The account of the agreement between InterCap and West Windsor Township in our July 15 electronic newsletter sparked much of the commentary.
John Church wrote to “expand further upon some financial points raised in the July 11th Council meeting by Councilwoman Geevers and myself. It is now past time to forever lay to rest the urban legend that the Administration and Township Attorney have continued to repeat, as late as the above meeting, concerning the $683,000 so-called ‘Redevelopment Fee’ that InterCap would pay West Windsor. Interestingly enough, this amount plus the $2,678,090 ‘Off-Tract Roadway Assessment’ in the agreement adopted November 22, 2010, turns out to be exactly equal to the updated $3,361,090 Transportation Infrastructure Cost Allocation to InterCap described in the Gary Davies memo to Michael Herbert and Gerald Muller dated October 19, 2010. . .
“In other words, the above ‘Redevelopment Fee’ that has been touted all along as some sort of reimbursement to the township for our sunk costs to date, is really nothing of the sort. In actuality, it is part of the above transportation infrastructure cost allocation that InterCap would have to be responsible for. Our total costs to date, including the early redevelopment work by Hillier Associates and others, and including all of our legal and consultant fees to date related to redevelopment, must be in the neighborhood of at least $1.5 million by now, if not larger. These unreimbursed (and apparently unreimbursable) expenses must be weighed against still another urban legend that redevelopment will not cost the township one penny.”
Others weighing in included Farrell Delman, who noted that “anyone who thinks this is game over for Goldin is seriously misguided. After having spent a fortune to outwit our weak team of defense attorneys, Goldin is not about to stop his attack on West Windsor, quite the opposite. The case management team’s objective will be to get an even better deal for him. Just wait and see. This baby ain’t going away: it’s just going to get worse. What is puzzling in all of this is the degree to which our Council people are helping or hurting.”
Pete Weale asked “how can anyone on West Windsor Council approve ‘On Goldin Pond’ without a requisite thorough fiscal and environmental impact analysis? This proves how much you don’t know.
“Does flooding on Washington Road and Alexander Road and existing clogged roadways mean anything to you? Does an existing excess of retail and commercial office space glut compute? West Windsor residents have never had a say in this no-bid professional consultant smorgasbord.”
And Marshall Lerner noted that “Goldin’s attorney pointed out that his client needed ‘certainty’ in order to complete the financing InterCap would need to proceed with the project. Why aren’t the members of our community entitled to the same consideration?”
Editor’s note: With this issue the News takes a three-week break before its next issue on Friday, August 12. Our E-mail newsletter will be distributed next on Friday, August 5. We will file updates at that time, and also send out tweets of breaking news as it occurs. Follow us on Twitter: @wwpinfo.
