Developer’s Name Is Misleading, but Board OKs What Could Be Boon for Rec Department

Matthew Hersh

The Regional Planning Board of Princeton Thursday heard a plan from a company called Princeton Soccer Fields involving 19.1 acres of wooded property along Mercer Street, near Gallup Road, and while that combination of ingredients appears to have some athletic reference, the outcome will likely result in preserved, undeveloped lands.

The applicant, Princeton Soccer Fields, LLC, received the go ahead from the Planning Board to subdivide the land into two lots, creating one four-acre parcel that could have a house built on it in the future. The remaining 15 acres, however, will be parceled off into an area that is under contract to be sold to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to be permanently preserved as open space.

The area lies in the Township’s R-1 residential zoning district, as well as in the Township’s Battlefield/Stony Brook Settlement Historic District Buffer Zone.

The Princeton Soccer Association had plans dating back to the mid-1990s to build soccer fields on the site. PSA owns the site and is willing to sell the plot as it works with the Princeton Recreation Department on creating more active recreation spaces throughout the Princeton area, according to PSA attorney Christopher Tarr.

Mr. Tarr mapped out the PSA’s migratory history, thanked Princeton University for allowing the organization to use its West Windsor fields, and indicated that PSA would work with the municipal Recreation Department, including turning over sale proceeds to the department, in finding future playing field solutions.

“The Princeton Soccer Association has been here since the early 1970s, and PU has been a wonderful host for so many years,” said Mr. Tarr, though added that the University has “made clear” that the school needs that land.

PSA, for a time, had eyed about 30 acres in an area adjacent to the PU playing fields in West Windsor, south of the D&R Canal, “but the regulatory climate got worse and worse, and the regulations got to be so profound that the idea of using that area for playing fields became untenable,” said Mr. Tarr, who spoke alongside Catherine Knight and Jonathan Frieder of the Soccer Association.

The Township engineer, Robert Kiser, said in a report that any applicant to build a single-family house on the four-acre parcel would be required to restore any pavement openings during construction using infrared technology. That portion of Mercer Street is currently under a five-year moratorium restriction related to road openings.

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