Historic preservation deserves honest debate, not political turnarounds

Dear Editor,

I am writing in response to the recent letter published in Town Topics. “Defending Historic Princeton? From Whom, and From What?” by Leighton Newlin, council member and liaison to Princeton’s Historic Preservation Committee. It’s distressing to see a public official, especially one who describes himself as someone who listens, dismiss residents who speak out, and label them unfairly.  It’s too easy to paint us as an enemy. We are not.

In 2019, when a two-family duplex rental was proposed in the Witherspoon-Jackson historic neighborhood where Mr. Newlin lives, he publicly opposed granting any variance. 

According to a Community News article from the time:

But others, including members of the board, expressed concern that a variance granted here would open the floodgates to the “condominiumization” of Princeton. Leighton Newlin, a lifelong Witherspoon Jackson neighborhood resident and a key figure in the fight to have it designated as a historic district, warned about the unintended consequences the variances could have, expressing concern that changing the owner-occupancy requirement would open the neighborhood to real estate investors who would buy up properties and turn them into multi-family rentals.

“What we’re talking about here tonight, quite frankly, is history. Now let’s be clear: The reason that Witherspoon Jackson was made a historic district was to preserve the streetscape and the integrity of the neighborhood,” he said. “One of the things that will kill a neighborhood and displace a neighborhood quicker than anything is to have a flood of renters in what is now a historic neighborhood where the reason it’s historic and the reason it got the designation is because of the camaraderie of the people and the fact that when people own homes there is more care and concern with the neighborhood.”

Mr. Newlin defended his own historic neighborhood when he felt it would be “killed” by the addition of a single duplex rental, and he successfully argued against the variance. He now applauds a 238-unit luxury rental apartment complex (complete with rooftop swimming pool) which will dominate and reshape the streetscape of another historic Princeton neighborhood. He asks why there isn’t a civil conversation. That statement is so depressing. The Mercer Hill / Frog Hollow neighbors (those most affected) have repeatedly asked for a conversation with the Princeton Council for more than five years and, despite a written commitment from the town’s attorney, the Council has repeatedly declined to meet. 

If defending historic Princeton and neighborhood integrity mattered in 2019, it still matters now. And, in any healthy democracy, people deserve to be heard.                                         

Let’s have that conversation and work together for the common good.

Karen O’Connell
Hibben Road