The story behind the Stockton Street project began in 2018, when the Princeton Theological Seminary, in pursuit of building a new dormitory complex as part of a consolidation master plan, obtained from the Municipality, evidently at the Municipality’s prompting, a designation of parts of their campus as an Area in Need of Redevelopment (ANR). Designed by the New Jersey legislature to encourage redevelopment of blighted areas, commonly known as slums, the ANR effectively lifts virtually all zoning restrictions on redevelopment. Rather than follow the normal painstaking process of gaining a zoning variance, the Seminary, at the suggestion of the Council, decided to go for an ANR. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whatever its advantages in some genuinely blighted places, the ANR has long been a means whereby complicit New Jersey municipal governments compromise viable and often historic districts for the benefit of private developers, who stand to gain enormous profits virtually unchecked. 

 

From the start, the Municipality’s approval of the ANR for the Seminary was sketchy. The blight in question chiefly involved two dormitories, Tennent and Roberts Hall, and Whiteley Gymnasium. The Seminary had neglected maintenance, but the buildings were by no means blighted. Yet the Municipal Council approved the ANR anyway, having suggested the ANR to the Seminary in the first place. 

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​​​​​​​​​When the ANR was originally proposed, residents were led to believe by the Seminary that there was no cause to worry, that the beauty and historic character of the neighborhood would be respected. The ANR amounted to a technicality – a “redevelopment statute,” one Seminary official informed residents, that would allow the Seminary “to look at all future plans for building in the neighborhood at the same time rather than piecemeal.” [italics added.] The Seminary led the neighbors to believe the ANR was merely a first step and that there would be close collaboration with them to secure their common goal of preserving the neighborhood’s historical character, and that future plans concerned only advancing the Seminary’s academic mission. 

 

Lulled into an assumption of goodwill, residents did not think of raising any objection to the ANR during the very brief period (45 days) allowed for such objections. Only later did the residents realize they had been misled.

 

That false sense of security about the ANR, as fostered by the Seminary, lasted for years. Finally residents began to see what was suppose to be a benign technicality turn into a nightmare. As events have since shown, the ANR, while sparing the Seminary the cumbersome process of gaining necessary zoning variances, also gave the Seminary a virtual free hand to develop the area however it wished, or to sell it to a commercial developer who would enjoy the same free hand.   

 

 

 

In October 2019, after more than a year of study groups and public forums about the dormitory plan, the Seminary suddenly announced that it was abandoning the project, citing rising costs and neighborhood concerns. Then, in January 2021, the Seminary entered into an agreement with a private developer, Herring Properties, to sell the land for $14.5 million, a sale contingent on its site proposals receiving all necessary approvals.  In 2022, over strenuous opposition from residents led by the Princeton Coalition for Responsible Development (PCRD), the Seminary demolished the historically important Tennent and Roberts Halls and Whiteley Gymnasium, in anticipation of their final sale to Herring Properties. Although the worst of the alleged blight cited to justify approving the ANR had been removed, the designation remained. 

 

Not until five years after the Council approved the ANR, at a public roundtable about the site on October 17, 2023, did Herring Properties unveil a proposal for a massive 238-unit luxury apartment complex, with the absolute minimum of 20 percent of the units set aside as affordable housing, as mandated by the Mount Laurel II decision in 1983 and subsequent legislation. The proposal alarmed residents as not simply excessively dense and tall, its design entirely at odds with the area, but as a clear and present danger on historical and environmental grounds, as well as potential disaster regarding Princeton’s already dangerous traffic situation. 

 

Working through what they believed were the proper municipal channels, residents expressed their strong objections, to no avail. On July 24, 2024, two weeks after a highly contentious public hearing, the Council unanimously gave its final approval to the Herring Properties redevelopment plan, based on its own spurious ANR designation. Meanwhile, the PCRD pursued litigation charging, among other things, that the Stockton Street project was out of step with the municipality’s Master Plan for development. That litigation is continuing. 

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On December 19, 2024, the Municipal Council approved an ordinance awarding the developer for this project what amounts to a $40 million PILOT over thirty to thirty-five years. In essence, the developer will be entitled to pay up to $40 million less than the assessed value of the property would demand over the course of at least three decades. The justifications for this windfall are weak. A heavy burden will fall on Princeton taxpayers. But because the PILOT ordinance contained highly opaque computations and jargon, and because the Municipality released what seemed like sound justifications for approving the tax break  it has taken time for its true significance to sink in among the residents, once again moving beyond the extremely brief period allowed for public objections. 

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In April 2025, a group of five historians ran a statement in Town Topics, decrying the Stockton Street project as a threat to Princeton’s historical significance and national (indeed, international) prestige. Off that statement, DEFEND HISTORIC PRINCETON lawn signs have blossomed across town, and numerous letters have appeared in Town Topics, Planet Princeton, and TAPinto Princeton, explaining objections to the project on numerous grounds. That groundswell of public support has met with ugly attacks from the project’s backers. Support for the opposition campaign has only grown in response, measured in part by the continuing proliferation of signs. 

 

See a timeline of these events.