AvalonBay Application Reveals Desire for New Environmental Standards

A revised proposal for the AvalonBay redevelopment that was passed Thursday has the township considering instituting new environmental requirements for some developments.

The project was passed last week after months of debate, and after the company filled out an environmental survey. The survey asks a variety of questions, none of which are enforceable.

“At this point, the only mandatory aspect is filling out the statement," said Gerald Muller, one of the Planning Board's attorneys. "When the ordinance requiring the green buildings standards checklist was passed, it was in the discussion: should the governing body mandate green building requirements, or, at this point, do we just want to get information and have a dialogue with the developers and educate the developers? And the option was to do the latter: to secure information and have a dialogue."

AvalonBay was the first developer required to fill out the new green buildings standard questionnaire drawn up by the Princeton Environmental Commission. According to AvalonBay’s questionnaire, they will be Leed Silver certified and qualify as Energy Star B3, should they choose to apply for these certifications, which they would do independently.

The board rejected the original AvalonBay proposal in December, and the developers made a number of changes to the plan based on recommendations made by the board and the Princeton Environmental Commission. Some of the changes included making the structures more energy-efficient, incorporating a generator for power outages, and creating more space for bike storage. 

“There’s nothing in the city ordinances that allows us to go as far as [AvalonBay] have with this application,” said Planning Board member Gail Ullman. “Obviously, our ordinances haven’t caught up with our environmental concerns.”

A number of Planning Board members raised concerns that the soil on the site had not been tested for contaminants, and discussed whether testing should be a requirement of future applications. There is no state law requiring soil testing unless there is evidence of contamination. 

The site was formerly home to a hospital that used a number of chemicals, including mercury. Legally, the planning board cannot impose soil tests without some evidence of contamination, according to Rob Kasuba, AvalonBay's chief attorney. 

“There is no ordinance in the municipality that requires the testing to disprove that there is any chemical exceeding the NJDEP requirements," said Kasuba. "I would ask this board whether they ever imposed this condition on any other applicant, for any other application.”

The site has been examined by board's own expert consultant, hospital officials, and a Licensed Site Remediation Professional, according to Kasuba. According to Planning Board member Bernie Miller, all state protocols regarding hospital decommissioning are being followed on the site. 

"Ultimately, any monitoring or remediation would be under the auspices of DEP not of Princeton," said Miller. "But we don’t even have to get to that because there’s no evidentiary basis for the imposition of such conditions."

Planning board member Marvin Reed spoke in favor of the Environmental Commission pushing to make their recommendations a requirement for all future applicants. He agreed with board member Jenny Crumiller, who said that since this was the first hospital decommissioning the board had undertaken, there was no way these laws could have been on the books prior to AvalonBay's application.

“If it’s going to become a requirement, it probably has to become a requirement for more than one applicant,” said Reed. “If we’re going to have that as a requirement, we have to go to the next step and incorporate it into the ordinances applied to multi-family housing, to office buildings….I think that’s a charge to the Environmental Commission to see because that’s where we get the authority to make that a condition of approval.”