Residents Worry Any Development On Hospital Site Will Be Disruptive

Matthew Hersh

Only a handful of hospital-neighborhood residents attended a Monday evening session outlining current traffic situations at the University Medical Center at Princeton as the hospital continues its outreach efforts in the course of planning to move its current facility and sell the 11.76 acres of Witherspoon Street land for future development.

And while the slight turnout‹three residents in all‹was most likely not what the hospital had in mind for this second of two traffic sessions, the neighbors said the small turnout was not indicative of apathy.

"We have a fairly quiet neighborhood in the evenings and weekends, and we like that," said Harris Road resident Jamie Laliberte.

Residents responded to preliminary data offered by Ken Newman, senior project manager at TRC Raymond Keyes Associates, a Mountain Lakes-based civil engineering firm specializing in traffic surveys. The firm is currently involved in a manual traffic count of the hospital's three driveways, but not of the surrounding streets into adjacent neighborhoods.

A more comprehensive count will occur in September, Mr. Newman said, when schools are back in session and congestion is typically higher.

The purpose of the preliminary study, Mr. Newman said, is to gauge how current hospital circulation conditions would differ from a residential/mixed use development proposal for the hospital site put forth by architect J. Robert Hillier, a paid consultant of the Princeton HealthCare System. The Hillier proposal, which has been heard informally by the Regional Planning Board of Princeton, looks to transform the hospital's eight-story tower into approximately 280 resident-owned units geared to homeowners 55 and older.

On a daily basis, Mr. Newman said, any residential complex on the hospital site would generate fewer cars than the hospital sees now. The hours are, however, different.

The hospital's peak times are typically during shift changes, at 7 a.m. and 2 p.m., and the hospital's peak patient times are usually in the early afternoon. Proposed resident housing, Mr. Newman added, would largely shift those peak times to occur in the morning rush periods, with extended vehicular activity into the early evening.

The consultant echoed Mr. Hillier in past presentations, saying that the overall car count would decrease with any new development. Residents, however, were not consoled.

"As neighbors, we don't care about peak hours," Ms. Laliberte said. "What we care about is our evenings and weekends, and there's no way the traffic we see on the evenings and weekends is not going to be negatively impacted by 300 units put on this site."

Marco Gottardis of Harris Road pointed to the already-crowded conditions of Witherspoon Street: "We are at the nexus between the high school, town hall, and the hospital‹in the afternoon, Witherspoon is jammed."

Mr. Newman said the impact may not be as severe in off-hours as some residents perceived, adding that there is a "wealth of data" that says residential developments drop off "markedly" after 7 p.m. in terms of traffic. "Of course there's activity, but there will be nowhere near the activity you would see at the 11 p.m. [hospital] shift change," he said.