We often get asked: How could this proposed site, in the heart of the oldest residential neighborhood in Historic Princeton have ever been deemed blighted? Who would allow this to happen?   

 

To grant a designation as an Area in Need of Redevelopment, an instrument Herring Properties now has in its pocket, the Planning Board and the Municipal Council had to declare that the site in question conformed to New Jersey Local Redevelopment and Housing Law NJSA 40:12A-1 et seq. The law stipulates that its purpose is “to arrest and reverse conditions of deterioration of housing, commercial and industrial facilities” in areas that meet various conditions, including “substandard, unsafe, unsanitary, dilapidated, or obsolescent” buildings which are deemed “detrimental to the safety, health, morals, or welfare of the community.” 

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The Municipal Council took up the matter at the Princeton Theological Seminary’s behest in 2018; and according to the Seminary’s representative, it was the Council that came up with the idea of securing an ANR designation. Without anyone acknowledging as much, it served as a shortcut for the Seminary to get the zoning variances it needed for its dormitory project and other projects planned for the future; indeed, it would release the Seminary from virtually any zoning restrictions to enable its dormitory projects to go forward.  The same release would remain intact, though, no matter what the seminary decided to do with the land -- including sell it to a commercial developer. 

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A report commissioned by the Council and prepared by LRK Inc. consultants -- Area in Need of Redevelopment Preliminary Investigation of Princeton Theological Seminary Properties -- listed the supposedly dire conditions that warranted an ANR designation. The report focused chiefly on three buildings, the Tennent Hall and Roberts Hall dormitories and Whiteley Gymnasium.     

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In all three cases, the report described neglected maintenance problems, all correctible by repairs and renovation. as if they rendered the buildings blighted and unsalvageable. (The Seminary was and is notorious in the neighborhood for the poor maintenance of its residential properties.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bogus blight designations

Municipalities and developers have long used what one public advocate in another New Jersey municipality has described as “bogus blight designations, based on scant or superficial evidence.” All three buildings, for example, were designated as "blighted" in part because they lacked central air conditioning. But this is common in older buildings in Princeton whose owners have not attended to upgrades and maintenance. More tellingly, many older dormitories at Princeton University, including Rockefeller and Mathey Colleges, still lack central air conditioning. 

 

Roberts Hall and Tennent Hall needed to replace worn out stormwater and heating systems, also familiar in older homes; the gymnasium contained some “severely undersized” doorways and “poor sound attenuation,” and so on.  A subcommittee of the municipality’s own Historic Preservation Committee, writing months after the ANR was approved, described the problems as “delinquent maintenance issues, underutilized spaces, and unsympathetic alterations” in buildings that were“generally in good condition.” To conclude that this amounted to blight, “detrimental to the safety, health, morals, or welfare of the community,” was a travesty.

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​"Blighted" buildings still in use

Nothing better demonstrates the report’s unreliability than its inclusion of the Erdman Center and Adams House as part of the ANR. These structures do not figure into the Stockton Street project, but they underscore how contrived the ANR designation was and is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​Not only were the Erdman Center and Adams House not blighted in 2018 any more than Roberts, Tennent, and Whiteley were, the Seminary is still utilizing them fully and in the normal course of business, Erdman as a conference center and temporary residence for visitors, offering "comfort and convenience," and Adams House for faculty offices. Seven years ago, the report commissioned by the Council labelled them blighted structures, “detrimental to the health and welfare of the community” and (in the case of parts of Erdman) “conducive to unwholesome living conditions.”  

 

The report that justified granting the Seminary an ANR designation was not merely flawed, it was an embarrassment. Discrepancies between the facts and the skewed conclusions, then and now, raise serious questions about how the report was devised and written.        

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Town officials rubberstamp their own ANR

Rather than investigate the proposal seriously, let alone challenge it, both the Planning Board and the Municipal Council unanimously passed two ordinances approving the ANR as laid out in the report, one in 2018 and the other, covering Whiteley Gymnasium, a year later. 

 

The outcome should have come as no surprise. It was the Council, after all, working in concert with the Seminary, that came up with the ANR strategy; and it was the Council that commissioned the bizarre report on “blight” that justified the ANR. The public hearings on the matter were a sham. The Council members voted to approve a plan they themselves initiated, based on a report prepared by their own hand-picked experts. That is, they sat in judgment of what amounted to their own handiwork.  

     

How and why the individual members of the Council and the Board, as well as the parties responsible at LRK Inc. and at the Seminary, acted as they did remain open questions, as does the matter of whether the ANR the Council initiated, justified, and approved was illegal.  

 

What once looked like a convenience extended to the Seminary to build new dormitories has since turned into the means whereby a private developer is evading virtually all zoning regulations and building a luxury megalith in the heart of historic Princeton. And this only begins to cover the concerns that lie behind the Stockton Street project. t.

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