The proposal by the Lanwin Development Corp. to build 30 single-family houses on a 90.6-acre lot on Herrontown Road, near Bunn Drive, will be reviewed by the Princeton Planning Board at its June 6 meeting.
The meeting, which begins at 7:30 p.m., will be held in the Main Council Room at the Witherspoon Hall municipal building, which is located at 400 Witherspoon St.
The meeting marks the second one in a series of public hearings on the application, which began at the planning board’s April 4 meeting.
In addition to creating 30 single-family building lots on a portion of the 90.6-acre lot, a 3-acre parcel fronting on Mount Lucas Road will be dedicated to Princeton for to develop affordable housing. Of the 90.6-acre lot, 67.4 acres will remain as open space.
The applicant’s engineer, Geoffrey Brown of Princeton Junction Engineering, told the Planning Board in April that two houses and a barn on the property will be demolished.
The entrance to the proposed development would be off Herrontown Road. It would be a divided boulevard, with a landscaped island dividing the in-bound and out-bound traffic. There would be granite curbs and concrete sidewalks on both side of the boulevard.
At the April 4 meeting, Planning Board member Louise Wilson commented on the regrading of the site for the building lots. The Princeton Ride is ecologically fragile, she said, and to regrade the land to make the building lots “flat” will be destructive.
Brown replied that the lots are being designed to provide “walk-out” basements for the houses, which requires re-grading the land. It was decided that Jack West, Princeton’s land use engineer, would look at each lot as the development is built out.
When Wilson asked whether the applicant had considered using permeable pavement, which allows water to drain into the soil, Brown said permeable pavement could be used for the driveways.
Also at the April 4 meeting, geologist Randy Kertes told the Planning Board that the land had not been farmed in many years, and that “successional growth” had taken place on the land. The land has begun to be reforested.
The applicant will be “respectful” of forested land and build the houses on the land that had formerly been farmed, Kertes said. The goal is to minimize disturbance, he said, adding that in his opinion, the development is being designed to be sensitive to the natural environment.
