Report: E.B. to benefit from Golden Tri. plan Rutgers professor says initial data shows surplus of $2M a year BY VINCENT TODARO Staff Writer The initial results of a study requested by Mayor William Neary show that the proposed Golden Triangle redevelopment would be a fiscal boon to East Brunswick. Speaking at Monday's Township Council meeting, David Listokin, a professor at the Center for Urban Policy Research of Rutgers University, said his fiscal impact analysis revealed that the revenue made from the development would outweigh its projected costs to the town. The issue of whether the plan, a transit village of residential and commercial uses proposed by Toll Brothers, is fiscally sound has been debated at Town Hall over the past three years. The township has sold the Route 18 property, where Sam's Club and other stores are located, to the Pennsylvania-based builder for approximately $35 million. Some of that revenue has already been used to erase a deficit in the municipal budget. Neary asked for the fiscal impact study last year. Though Listokin said his analysis is not yet complete, he reported on his initial findings in a lengthy presentation Monday, describing the study as a comparison of the public costs vs. the public revenues generated. After offering a voluminous amount of data on the issue, Listokin concluded simply: the deal makes financial sense for the township. Listokin addressed a number of concerns that critics have had with the plan, including the eventual cost of school-age children who could live in the approximately 400 residential units proposed by Toll Brothers. The fact that the residences will be built adjacent to a new commuter parking deck that will replace the township's current Transportation and Commerce Center park-and-ride lot will play a role in limiting children, he found. Listokin said that the areas studied showed that transit villages, those close to means of mass transit, predominately draw older people or younger residents without children. He called that a "low yield" for children and said it could be attributed to the nature of the communities and the housing product. But Listokin said the study did not use transit-oriented development (TOD) demographics. Instead, to be conservative, it used standard demographics. East Brunswick is not similar enough to other communities studied to be sure that a TOD demographic was appropriate. The study aimed to project how many school-age children, rather than just public school children, would be brought into the township, Listokin said. This was another conservative move, because usually some of the school-age children who move in wind up in private schools and thus are not a burden on the district. In addition, the study inflated the numbers because it is possible East Brunswick's highly valued school system will attract more families with children than would occur in other towns, he said. He also made note of concerns that the school district would lose state school aid because the development would increase the town's wealth factor, but said this is not enough to suggest the redevelopment is a bad idea. State aid has been frozen for several years anyway, and there are also "hold-harmless" provisions that could allow the school district to keep its aid from dropping. The aid formula is likely to change in the future anyway. Neary said the township will soon know for certain the exact number of units Toll Brothers is proposing. Listokin said the study found that even if the maximum of about 402 units is built, they would house about 750 people, including about 70 school-age children. Toll Brothers has agreed to give East Brunswick a one-time payment of $20,000 for each school-age child who moves into the new residences. Regardless of whether the township collects conventional property tax revenue from the new construction or uses a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes program, the result would be a revenue surplus for the township of nearly $2 million per year if a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes program is used. Council members and people in the audience Monday had little to say about the presentation, as the study is not yet complete.