by Bill Potter — West Windsor Township Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh is quoted in the press as wondering what kind of restaurant to have in the 350-acre “redevelopment area” that is planned for the busy Princeton Junction train station area. “We haven’t decided whether we want Italian, French or Chinese” within the new downtown and transit village planned for the sprawling township, he said.##M:[more]##
Culinary concerns aside, local residents should worry more about this massive project than the ethnicity of a new restaurant. Like other redevelopment projects around the state, this one could lead to the taking of homes and businesses so that new owners will carry out the municipal “vision” in a process called eminent domain. Even if everyone decides to sell rather than fight condemnation, properties can be tied up for years in legal limbo. As a cautionary tale, look at Asbury Park – or what’s left of it — which has been “redeveloping” since 1984.
With redevelopment, all too often, local officials — with little experience in the business of business development — are easily enticed by the latest “urban renaissance” vision spread before them by consultants. Then, with hopes high, they declare large swaths of their communities “redevelopment areas” and downplay the costs and risks. Meanwhile, the consultants who drew up artists’ renderings get paid up front, even if project has stagnated or tanked.
By any measure, redevelopment is all the rage these days across New Jersey. It is sold as an antidote to suburban sprawl — and, hence, is frequently referenced as “smart growth” — and a way to foster more local tax revenues and jobs. This latest phase of the ratables race gained speed after the courts approved Princeton Borough’s redevelopment of its not-exactly downtrodden downtown with a $13.7 million, taxpayer-financed parking garage. (Disclosure: I was the attorney for the Concerned Citizens of Princeton who failed to overturn the redevelopment area designation so as to have a referendum on the bond issue that is paying for the still unfinished project).
The core problem with this assumed solution to almost every urban problem is that local officials often misuse a law originally intended for fighting the “cancer of urban blight” — notably, crime-ridden slums and dilapidated and abandoned buildings next to weed-infested vacant lots — even where there is no hint of blight. Mayors want the power granted to fight blight be cause it will help them achieve ambitious aims to remake a community with little in the way of interference from even the most aroused residents.
As the late Princeton Borough mayor, Joe O’Neill, who was known for, his candor, volunteered in a letter, the borough council never believed the area dubbed “in need of redevelopment” was blighted: Council members just wanted the power reserved for combating blight as a way to speed completion of their grandiose parking garage. In this way, a law intended to remove blight is being abused to keep pesky citizens at bay while councils and consultants map out new towns within towns financed by those same residents who are denied an effective voice in the decision-making process, and who may well face eviction before it’s over.
In other words, just because a site looks ripe for fancy new buildings — including a new downtown, as Mayor Hsueh foresees — does not make it a “redevelopment area” under state law unless it is also blighted. The 1992 Local Redevelopment and Housing Law caused the confusion when it scrapped the familiar term “blighted area” and substituted the euphemism “redevelopment area.” The name change was intended to help mayors fight blight without suffering the stigma of admitting to blight; it was not supposed to confer blank checks for seizing non-blighted homes or businesses simply to improve local land use and tax revenues.
Among the blight-fighting powers handed to the West Windsor governing body, even though there may not be an acre of blight in the 350-acre site planned for the new downtown, are these:
(1) to select a master redeveloper without competitive bidding,
(2) to negotiate the size, scope and cost of projects in closed session and without competitive bids,
(3) to condemn private property within the redevelopment area, even if it isn’t blighted,
(4) to grant long-term tax abatements that deny revenues to schools and counties,
(5) to issue bonds to pay for it all and
(6) to prevent citizens from having a referendum on the new debt load, no matter how many sign a petition demanding a vote.
What should be done to promote the benefits of redevelopment without the loss of democratic checks and balances and the lifting of barriers to cronyism or corruption?
For starters. Mayor Hsueh and his council members should renounce the misleading “redevelopment area” designation for the train station area. For solidly middle class West Windsor, this was a case of mistaken identity from the start. Just because parts of it seem ideal for a new downtown — and perhaps they are — does not make it a blighted area (the meaning of “redevelopment area”).
Next, if local officials won’t admit the error, they can show their good faith by rejecting any plan for the new downtown that includes eminent-domain taking of any property that is not itself a source of blight. Merely because some house or business is located near a supposedly blighted site — and it’s doubtful that any can be found in this tidy township — does not justify getting rid of everything within the boundaries of the “redevelopment area.”
Finally, before spending another dollar on consultants, officials should await the consensus plan being prepared by local residents — including architect Jeremiah Ford — and see if it does a better job of protecting current homes and businesses. Maybe then it will be time to pick a restaurant for the new downtown.
Bill Potter, a Princeton lawyer, is also a lecturer in politics at Princeton University and an adjunct professor of environmental law at Rutgers Law School. This article appeared originally in the Times of Trenton.
