Princeton Regional Schools mulls fate of former school

At the end of the month, the future of the former Valley Road School site will be determined. Princeton Regional Schools will choose between replacing the school with a site to house Princeton’s emergency services or converting the school to a community center for local nonprofits.

The former Valley Road School currently houses the Township Affordable Housing department and nonprofit organizations including Princeton Community Television and Corner House Counseling Center, a nonprofit jointly funded by the Borough and Township to help residents with issues of substance abuse. The three-building site operated from 1918 to the mid-1970s as a school for first through eighth graders, and is now in a state of dilapidation.

The Essential Services Proposal seeks to replace the former school with a building to house the Princeton Fire Department, the Princeton First Aid and Rescue Squad and Corner House.

In a competing proposal, a coalition of Borough nonprofit organizations is requesting to convert the Valley Road School complex into a community center that would lease space to fellow nonprofits and community groups.

Representatives from the fire department presented the Essential Services Proposal at a June 14 joint municipal meeting. The department, which uses volunteer firefighters, has three stations but keeps all its fire engines at its Witherspoon Street location. Department staff say expanding the current Witherspoon station into the Valley Road site would improve service and response time. Under the plan, the Valley Road-Witherspoon location would become the sole station.

The fire department has already begun working toward a single fire station approach, representatives explained. In April 2010, the department moved all its primary pieces of equipment to the Witherspoon location and began cross-training all three crews on all the main equipment.

“The vast majority of firefighters — the people that come out and respond to the vast majority of fire alarms, day in and day out, are very satisfied with this system and think it’s a huge improvement. We’re providing a better-quality, more consistent service due to the single-station response,” said Mark Freda, the department’s director of Emergency Services. “It’s inevitable that we need to have all three fire departments in one building, and it needs to be a building that’s adequate.”

“When you separate the response, you’re limiting your response. We had three stations before — you could live right next to one fire station and never get an engine out of that station,” Chief Daniel Tomalin explained. He explained that, at times, trucks have to leave their home station understaffed and pick up volunteers from the other stations.

“You can’t preserve the volunteer fire department in three separate firehouses when the fire trucks are really housed at one firehouse,” Freda said. He added that constructing the single station would attract volunteers by improving the volunteer experience and allow the department to remain volunteer-run.

If the school board chooses the Emergency Services Proposal, the municipalities would front the funding for the total project by issuing bonds.

The municipalities would cover the cost of expanding the existing firehouse, estimated at $1.5 to $2 million. PFARS and Corner House would each launch capital campaigns to repay the costs of constructing their new buildings. The costs are estimated at $5 million for PFARS and $2.5 million for Corner House. If the agencies’ fundraising efforts fall short, Borough Mayor Mildred Trotman explained at a meeting last month, the municipalities may agree to cover some of the funding.

The other group seeking the space, the Valley Road School Adaptive Reuse Committee, made a presentation of its proposal at a Borough Council meeting on June 28. Princeton Regional Schools, originally scheduled to consider the committee’s proposal on July 14, cancelled the meeting.

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The center would include a portion rented out under a long-term lease, a shared space portion to be used by various tenants on a rotating schedule and a fee-rented space where organizations could pay for one-time use.

Based on projections developed with consultants, VRS-ARC expects to pay $173,061 in operating expenses and to take in an annual fee income of over $200,000 in its first year. The group initially raised $10,000 as seed money and has continued to raise funds.

The community center proposal requires $173,500 in immediate improvements. This money would install a new boiler to heat the space, convert the auditorium and cafeteria to black box theaters and make roof repairs necessary before tenants could use the space. Additional improvements, including an elevator and refurbished bathrooms, would be phased in over several years.

VRS-ARC has registered a 5013c nonprofit organization, Valley Road School Community Center, Inc., to raise funds from donors for additional improvements. In the final phase of improvements, representatives from the group said they hope to add solar energy panels to the roof of the facility.

“Every tenant that we have in the building comes with an entourage of interested people who are very concerned about the space and very concerned about the future of the building,” Kip Cherry, spokesperson of VRS-ARC, said.

Because the school building lies in an educational zone, the community center would require that all tenants have some educational component in their mission statement.

Part of the group’s desire to preserve the school building comes from its belief that the almost 100-year-old building is a historical site and its reluctance to see it replaced.

“Valley Road School does represent the 20th century for Princeton,” Cherry said, noting that it was the first racially integrated school in the Princeton area.

The school board plans to make its decision at a Sept. 27 meeting. The board postponed its decision from the original date of Aug. 30 to request more information on both proposals.