U. to demolish Butler apartments following delays
Maya WesbyThe permit for the demolition of Butler Apartments will be granted to the University by the Municipality of Princeton this week, allowing construction to begin, Director of Community and Regional Affairs Kristin Appelget said.She said the exact date of demolition will be determined as soon as the permit is issued to the University and project managers in the Office of Design and Construction coordinate with their contractor.Graduate students moved out of Butler Apartments once construction for Lakeside Apartments finished in June.“We now have graduate students who are living in modern housing with access to conveniences that they didn’t have in the Butler tract,” Appelget said.Christine Philippe-Blumauer GS, the former chair of the now-disbanded Butler Committee, which consisted of Butler residents that voiced concerns about the building's maintenance, said that she will be sad to see the site torn down but believes that the step is necessary.Butler fostered a sense of community and had affordable rent, she said."You’d walk around the streets and there would be kids, there would be dogs, there would be a lot of [grad students] that we knew … so it was a nice little suburban place to live in,” noted Alexander Berg GS.In September of 2014, Berg wrote a column in The Daily Princetonian criticizing the administration's handling of graduate housing.He added, however, that the facilities were in a constant state of disrepair, while Philippe-Blumauer said that the Butler housing had poor insulation and defunct heating systems.Appelget explained that the Butler tract was installed in 1947 as a means of temporary housing for students coming back from military service in World War II, and until the spring of 2015 it was used for graduate student housing.The demolition process has been in place since this past summer, when utilities such as refrigerators, washers and dryers were donated to area nonprofits, and hazardous materials like asbestos were removed.Appelget said that the demolition of the buildings would last for several weeks, and afterwards grass would be planted to fill in the spots where the apartments once stood.The delay of the opening for Lakeside Apartments caused tension between University administrators and graduate students.