Another Betrayal of Medical Center's Promises

I’ve just learned with dismay and anger that the Medical Arts Buildings) on the corner of Witherspoon and Henry Streets has been sold by Barry Rabner, president and CEO of Princeton HealthCare Systems, to Wythe Capital. 

This sale destroys all hopes of the Princeton community and the local neighborhood for the 35,000 square foot public, green park that he promised the community, back in 2005-2006, in exchange for an excessively high density of 280 apartment units for the hospital site. Mr. Rabner even commissioned an architect to do a concept plan that would include the public open space as part of a system of public walkways “crossing the site” so as to achieve neighborhood interaction—“greener than Hinds Plaza.” This sale is the seal of death on his broken promise.

At the Planning Board meeting on AvalonBay (October 25), Marvin Reed (who chaired the Hospital Task Force through many meetings in 2005-2006), lamented that “The good will of the Medical Center seems to have disappeared.” Mr. Reed was complaining that the Medical Center had sold the hospital site to a prospective developer, AvalonBay, whose plans reduce a so-called park (a bare 15,000 sf.) to a private open space leading to the building’s main entry. But he must also have had in mind Barry Rabner’s now-completed efforts to sell the smaller of the adjacent Medical Arts Buildings (277 Witherspoon): this building, demolished, was to have provided public open space for the public park that was central to his negotiations with the community (as transcripts of the Planning Board meeting in May, 2005, show). At the end of a Planning Board meeting on April 19, 2012, Mr. Reed was overheard discussing the matter of the potentially lost public space from 277 Witherspoon with Mark Solomon, attorney for the Medical Center. “What do you want us to do, give it to you?” Mr. Solomon asked, referring to the smaller Medical Arts Building.

Well, yes. That was part of the deal, possibly the core of Barry Rabner’s exchange with various community groups. A lot of people (not only Mr. Reed) want to know: Mr. Rabner, what was the price for breaking your commitment? did you get so much money from Wythe Capital that it’s worth all the mud on your face? Not to mention the hospital’s reputation as a “good neighbor.”

Princeton is now faced with a developer who offers virtually no public open space at all, and a (prohibited) “private gated community” to boot. What will Mr. Rabner do to save his face and rescue the commitment he made six years ago. Or is he now amnesiac? 

The Rev Daphne W. P. Hawkes

50 Patton Avenue

Princeton, New Jersey 08540