Princeton Battlefield Society Wins Fight!

I'm passing along the following report from Glenn Williams:

It looks like the Princeton Battlefield Society (PBS) has won its fight for keeping the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) from building faculty housing on historically significant land - the sight of the most crucial fighting on January 3, 1777 - which lies outside the state battlefield park boundary! Members of the PBS filed a complaint against the IAS waiver request to build on land within the jurisdiction of the Delaware and Raritan Canal Commission (DRCC).  Based on the legal arguments presented by the PBS complainants, DRCC denied the waiver that the IAS had applied for to build.  

As a member of the board of trustees for the Princeton Battlefield Society, I would like to put the news in context.  First, however, those of you who attended the Congress of ARRTs in Newcastle two years ago may remember that we collected some money to donate to the legal defense fund that helped make this possible - Thank You! 

This has been a long and tough struggle.  Not unlike George Washington and the Continental Army in the retreat from New York and across the Jerseys in late 1776, we received a number of setbacks along the way - such as the regional planning commission ruling against historic preservation in favor of the housing project.  The DRCC hearing can therefore be equated to Washington's counterattack of January 3, 1777, the culmination of the "ten crucial days" that started with his crossing the Delaware on December 26, 1776, that saved our nation's recently declared independence. 

The DRCC is a land-use regulatory program that must approve projects of any size proposed for that area that is within 1,000 feet of the D & R Canal. Each project is reviewed for its visual impact on the D & R Canal State Park. The Commission also reviews large projects that are within one mile of the park for their traffic impact, and requires the preservation of corridors along the major streams that enter the park.