The former Naval Air Warfare Center site, where the township is negotiating for a 300,000-square-foot retail project.
The Gateway to the redevelopment area at the Parkway Avenue railroad bridge as envisioned in a conceptual drawing.
Construction of a mixed-use transit village on the old General Motors site could begin as early as this Spring, according to Mayor Bert Steinmann.
The mayor said that the township has reached an agreement with a redeveloper plans to build a project that would bring 1,000 units of high-density housing and 150,000 square feet of retail space to the township.
Steinmann is expected to reveal more details about the project, including the name of the redeveloper, during a meeting of the Ewing Redevelopment Agency in January. The date of the meeting had not yet been determined as of the Observer’s deadline.
The Redevelopment Agency — the body designated by the township to oversee projects in the Olden Avenue and Parkway Avenue redevelopment zones — must approve the redevelopers and projects proposed for those areas.
Steinmann talked about his plans for the GM and Navy sites — including tax revenues, the impact on the school district, and the state of contamination in the redevelopment area — during a recent interview with the Observer about the state of Ewing Township.
“If everything goes right, we’ll have a shovel in the ground in the spring. If not, then in the early summer,” Steinmann said.
In October, the mayor announced that he was close to a deal with a developer for the site, which is owned by Racer Trust, during a mayors roundtable forum hosted by the Princeton Regional Chamber of Commerce as part of Trenton Small Business week. At the time, Steinmann said he didn’t want to name the developer until a deal was finalized.
The site, which formerly housed a GM parts manufacturing plant until it was shuttered in 1998 and was demolished three years later, is part of the Parkway Avenue Redevelopment Plan approved by the township last January. The redevelopment area also includes the Naval Air Warfare Center across Parkway Avenue from the GM site. The properties combine for a total of about 120 acres.
According to Steinmann, the development will be a transit-style town village that will ultimately connect to the West Trenton train station and the Trenton-Mercer Airport. In the past, officials have proposed construction of a new station and extension of the SEPTA line to tie into N.J. Transit’s rails to New York City.
The residential buildings on the site will be a combination of apartments, stacked townhouses, and townhouses, Steinmann said. There will be no single-family homes. The stacked townhouses and townhouses will be for-sale units and the apartments will be mostly rentals.
“It’s a project that’s going to take 10, maybe 15 years, to fully complete,” said Steinmann. “We’re looking at full buildout to a project that’s worth approximately $500 million.”
Steinmann said that all of the paperwork is done, and the plan just requires the review and approval of the Ewing Redevelopment Agency. He added that he could have announced the agreement in December, but opted to wait until after the holidays.
While the agreement doesn’t include the Navy site, the township is working on a deal there as well, Steinmann said, but there are still a few wrinkles that need ironing.
“We are working very diligently to get that developer on board,” Steinmann said. “They still have some ideas that they want to build it the way they want to build it, but they’re in a redevelopment area and that’s not going to happen. The town has a vision for this area and we’re going to live up to that vision.”
He said one of the key factors is coming up with a design that fits the town’s blueprints for the zone.
“It’s not just going to be, ‘I’ve got a cookie cutter store and that’s what it’s going to look like.’ We said to them, ‘Maybe in another area it would work, but it’s not going to work here. You’re going to have to be a little more creative with your design.”
Under the plans currently being discussed, the Navy site would be developed with about 300,000 square feet of retail space, although some second-floor residential apartments might be included, Steinmann said.
As for the GM site, the township stuck to its guns and waited for the right plan to came along.
“We weren’t looking for a quick ratable,” said Steinmann. “If we wanted a quick ratable I could have had warehouses on the GM site and on the Navy Jet Propulsion Site. But that’s not good for the long term future. That’s really not a future. We were looking for something that was going to be lasting. Not for 5, 10, or 20 years, but for 50 years or longer beyond that.”
He added that a developer wanted to built a million square feet of warehouse space on the site under a plan that was proposed two years ago.
“That wasn’t happening,” he said. “It’s not a good ratable for the town and serves no interest as far as employment is concerned. This particular warehouse was highly automated. 10 people were going to run it. I’m looking for jobs. 10 people is not jobs. I mean, yeah, 10 lucky people, but I was looking for more.”
In addition to Ewing, the as-for-now-unnamed redeveloper is also getting its ducks in a row with other agency and governmental approvals and is coordinating them with the township, said Steinmann.
“They’re already talking to the county about what infrastructure changes have to be made as far as road systems are concerned. I’m in constant contact with the county because we’re working hand in glove with the county not only with our property, but with the airport and how we develop it and we’re kind of developing it simultaneously as we go along.”
As for environmental contamination on the property, Racer has been working with the state DEP and the federal EPA, and the site has been cleaned up to an industrial standard. The responsibility for the cleanup of contamination will remain with Racer even after the site is developed.
“Racer has an obligation to monitor and make remediation if the federal government and DEP says they’ve got to do something,” said Steinmann. “They have a continuing interest in this site for 30, 40, 50, 60 years. They still need to do groundwater monitoring.”
The redeveloper will be responsible for making sure that the areas where housing is going to be built is up to residential standards. He explained that the area where the housing is planned is where the parking lots used to be, and that area is clean enough to build on now. The “slab” — where the old factory was located — was the area that had the most contamination, and the retail portion is planned for that section of the property.
On the issue of ratable revenues, Steinmann said he has negotiated a payment in lieu of taxes to the township, which is allowed under redevelopment, law. Under the PILOT, 95 percent of the revenue will go to the township and the remaining 5 percent to Mercer County, he said.
The PILOT is the only tool in terms of tax incentives, that a town can offer a developer to attract them to do a redevelopment project, Steinmann sai. “We could have not done a PILOT agreement and demanded that they just pay based on land value, but then it (the deal) wouldn’t have happened. The alternative is that you have vacant land or we put a warehouse there.”
Under the PILOT, the developer will pay 55 percent of the property value from year 1 through 5, then 65 percent in years 5 through 10. That amount will increase to almost 100 percent by year 15, said Steinmann.
The mayor said he also plans to negotiate a PILOT with the developer of the Navy site. “It’s a redevelopment zone and there’s a pollution and the developer is going to bear most of the cost to clean it up. There needs to be some incentive for them to do that.”
Just because the town will be getting the majority of the revenue from the PILOTs doesn’t mean the school district won’t see some funds as well. Steinmann said he has told the school district that he will work something out with them “I told them, ‘Maybe we’ll pay you per student, or a maybe percentage. But you’re going to get something.”
He said he also plans to include the school district in the process as the project goes through the redevelopment agency. “They’re going to be involved as we go through this process. That way everybody sees, including our taxpayers, that we’re in sync with what we’re doing. I’m not excluding them. They need to be part of the conversation. I don’t need them as an enemy. We need to work together.”
The township estimates that the project will have minimal impact on the school district, adding between 130 and 170 school children. “We don’t believe its ever going to be 170 kids,” said Steinmann. “It’s going to be closer to 130. The type of housing there is not conducive to families.”
Steinmann compared the residential to the number of school children generated by the Madison and with Scotch Run developments.
“When Scotch Run was being built we had a school board member who said not to built the project because we’re going to get 100 kids,” said Steinmann. “The developer’s professionals came in and said the maximum would be 26. The most kids that ever were generated out of that complex was nine, and right now there’s two. At the Madison, they estimated 25 or 30 kids. Right now there’s one.”