TRW Should Be Redeveloped Gracefully and Appropriately Without Contributing to UHI
To the Editor:
Climate change is upon us, and New Jersey is the third most impacted state in the U.S., with Princeton among New Jersey’s most affected areas. The Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect raises our town’s temperatures by 6.3°F to 8°F and, until Princeton takes action, temperatures will only climb. What reduces the UHI effect? Trees. According to American Forests, because cool air settles near the ground, air temperatures directly under trees can be as much as 25°F cooler than air temperatures above a nearby blacktop. When you walk on Nassau, the difference in temperatures between the University side and the business side is palpable.
Last Monday, Princeton Council approved a Green Development Checklist. This detailed checklist is admirable and begins by focusing on the big picture: “Does the development limit disturbed areas by limiting clearing and grading to a carefully described and compact development envelope?”
The resounding answer to this as applied to the proposed TRW redevelopment on Stockton is no. The criteria of “limiting disturbed areas” reveals that this plan does the opposite in every conceivable way. Rather than limiting clearing, it instead clear-cuts the properties entirely. It regrades the property to raise it up higher than neighboring properties and proposes 60-foot buildings, including atop a garage that adds additional height.
The idea of it being a compact development envelope is laughable. This “compact envelope” envelopes the entirety of the properties, encroaching in every way on the residential neighborhood, stripping it of privacy and exposing it to a gigantic concrete Urban Heat Island. By definition, a compact development envelope should not detract from the visual or residential appeal of the area. The beauty of Princeton, and this historic neighborhood, is in its viewshed, one defined by old growth trees. The redevelopment plan slaughters all the trees and decimates a beautiful park-like landscape, one that Princeton Theological Seminary itself deemed environmentally sensitive.
It’s also in direct opposition to other important items on the Green Checklist, including fitting well into the existing neighborhood and streetscape. This type of hatchet-job development in an age of global warming, with its overwhelming mass and impermeable surfaces, already feels dated. It will not age well as it dominates and towers over an historic residential area and invades Princeton’s viewscape.
TRW should be redeveloped gracefully and appropriately (including affordable housing) without contributing to the rising Urban Heat Island effect that is plaguing us. It is not smart growth to take a beautiful open space and clear-cut the trees, creating 70 percent new impervious surface (a calculation that excludes the road that will run the entire length of the property).
It is shocking that an ordinance prescribing this massive redevelopment would be introduced on the same day the Green Development Checklist was unanimously passed.
Council has 100 percent control over the approval of this plan. We will learn at the July 22 meeting whether the enthusiastically adopted Green Checklist has meaning or whether residents are being gaslit as temperatures continue to rise.