Planners, Residents, Examine Density Around UMCP Witherspoon Campus

Matthew Hersh

Members of the Regional Planning Board of Princeton’s Master Plan Subcommittee focused on the density issue during a hearing last week on the future development of the main campus of the University Medical Center at Princeton.

The hospital maintains that it plans to announce this month where it intends to move, and in the meantime, municipal planners are faced with undertaking rezoning the present site to accommodate some sort of housing complex, along with commercial space.

Currently, the 11.76 block bound by Henry Avenue, Harris Road, Witherspoon Street, and Franklin Avenue, is primarily zoned for hospitals and hospital-related uses.

Members of the Regional Planning Board of Princeton’s Master Plan Subcommittee are largely in agreement that a certain degree of building density needs to be maintained at the site if is going to be used for housing.

The Princeton Community Master Plan needs to be amended by the full Planning Board before it can defer potential zoning ordinances to Princeton Borough Council and Princeton Township Committee, which are both impacted by the issue since the hospital block straddles the municipal line.

While subcommittee members have arrived at a tentative consensus when it comes to usage, affordable housing components, retail usage, and office standards; questions remain about what is appropriate for overall density of the site.

The potential range of floor area on a rezoned site ranges between 300,000 and 510,000 square feet. The latter would be likely if 20 percent of the housing units are to be set aside to qualify for the state’s Council on Affordable Housing for low- and moderate-income units.

The 510,000-square-foot scenario is only slightly less than the current situation on the hospital campus. Residents have voiced concern that while the hospital maintains peak activity during the daylight hours, Monday through Friday, a housing complex would generate round-the-clock activity, and that the density should be reduced:

"We support affordable housing — there’s no question about that — the question is: How is this development formed and what does it do to Witherspoon Street?" said Virginia Kerr, a resident of Jefferson Road.

"We should put some more considerations into the hopper," she added, citing proposals from neighborhood groups like Princeton Future, who have advocated incorporating any new development into the surrounding neighborhood by way of extending through streets and maintaining similar housing styles.

But a housing concept that has been circulating throughout several subcommittee hearings is the hospital’s plan for housing on the very site it hopes to sell to finance, in part, its planned $350 million campus. Princeton HealthCare System (PHCS), the hospital’s parent entity, put forth a proposal for a 280-unit complex that includes a park and open space. That proposal would require the 510,000-square-foot scenario.

The hospital, for its part, must assure any future developers that they will be allowed to build within the confines of any new zoning on that site. Additionally, the hospital is seeking top-dollar for the land as it pursues relocation.

Residents like Ms. Kerr, however, say that proposals like the hospital’s should be considered along with ones that call for less density. "We’d like to bring another expert into this forum. When we read this proposal, with all due respect to Mr. Hillier and the hospital, it really looks as if the hospital has put its numbers into the Master Plan," Ms. Kerr said, referring to J. Robert Hillier, an architect-consultant contracted by PHCS to design a concept for what future housing on the Witherspoon campus could look like. Mr. Hillier, a minority owner of Town Topics, was not at the hearing.

The hospital has boiled developers' proposals down to a final three, according to PHCS President and CEO Barry Rabner. Those developers, Mr. Rabner added, have put forth plans for the hospital campus, Merwick Rehab on Bayard Lane, a surface lot on Franklin Avenue, or a combination of the three.

One proposal, however, that did not make the cut was one put forth for a Continued Care Retirement Community by developer Charles Street Partners, LLC. Spearheaded, in part, by Princeton resident J. Barclay Knapp, president and CEO of NTL Inc., a New York- and London-based operator of cable and telephone systems. The Charles Street proposal called for approximately 150 units.

Mr. Rabner said one of the reasons that plan was rejected was because the group, as a whole, came together specifically for the purpose of developing a proposal for the hospital, and while he said the various partners were well-credentialed, the group as a whole did not have the established credentials the hospital sought. They were weeded out in the first cut, Mr. Rabner said.

The Master Plan Subcommittee is slated to hold an evening hearing Tuesday, October 18, with any recommendations from that session going to the full Planning Board on Thursday, October 20.