Planning Board amendment conflicts with University expansion

Officials from the University and the community came together last Wednesday at a Princeton Regional Planning Board committee meeting to discuss how the University’s Campus Plan will coincide with the Princeton Community Master Plan. This meeting, the first opportunity for both parties to look at the draft of the Master Plan, failed to resolve all conflicts.

Princeton Regional Planning Board member Marvin Reed said that the community remains concerned about the University’s planned encroachment into community areas as defined by the Campus Plan.

The Campus Plan details many of the University’s development projects — including plans related to traffic, parking, the environment and the Arts and Transit Neighborhood — in line to be initiated by 2016.

University Vice President and Secretary Bob Durkee ’69 said in an interview that these projects must be reconciled with the interests and agenda of the surrounding community. “The community has its own master plan for how [it thinks] about growing and evolving over time, so it was important to have these conversations with the planning board,” Durkee explained.

Concern about University expansion motivated the community to propose its amendment to the community’s master plan. The amendment, which was read at the meeting, asks that “the development of Princeton University should avoid encroachment into established residential and commercial neighborhoods adjacent to their campuses.”

“We advocate a mixing of the public and students,” Reed said. “But what we don’t want to see is the University moving administration and classroom buildings and taking up space [where] regular offices and buildings would be located.”

If the community’s acquiescence is not obtained, the University’s plans could be delayed or even suspended altogether as the community retains rights over land usage, Reed said.

“Anything [the University is] doing requires changes in the Borough and Township zoning,” Reed said. “This agreement [between the University and the community] would have to precede that change so that the zoning would … be consistent [with the plans].”

Reed noted that taxes were a concern of the Borough, but he also explained that it was more important to have a mix of businesses in the downtown area to keep it vibrant and thriving.

“We like the University, but we want the town to be strong in its own right,” Reed said.

The University is a part of this strength, Durkee noted. “We were able to remind them that when the University has had property on the north [side of Nassau Street], we have contributed to the liveliness [of the downtown] or at least remained on the tax rolls,” Durkee said, citing the local presence of Labyrinth Books, which was brought into the community by the University, and the Princeton Garden Theatre, which is owned by the University.

The proposed move of the Dinky Station further south, to a location on Alexander Road, is also a concern to the board and to the community, Reed said.

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“We’d like the station to stay where it is,” he said. “We want it as close to the center of town as it can be. That [issue] hasn’t been worked out yet.”

Talks between the community and the University have also focused on decreasing the number of University employees using transit services, Reed said, as well as increasing the usage of bicycles for transportation.

The University remains optimistic that an agreement will be reached that is beneficial to both parties, Durkee said, noting, “I think that we have worked very effectively to try to develop a set of plans for both the University and community that respect the needs of both.”