The University announced earlier this month that it would abandon its proposed neighborhood and look for a new location for the Lewis Center for the Arts after several years of tension with the Borough and Township governments.
“We simply could not allow this project to be in what felt increasingly like limbo,” Tilghman said. “[The new location] will not have benefits to the community in the way that this project we designed would have, but that is something, frankly, that we cannot do anything about.”
The major sticking point in the negotiations was the University’s proposed relocation of the Dinky station 460 feet south, a move that the joint Borough-Township Regional Planning Board deemed unacceptable in December.
Despite the University’s abandonment of the plan, however, last week both Borough and Township officials indicated their interest in returning to the negotiation table.
At Monday’s meeting, Tilghman said that the University would resume discussions with the town, but only within the “very narrow window of time” of 45 to 60 days.
“As we said at the outset, this is the best outcome for the University if we can get there,” Tilghman said of the original plan for the Lewis Center. “But we have also made it clear that ... we are moving the Dinky or we are not doing the project. That is not negotiable.”
Until that issue is resolved, she said, the University will continue exploring alternative locations.
At the meeting, Tilghman also offered an update on the five-year Aspire capital campaign that the University commenced in 2007.
After nearly four years, she said, the University has raised about $1.35 billion, but securing the remaining $400 million will be “really challenging.”
“The hill that we had set for ourselves to climb three and a half years ago got much steeper as the events of late 2008 and 2009 hit the University,” Tilghman said, referring to the effects of the recession.
Tilghman also reflected on the projects that have already been enabled by the $1.35 billion raised thus far.
The Lewis Center for the Arts; the Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education; the Bridge Year Program for incoming freshmen; the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment; and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute have already benefited from the funds raised, she explained, adding that the University intends to continue developing these programs.
The Bridge Year Program, which currently only supports 20 students, is set to see further expansion, while construction of facilities for the Andlinger Center will begin next year and is targeted for completion in 2015.
New facilities for the Neuroscience Institute, currently under construction, are scheduled for completion in two years.
The campaign has also strengthened the University’s commitments to graduate fellowships and financial aid, Tilghman said.
The University has the forthcoming $400 million earmarked for a variety of projects, she explained, such as bolstering the University’s existing international programs to further support study abroad.
At the meeting, the facilities department also made a presentation on the University’s upcoming construction projects.
Preliminary drilling on the 27-acre, 5.3 mega watt solar energy project at West Windsor Fields will begin this summer, and construction will begin in the fall. The field, which will provide for 5.5 percent of the University’s annual electricity use, is set for completion in fall of 2012.
Jadwin Hall is scheduled to begin a major infrastructure renovation project that will require the physics department, which is currently located there, to relocate at some point in the next 2 to 4 years.
The University is also building a new High-Performance Research Computing Center on the Forrestal Campus, which will house Princeton’s computing system, the Terascale Infrastructure for Groundbreaking Research in Engineering and Science Center, or TIGRESS. The 40,000-square-foot facility will be operational in late 2011 and will meet the University’s needs through at least 2017.
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