Princeton school board cools on acquiring Westminster Choir College campus

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
The Princeton school district has put on hold its pursuit of potentially acquiring Rider University’s Westminster Choir College campus, the more than 20-acre property that officials had eyed as a site for a new school., “First and foremost, we want to be respectful of Rider’s process here and affirm its desire to have a buyer for the Choir College, both the campus and the program,” Superintendent of Schools Stephen C. Cochrane said Monday., Rider has said it is looking to sell the music school and the campus, with the intent of keeping Westminster in Princeton. Another possibility is for Rider to find a suitor who only would want to take over Westminster, leaving the university to sell the real estate to a third party., “This is a year-long process that we expect to take place over the course of the next 12 months,” Rider spokeswoman Kristine A. Brown said Thursday., “We’re waiting for that process to play out,” Cochrane said. “We would welcome – if that doesn’t play out in that way where the college is kept at its current location, and the property becomes available – the opportunity to become caretakers of that campus. We are asking the questions that we need to ask in order to look at the finances and everything else that would be associated with that.”, The school district, in the midst of preparing for a facilities bond referendum to put before voters, initially leapt at the chance of obtaining a property contiguous with Princeton High School and John Witherspoon Middle School., The Board of Education, two weeks ago, was interested in having the town put the Westminster campus on the municipal master plan as a future school site. Such a move would have put a one-year-reservation on the property if any future development project is proposed for there, to enable the town or the school board to acquire the parcel., But so far, the town has said it has not heard from the school district., Even as Westminster finds itself on the school board’s back burner, the district is looking to plan for the potential growth of the school system, in connection to the growth of the town as a whole, Cochrane said., As a school district, Princeton has seen a bump in enrollment of 332 students in the past five years. But with more affordable and market rate housing expected to be built, the district has asked its demographer to analyze the impact future development will have on the enrollment., “We’re trying to take a long look at the growth of the town and the schools,” Cochrane said., The municipality of Princeton is in a court case in which a Mercer County judge will determine what the town’s affordable housing requirement will be through 2025., “Obviously, there’s a lawsuit still pending, so we’re really not sure what the outcome is going to be,” Cochrane said. “So we want to look at the possible outcomes, the high rate, the lower number and then something possibly in between, so that we can do appropriate planning.”, For her part, Mayor Liz Lempert said this week that she believed the school district needed to analyze what its space needs are and project enrollment growth in the next decade or two, a process that has begun. She has not fully endorsed the idea of the school district buying the Westminster property., As for that campus, Mayor Lempert on Wednesday called it a “big, important property for the community” given it is located in the center of town., She said she expects the municipality and Rider would be in touch “throughout” the process and about the future of Westminster. She indicated that the university expects to hear back from interested suitors in June.