The Regional Planning Board's Landscape Subcommittee signed off on the Princeton Shopping Center's proposal for an overall facelift and landscape redesign. In December, the Shopping Center's management agent, the Manhattan-based George Comfort & Sons, received approval from the full Princeton Regional Planning Board to significantly alter storefronts, walls, awnings, signs, lighting, and landscaping. A major point of contention in the original Planning Board sessions — the prospect of the removal of the fountain in the center courtyard — has since been nixed. "You've done a good job on preserving what people like," said subcommittee member Gail Ullman. "I think people will be happy."
A building proposal to construct a 46,700 square-foot building that will serve Princeton University's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, as well as the school's department of Operations, Research and Financial Engineering, will be heard before an advisory wing of the Regional Planning Board this Wednesday, September 13, at 7:30 p.m. in Conference Room A at Township Hall. The three-story building is slated for a site located on the north side of Charlton Street in Princeton Borough. The full Planning Board will hear the proposal later this year if the advisory board gives the application the green light.
The Princeton Community Democratic Organization will host an open-to-the-public talk this Sunday, September 17, with Jeffrey Laurenti, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a New York-based public policy institute, and at the Security and Peace Initiative, a joint venture of The Century Foundation and the Washington-based Center for American Progress. The talk will take place at 7:30 p.m. at the Suzanne Patterson Center, behind Princeton Borough Hall. Mr. Laurenti, a member of the Mercer County Democratic Committee since 1974, is scheduled to discuss the current situation in Lebanon and how it will impact the Middle East in the long term.
José Rafael Moneo Arquitect, the Madrid-based firm headed by award-winning architect José Rafael Moneo, has been chosen to design Princeton University's new neuroscience and psychology buildings. Mr. Moneo, who is known for combining contemporary architecture with physical contexts, has also taught architecture as the chair of the Department of Architecture at Harvard University from 1985 to 1990 and currently lectures there as the first Josep Lluis Sert Professor of Architecture. He has taught at other institutions including Princeton University, where he served as a visiting professor in 1982.