Neighborhood meeting on redevelopment plan

April 19, 2007

Diane from Regional Planning Partnership

Diane from regional planning partnership. Workshop #3. Requested to present at the town meeting. Facts about town centers in general. Town centers and transit oriented development. If Route 1 development went in centers as opposed to what it’s zoned for, could reduce # of trips could be reduced by 60%. What you can do here is to set the standard for the region, this is what centers should be like. Is a state policy – more efficient, better for environment, economy, etc. Clustered, mixed use centers works better than low density, separate disparate uses.

Care that new development that comes in actually succeeds. Reports from experience of half-built center in Washington and problems in Hamilton have been invoked as cautionary tales for West Windsor. West Windsor officials have been peppered with concerns about ‘are we going to have the same problems’. Both Washington and Hamilton’s experience are different enough from WW to be irrelevant to what you are doing. Mistakes they made you can benefit from. The town center being built in Washington township – was being started 10 years ago, now 13 years ago. Was approached as an overlay to their master plan not as a redevelopment zone as West Windsor has done. Means township will have more control. Negotiations between Washington Township and developers have held up plans for bypass that Washington needs. And state agencies no longer had the money – delay – money was used elsewhere. Bypass is not dead, but is more challenging going forward.

Fears for losing money in WW need not be laid out the same way. DOT has infrastructure in the budget – Vaughn drive – if WW retains their attention – and focus – won’t have Washington ‘s troubles. The fact that Washington has to build a high school is not caused by town center. What they wanted to do was transfer housing units that would have been built in farmland and move them to the town center. The town center’s effect on Washington was better than it would have been to development across the town. They were at the stage where they had to build a high school. Units they were building were not same kind as you are talking about here. Matters how many children are going to be living in the units.

Hamilton township’s experience has been rocky because they haven’t followed careful step by step public involvement process that I have seen West Windsor do. WW had spent several years in community consultation. Because of the amount of consultation, the process will work better. West Windsor has made it clear that the township is the leader, not the developers.

This is about transforming West Windsor into a place residents can be proud of – making it more beautiful and more functional. This has been wanted for many years. The first committee meeting was in 1988. I wanted to applaud what WW’s leadership has done. I look forward to following public process and expect there will be progress. Remember, we’ve been working on this since 1988 and the place has languished. Have to begin to trust someone and come together as a community, to make it a town that we are proud of. I’m impressed with the turnout and willingness to work on this – whatever support I can give I will.

Bob Hillier

Holds up the yellow sheet that someone distributed – “it was put out by the tobacco lobby, so you are welcome to roll it up and smoke it.”

I have been contracted by the town to help in the plan of the redevelopment area. Basically to get input from the community and to create a project – redevelopment that will serve the town going forward. This is our third workshop. Have done quite a bit – will see something that is entirely different than what you’ve seen before. I want to thank you for coming out, for your emails, letters to the editor, and also specifically thank steering committee – want to thank you for coming out and intense and passionate interest.

Anish Kumar – director of our planning group. Citizen of west Windsor – Bradley Walters – was a member of your planning board. My last email from Bradley last night was at 3:48 in the morning. Finally, Anda French – when I said what were you doing at 3:48 – passed Anda on the way out – she was coming in at 4 am.

This has not been easy. Complex site. It has several non negotiable constraints. I think it’s great how you have all been involved, but you have also not been the easiest client. Remember – you are the client. So many points of view. Many of you have given us thoughtful ideas complete with sketches. Others have simply ranted obscenities at us and said leave it the way it is [applause]. Others have cheered us on [applause, from different people].

Having breakfast in PJ’s with a prospective client and a woman comes up and says are you Mr. Hillier? She said I’m a west Windsor resident – and I thought Oh god here it comes. She said I just want you to know that you are doing a great job.

A good architect listens carefully, identifies all the forces at work on a problem and tries to bring them into balance. Recall the bad weather we had this past week. If this thing goes ahead a lot of the issues we dealt with around the station will be solved. Economic forces – budget and taxes. Market forces, politics. A good design achieves equilibrium which deals appropriately with strength and priority of these forces, and works at them until they are brought into balance. In the end, big force is that it’s about quality of life. And your home town. If you left it to market and economic forces – you would get more sprawl and you would get a world created by developers. I have respect for developers. They are often well intentioned. What is wonderful is that you have taken control. In the end we will tell the developers what we want our town to be. Better than being on the defense, seeing developer proposals coming to planning board, piecemeal. In 20 years you look back and say ‘how did this happen’.

Design process is a ball of clay - shaped and formed as each issue is brought up. Tonight, we have the form. But are not going to put it in the oven. Not ready for the oven yet. Still refinement and tweaking to do and that’s what tonight is all about. We have a plan – want you to take that plan and tell us how you think we can make it better. Good and totally open process this has been. What I’m going to show you cannot believe what it will be. Gotten attention of many towns in NJ and attention of national press.

NJ is way behind the nation in achieving right balance between people and jobs. Losing people, losing jobs. Taxes are out of sync. People go where there is attractive housing they can afford. If we don’t have convenient attractive housing can’t attract businesses. Businesses remain vacant, affects tax revenues. Buildings attract business – good residual benefit to be derived from housing which people can afford. Not about today, it’s about tomorrow, our kids having a place to live. Stopping sprawl, better mass transit, getting rid of a car and saving $10K / year. Reduced taxes – make a remarkable place to live, work shop.

Fears about housing – what it brings – traffic, school children, higher taxes. We have proposed the minimum housing that we can. Tonight we will demonstrate that that is positive. New Jersey Transit, Office of Smart Growth, urban land institute, governor’s office all believe we should be achieving much higher density along mass transit corridors.

I’ll take you through the plan. Then we’ll go to the other room. Want each group to identify a leader. We’ll work for an hour to and hour and 15 minutes. Have everyone come in – have 16 leaders get up and comment on their group’s tables reaction to the plan and how it can be fixed. Ask those leaders to make sure that you start with the important point – keep it to one or two critical points, not repeat what they have said, it would be helpful. An hour of feedback. Should get us through the evening. Let’s move on with the plan.

First meeting – everybody on the left is represented by a dot – in second workshop – you can see that we had same distribution across the township. We feel that township has been well represented in the process.

Schedule – we’re on schedule. Schedule is important. Had workshop 1 2 open house at our office to which 200 people came.

Here tonight – workshop 3 4/19/07

Then a presentation of concept plan to joint meeting of township council and planning board scheduled for 6/4. Joint meeting of township council and the planning board. After that, redevelopment documents to planning board in 3 different hearings. After that from planning board to township council. Then prepare development RFP’s.

Everywhere along here are public inputs. See that they continue. Public input available and expected. We are at the beginning. Input from our professionals. Once we deliver plan to township council and planning board, then township professionals will take over full time. Have public input an dthe professional input.

Goals – here’s what bothered the people at the first meeting

  1. Traffic/ circulation 47%
  2. Economics 27%
  3. Cultural 14%
  4. Parking 8%
  5. Environmental 4%

Input – this is an important chart –

Citizen input and concerns / Current status of proposed plan
Tax neutral or tax positive / Annual revenue surplus of $7 million
No new schools / Will add 303 new students within projected capacity – within capacity of school system now. Stan Katz has been invaluable in helping us arrive at that number, show how it can be phased into schools
Improve traffic circulation / 23% reduction in trips (compared with current zoning)
Minimal development / 20% reduction in area (compared with current zoning)
Minimal residential uses / 1000 including affordable and age-restricted
Minimal new parking spaces / 4700 total commuter spaces (2030 ridership projections). Right now have about 3,700 spaces. Need 950 more spaces just for west Windsor residents
More parking for residents / Up to 950 additional spaces for resident commuters
Economic viability of retail / Modest scale (5.15% of potential) plus complimentary uses. ERA has said that development we’re proposing will fulfill only 5.25% of potential that is there. They said we could make as much as 500,000 square feet of retail. Didn’t want to do that – 2-300,000 of that retail because it was big box. Didn’t think we wanted big boxes init. We kept it to basically around 200,000 square feet, a little less.
Create a place for WW / Public spaces, green, market walk and linkages. “Photo op”. Done that in a lot of ways – public spaces, village green, market walk and linked it all together so the whole thing is within a 5 minute walk.
Environmental stewardship / Meeting criteria of LEED for neighborhood development. Site is such that it could achieve platinum LEED rating as a district.

Have taken all of your concerns here, at least tried to.

If nothing changes and existing zoning remains in force

Existing and approved on the site (picture) – redevelopment is outlined in black – all the existing buildings that have been approved and their parking or are standing and their parting.

That’s what your current zoning could let you have. Look at the parking, the buildings.

Retail/neighborhood center 210,000 SF

Office 2 million

Office R&D 940,000

Total 3,150,000

Residential affordable – 362-767 units

Residential: market 3 units

School children 125-264

Parking 12,600 spaces

Commuter 3,700

Take your current parking code requirement – current parking code requirement could add 12,600 spaces in addition to the 3,700 that you have right now.

Traffic – would be created with that build out

Trips in PM peak hour

Office 3372

Retail 702

Residential 165-299

Train station commuter parking 1221

Train station drop offs / pick ups 752

Approximate trips 6,212-6,346

Traffic – two categories of improvements. Purple lines – improved and committed and money is lined up. 571 improvement. Vaugn drive connector. Route 1 improvements between Penns neck and Millstone. Meadow road connection. Proposed that there be a connection through to Route 1 going through Sarnoff property. [NOTE – he didn’t say it but the purple line pointed to the proposed connection between Sherbrooke and Alexander Road]. Put it on here – controversial – essential link in helping traffic to flow better around the town.

Here’s what is there in the plan

# units / Area per unit / Area (sf)
Unrestricted condos / 650 / 1000 / 650,000
Age restricted condos / 200 / 1000 / 200,000
Apartments rentals / 150 / 1000 / 150,000
Retail / 150,000
Office / 800,000
Totals / 1,950,000

As opposed to 3 million plus that is there under current zoning.

Economics of the plan

Total tax revenue of $12,800,000 would e created. School and municipal service costs $5,155,000. Required to send money to county of 640 – leaves a surplus of $7,016,000 annually. If you take that number it will support on tax financing a bond issue $108 to $114 million in development bonds – infrastructure, amenity cost.

Residual development value, contributed by developers - $53 million.

End up with $161 to $167 million.

This buys…

Vaughn drive extension $17 million

Brownfield remediation (the compost area) $5 million

Site redevelopment infrastructure – 100 acres of development $35 million

Acquisition of private property $35 million

New WW parking garage for residents $10.9 million 950 spaces, $22,000/space

New Fire Station – EMS Police Substation $1.75 million

New Athenaeum community facility $14 million

New station waiting area 600,000