The Coalition for Senior Housing began its advocacy in 1995 after a proposal to build a continuing-care facility on the 82-acre Tusculum tract on Cherry Hill Road was rejected by the Princeton Township Committee.
   Since then, the coalition and Princeton seniors have lobbied officials in Princeton Borough and Princeton Township to find sites suitable for age-restricted housing.
   After seven years, coalition spokeswoman Eleanor Angoff says, the community is only now beginning to place senior housing near the top of the community agenda, putting it alongside such issues as suburban sprawl and open-space conservation.
   Indeed, senior housing is shaping up as a priority for candidates in the November municipal elections and seems to be turning up in talks at municipal meetings and in the newspaper op-ed pages with greater frequency.
   But Ms. Angoff and other senior advocates say the needs of seniors deserve action — not just talk and good intentions.
   Despite efforts in the past, real solutions have been few and far between, in part because senior housing has taken a back seat to land conservation.
   "Whether you choose between humans and the environment, it's a very, very tough decision to make," said Jocelyn Helm, co-founder and former director of the Princeton Senior Resource Center. "I think many of us certainly appreciate the open space in town, but my feeling is it's time to look at the facts and see that we're losing all of our older citizens. And I do think people are more important."
   In 1994, the proposal to build a retirement community with nursing-care units at Tusculum died when the Princeton Township Committee approved a retirement-home ordinance that prohibited such facilities from being built in historic districts. Tusculum was the summer home and farm of John Witherspoon, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and president of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University.
   In 1996, Tusculum was purchased by Tom and Avril Moore of Cincinnati for a reported $3 million, under a contract provision that the estate be used as a single-family residence and the property not be subdivided.
   Last month, the township again chose open space over seniors, when it and the Delaware & Raritan Greenway closed their $9.5 million deal to preserve Coventry Farm off The Great Road.
   A portion of the 165-acre property, the last piece of undeveloped property of its size in the township, had been slated for development with 66 units of age-restricted housing by architect J. Robert Hillier, but the open-space purchase brought that proposal to an end.
   "I was not surprised but I was disappointed," Ms. Angoff said. "I felt those units really would not have affected the property that much."
   It still remains to be seen whether recent talk of designating a handful of remaining sites in the township for development as age-restricted housing will bring results, due in part to the lack of results from similar efforts in the past.
   In 1996, the township created senior-housing zoning overlays for a tract between the Princeton Shopping Center and Terhune Road; at the Hulfish North site near Palmer Square; and for a 7-acre tract behind Elm Court, a senior-housing complex off Elm Road.
   Overlays allowing for nursing homes and assisted-living facilities were also approved at that time for tracts off Cherry Valley Road, Mount Lucas Road and Bunn Drive.
   In 1990, the Princeton Regional Planning Board granted permission to build market-rate townhouses on the Hulfish North site to Palmer Square. And the parcel off Cherry Valley Road was taken off the list when it was developed by Pulty Homes.
   The Acorn Glen assisted-living facility, which opened last year, was built on the Mount Lucas Road site, and there have been no proposals for the Bunn Drive parcel or the site between Terhune Road and Princeton Shopping Center.
   Meanwhile, plans to build on the 7 acres behind Elm Court, an expansion referred to as Elm Court II, recently came under fire by the Sierra Club a potential threat to the environment and by some neighbors who fear an impact on their properties.
   "Elm Court II is a perfect example of what has been happening all along," Ms. Angoff said. "It just goes on and on, and it's frustrating."
   Currently, the township is contemplating a second round of senior housing overlays. A 30-acre site off Mount Lucas Road and Route 206, a roughly 20-acre site off Mount Lucas Road near Herrontown Road and a 20-acre site off Bunn Drive near McComb Road will soon come under review by township planners, said Township Planning Director Lee Solow.
   But the Princeton Environmental Commission recently recommended against developing the Mount Lucas site because it is classified under the most environmentally-restrictive land designations in the State Development and Redevelopment Plan, and warned that the Bunn Drive site may be too environmentally sensitive for development.
   While age-restricting housing exists regionally, such as The Windrows at Princeton Forrestal in Plainsboro, Stonebridge in Montgomery and Village Grand at Bear Creek in West Windsor, Princeton seniors say they want to age in place.
   On June 25, the Princeton Township Committee heard testimony from more than two dozen seniors who raised again the question of inadequate senior housing in Princeton, and said they do not want to leave the town they have lived in and raised their children in for 20 years or more.
   "The thing I hear most frequently is the older adults feeling they have to leave the boundaries of Princeton because there isn't any viable middle-income housing available," Jan Marmor, the current director of the Princeton Senior Resource Center, said in a telephone interview. "What seniors are looking for in Princeton is an option where they don't have to leave town."
   Ms. Helm said there is "a tremendous amount of frustration" among seniors.
   "Many have spent years and years on committees and did the volunteer work in town, and they're very dedicated to the growth of the town," she said. "I think it's been a very, very sore point, because there's no caring for these people. This has gone on for a long time, and we've had to fight for everything we've gotten in senior housing."

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