U. to demolish Butler apartments following delays

The permit for the demolition of Butler Apartments will be granted to the University by the Municipality of Princeton this week, allowing construction to begin, Director of Community and Regional Affairs Kristin Appelget said.

She said the exact date of demolition will be determined as soon as the permit is issued to the University and project managers in the Office of Design and Construction coordinate with their contractor.

Graduate students moved out of Butler Apartments once construction for Lakeside Apartments finished in June.

“We now have graduate students who are living in modern housing with access to conveniences that they didn’t have in the Butler tract,” Appelget said.

Christine Philippe-Blumauer GS, the former chair of the now-disbanded Butler Committee, which consisted of Butler residents that voiced concerns about the building's maintenance, said that she will be sad to see the site torn down but believes that the step is necessary.

Butler fostered a sense of community and had affordable rent, she said.

"You’d walk around the streets and there would be kids, there would be dogs, there would be a lot of [grad students] that we knew … so it was a nice little suburban place to live in,” noted Alexander Berg GS.

In September of 2014, Berg wrote a column in The Daily Princetonian criticizing the administration's handling of graduate housing.

He added, however, that the facilities were in a constant state of disrepair, while Philippe-Blumauer said that the Butler housing had poor insulation and defunct heating systems.

Appelget explained that the Butler tract was installed in 1947 as a means of temporary housing for students coming back from military service in World War II, and until the spring of 2015 it was used for graduate student housing.

The demolition process has been in place since this past summer, when utilities such as refrigerators, washers and dryers were donated to area nonprofits, and hazardous materials like asbestos were removed.

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Appelget said that the demolition of the buildings would last for several weeks, and afterwards grass would be planted to fill in the spots where the apartments once stood.

The delay of the opening for Lakeside Apartments caused tension between University administrators and graduate students. There were complaints of living conditions and overcrowding, as those students who were assigned to move into Lakeside had to move into Butler to accommodate the delay.

In 2013, graduate students petitioned against the demolition of Butler, citing its affordability and capacity to hold a large number of students. Closing Butler would then be "imprudent, unnecessary and ignores the needs of graduate students with limited income, with pets or with partners and/or children," the petition read at the time.

Andrew Edwards, a co-sponsor in the petition to keep Butler, did not respond to a request for comment.

For now, it is uncertain what will become of the land from Butler Apartments, Appelget said.

“There are no immediate plans to redevelop the site … it’s most likely to [become] faculty and staff housing, [and] possibly grad students,” Appelget noted, adding that such a decision will ultimately be made by University trustees.

Because Butler Apartments were meant to be temporary, their demolition was inevitable, according to Philippe-Blumauer. However, she added that the complex still holds a great amount of historical significance.

An open house was held during Reunions so that people could visit the site, according to a2014 ‘Prince’ article.

“There is a nostalgia around Butler,” Philippe-Blumauer said. “It was one of the first places to acknowledge the reality that grad students have families.”

Philippe-Blumauer and Berg said that the new site for graduate student housing, Lakeside Apartments, provides students with a positive and community-building environment and has generally been a nice place to live, yet it too comes with problems.

“There are still some complaints that people have. A lot of the units seem kind of unfinished,” Berg said. “Some blank spaces on the walls of the kitchen where cabinets were obviously supposed to go but they obviously ran out of time in a rush to finish it.”

He added that students have also been complaining about a lack of hot water.

“But, in general, people are really happy with Lakeside,” he said.

Philippe-Blumauer pointed out the high difference in rent cost when moving from Butler to Lakeside. While the University provided financial assistance to graduate students with families or those who cannot work, others simply had to cope with the cost.

“Going forward, I believe that [students with families or students with disabilities] will always be taken care of, but obviously when the price goes up that much it affects the entire student population,” Philippe-Blumauer said.“I think it’s good to have graduate housing, I think it’s still appalling that it’s that expensive — but Princeton is generally very expensive.”

James Poole, manager of Graduate Housing, declined to comment.