Avalon Bay’s Closed Compound Impedes Connectivity Between Our Neighborhoods
To the Editor:
AvalonBay (AB) wants to build a closed compound of 280 units on the old hospital site: the hugest building in Princeton, with a private swimming pool in the main courtyard. Why should this development be allowed in our community? The 2006 Master Plan explicitly prohibits gated communities. AB prides itself on creating closed “communities.” Other municipalities have thwarted AB developments: Highland Park, N.J.; Greater Huntington, N.Y.; Scripps Ranch, Calif. We ought to reject AB in Princeton.
A closed compound is out of sync with Princeton values of diversity and openness. The proposed development would physically impede connectivity between our neighborhoods (Witherspoon/Jackson and Harris/Jefferson) — a goal of relatedness that the Witherspoon Corridor Study Group spent much time promoting. The Task Force for rezoning the hospital (now the MRRO zone) was adamant that any development should, as a matter of public policy, permit public plazas and pedestrian access routes “crossing the site” (Borough Code 17A-193B.d.1). It called the hospital’s departure a “unique opportunity” for area renewal and re-connection. Hospital leadership (including Barry Rabner, CEO and President of UMCP) signed on for this smart urban design (in exchange for a zoning for “up to 280 units”), and even suggested the obvious value of limited retail stores to assist with people-flow and economic vitality. (Who wants to waste gas driving to the shopping center for toothpaste?).
As far as is now known, AB has refused public access “crossing the site.” Talks about a pedestrian passageway that would connect a public plaza on Witherspoon to Harris Road have yielded little. The pedestrian thoroughfare proposed in the 2005 concept drawings (commissioned by the hospital), running between the garage and any building on the east (now perhaps to be AB’s big cube) has not been incorporated into new plans.
This is an outrage, an affront to civic values. The Master Plan and Borough Code both call for public access across the 5.6 acres. Who can imagine an enclosed four-story high wall of enclosed bridges between the garage and the AB cube so that residents don’t have to get wet, climb or descend stairs, or use elevators, and can remain on “their same floor” in order to reach apartments. No other garage I know of has “same-floor transition” to housing units. Princeton does not need a Berlin Wall.
Not all of the fault belongs to AB; their people are simply taking advantage of weak zoning regulations that should have been strengthened as soon as AB came poking around in the fall of 2011. Planning Board staff had ample time to advise Borough Council that potential dangers of a blockbuster development lurked (AB did not submit concept renderings until March 12, 2012). Proper guidance from Planning Board municipal leadership has been missing.
Princeton needs both market-rate and “affordable” rental units, but not at any price. All municipal bodies must ponder well the price-tag AB brings.
Jill Stein
Gulick Road