvements. The issue was brought up during an interagency task force meeting on September 27, where officials from state, county, and municipal agencies, continued to hash out the traffic circulation issues in the redevelopment area.
The poor state of the national economy has drawn up some worries as it relates to the state’s fiscal health, which has already been in trouble in recent years. Especially concerned was Planning Board Chairman Marvin Gardner, who raised personal reservations about the ability of the project to sustain itself during times of economic turmoil.
Specifically, he questioned whether both the state Department of Transportation and NJ Transit would be able to fund various infrastructure improvements in light of the economic uncertainty around the nation and in New Jersey. He pointed to the Route 1/Washington Road improvements that were contemplated years ago but were not funded, and removed from the priority lists at the time. He also said the township’s traffic consultant has indicated that both the Route 1 cut and the Vaughn Drive connector were essential to alleviating the traffic congestion — that “traffic congestion will worsen unless both of those road improvements were in place.”
“How can we be certain that with a dismal economic picture, some of the objectives could be achieved?” Gardner asked. He also pointed to the state’s removal of the Vaughn Drive connector this past year from a 10-year state priority list. The project was estimated to cost $38 million for a two-lane roadway.
“The traffic consultant suggested that it will be necessary to make that a four-lane roadway, which conceivably could double the cost today, and considering a construction somewhere down the line, that cost could increase even more so because these estimates are based upon present day dollars,” Gardner said. “Also, half of the $38 million costs for the two-lane highway were to be borne by the township. That number could increase substantially in terms of the township’s financial responsibilities.”
Over the winter, the state announced it had dropped the $19 million — or half of what the project is estimated to cost — in funding for the Vaughn Drive connector project in this year’s budget. The Vaughn Drive connector road would connect Alexander and Washington roads. The connector road, originally part of the Route 1/Penns Neck Improvements project put forth by the state, came from the final Environmental Impact Statement on the Penns Neck area that was conducted about half a decade ago. But the Vaughn Drive connector was broken out as a separate project once the state heard that redevelopment near the train station would happen in West Windsor. State officials said their half of the funding for the Vaughn Drive connector project was dropped because a redevelopment plan had not yet been created.
Gardner also raised concerns over the issue of tax increment financing, which is based on the view that property taxes would increase above what these properties presently are contributing in terms of tax revenues to the township, he said. The dollars that exceed what these property owners are presently paying would be directed for paying off bonds under the tax increment financing techniques, Gardner said.
“However, if these office buildings are unoccupied due to economic conditions, then those excess revenues would not manifest themselves and a decrease rent roll would probably enable the developer to come back to the town and ask for a reduction in its obligation,” Gardner said. “Then the issue would be who would become responsible for paying off these bonds if the monies were unavailable?”
Gardner said that no one was able to give him a satisfactory answer that would reassure him that somewhere down the line, there would be money set aside and appropriated for these significant infrastructure improvements. “No one at this juncture was able to estimate the costs of these infrastructure improvements, nor were they able to determine at what point it made economic sense to move forward with the project,” he said.
He says he understands that costs estimates can fluctuate until an agreed-upon plan is in place, and that a redevelopment plan can extend over a 25 to 30-year period. “This entire project isn’t going to be built at one time and, of course, economic cycles and market conditions are cyclical.” Still, “we continue to be expending taxpayer dollars on planning consultants, traffic experts, lawyers, and other professionals with no assurance that we will be in some form reimbursed from any source for these expenditures. It’s not a free ride that the township is getting while all these discussions are going on.”
“West Windsor is not isolated or immune from these economic pressures, and the residents and township will be impacted by virtue of the economic turmoil that exists in the nation and in the state,” Gardner added.
However, Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh, referring to questions over whether the state will have money and be willing to fund some of the infrastructure improvements, like Vaughn Drive, which has been suggested to include four lanes, said that “even if we don’t have the money to anything, don’t you think it would be good to plan?” Hsueh asked. “Once we have the plan, we have a plan to negotiate with state agencies. Without a plan, you’re going to talk about the chicken or the egg.”
Hsueh points to a written promise from the state, which, in a letter to the township, said it would dedicate that money once a redevelopment plan has been drafted and put into action. Hsueh says this is an indication the state will follow through on its promise.
“The economy is not good — we all agree,” Hsueh said. “But when the economy is bad, it doesn’t mean we can’t make any plans for the future, because when the economy comes back, we have to deal with the developers. What will be the options we have, and what will be the basis for us to offer the directions to the property owners in the future?”
And just like the Alexander Road Bridge, which was originally estimated to cost $9.7 million, but eventually rose to $25 million, Hsueh says he is sure that estimated costs for the Vaughn Drive connector project will rise over time, but that the state will live up to its promises.
“Once they promise they will do it, even if it costs more, they pay for it,” he said. “Even though the economic conditions are so bad, we just cannot give away our abilities to do the planning. We still have to plan for the future, and be able to deal with it whenever the property owners come back and say they want to do something. We have to tell them under which constraints.”
In addition, having a redevelopment plan will allow the township to set its own pace, and allow the project to come in phases, Hsueh said. For right now, the most important thing is to get a redevelopment plan in place because the plan will serve like a master plan, and all that is needed right now is land uses for the site, Hsueh said. Once a general concept is configured, specific ordinances will be drafted to implement the land uses with more specific site specifications. The next stage is to recruit developers, who will go through a site-specific review of the project.
Hsueh says what the NJDOT is doing is going to have to support the whole concept plan, and as time goes on, more information will become available, and officials can refine what they need to do. “All of this traffic circulation will have to be subject to the review of the DOT,” as it would by all of the state, county, and local agencies involved. As the process moves forward, the regional concepts will be able to be modified, Hsueh said.
During the October 6 council meeting, Council President Charles Morgan seemed to echo the idea that township officials should not make all decisions on redevelopment based on a temporary economic downfall, but rather on long-term planning. He pointed to Carnegie Center, which was planned in the early 1980s. “They’re still looking at build out in Carnegie Center,” he said. “We’re almost 30 years later and not at the end of it being built out.” Similarly, with the Princeton Junction train station area, he said, he does not see redevelopment being completed in the next year, nor a full-blown Main Street in the next five years. “I think it’s unrealistic to expect that redevelopment is going to be any less than a 10 or 20 or 30-year exercise.” Pointing to the current state of the economy, he said, “as we know, things change, and they never stop changing.” He said it would be wrong to “jump and react to a two or three-year cyclical issue.”
Still, some residents have also been concerned about the economy’s impact on redevelopment. Windsor Drive resident Bob Akens said during the meeting that given the financial turmoil in the markets, “it might behoove reconsideration of the plan or sending a redevelopment plan to the state.”
He said that even though West Windsor does not seem to be impacted by the situation nation-wide — home prices have stayed relatively stable, and the local economy seems to be relatively unscathed — eventually bigger companies and financial institutions may have to lay off some of their employees, including some West Windsor residents, which means a reduction in the tax base here. “I think we may see some of the fallout here,” Akens said. He said he just does not see a reason why township officials need to rush to finish a redevelopment plan just so they can try to get funding out of the state. — Cara Latham
