March 4: Statement on Faculty Housing

This statement is in response to a letter from the group Save Princeton arguing against the Institute for Advanced Study’s project to build faculty housing. That letter materially misstates facts, implies that the Institute is acting irresponsibly, paying no heed to preservationist concerns. This is simply not the case.

• The Institute has long supported the Battlefield Park. More than forty years ago, the Institute sold 32 acres of its own land to the State of New Jersey, enlarging the Park by 60%;
• Over the course of the development of the project, the Institute listened carefully to concerns of the public and incorporated extensive changes to the faculty housing site plans. Many were suggested by historian David Hackett Fischer, who is quoted in the objectors’ letter, and included moving the project further away from the Park, adjusting the profiles and materials of the housing units, and enhancing the landscaped screen between the site and the Park.
• Our faculty housing occupies only 7 acres of the 21-acre field on our campus, and by easement we will perpetually preserve the remaining 14 acres adjacent to the Park, all at no cost to the public.

Finally, as documented in the New York Times article regarding the project published on February 16, 2016, several experts made clear that the quality and conclusions of the Milner Report—on which the objectors rely regarding the location of the central events of the Battle of Princeton—is far from universally accepted.

The Institute has received all the necessary regulatory approvals to proceed. Preservation issues and the Institute’s accommodation of them have been thoroughly vetted. The letter from the project’s opponents is clearly part of a PR campaign by the Civil War Trust and the Princeton Battlefield Society to repeat misstatements that have been unequivocally rejected by the courts.