Overview
The proposed Arts and Transit Neighborhood on the western edge of Princeton University's campus would form a public space that is a nexus of both campus and community life. New public plazas and improved traffic circulation would complement new facilities to support the arts and a new New Jersey Transit Dinky station. These new activities in the area will build upon and strengthen the longstanding presence of two anchors of the Princeton community: McCarter and Berlind theaters and the Dinky.
The neighborhood will be the home of the new Lewis Center for the Arts with the requisite new teaching, rehearsal, performance and administrative spaces. It also will be the site of new galleries for the Princeton University Art Museum, an experimental media studio, and a performance hall. Combined with other facilities on the University campus and in the community, the neighborhood will become a vibrant cultural destination for the region.
Restaurants, cafés and other public amenities will support the needs of visitors, while also appealing to faculty, staff and students, as well as to the many riders of the Dinky and other transit services in the area.
These spaces will not all be housed in a single large structure but in a village-like cluster of buildings, compatible with the scale and texture of the surroundings, and interspersed with plazas and landscaped open spaces following traditions of campus and town planning in Princeton. The buildings will be designed by a variety of architects, establishing a diversity of architectural expression within a coherent whole.
Transportation infrastructure in the area will be reconfigured into a logical and functional system. This comprehensive upgrade will include the reconfiguration of the roadway network with a roundabout to reduce traffic congestion, the creation of a multimodal transportation hub and parking for patrons of the Dinky, the retail establishments and the arts.
Taken together, the proposed transportation improvements, retail, public spaces and buildings for the arts will create a lively and attractive gateway to the township and borough of Princeton as well as to the University.
