With work teams starting to mobilize at the former PNC site, its new tenant has finally shared its plans for the site.
Sweetwater Construction, the Cranbury-based construction management firm, purchased the Main Street property in 2009. It was forced out of its current offices on Prospect Plains Road due to the project to widen the New Jersey Turnpike.
According to Ronald Witt, the firm’s CEO, the current lot will be subdivided into two parcels. One parcel will comprise the former bank building, which he said will remain mostly intact and serve as the firm’s offices. The second parcel, which had served as a public parking lot, will become a residential lot.
Witt said the residential lot will become the new home for his Great Aunt Mildred, a lifelong native of West Virginia. He said his firm will relocate her trailer home to the site later this month.
“Everytime my Great Aunt Mildred has visited Cranbury she’s told me how much she’d like to live in this great town,” he said. “A few years ago I made a promise that I would move her here, and this is just me keeping that promise.”
Witt noted the feedback he and his firm have received about the change to Cranbury’s downtown.
“We’ve certainly received a lot of complaints about taking free parking away from the town,” he said. “And while I am sorry for that, it’s just not possible to make everyone happy.”
Witt also confirmed that the office building will feature a store front, and that a new ice cream shop is planned. It would be Cranbury’s third.
Photo: A work crew from Sweetwater Construction prepares to move the trailer home belonging to the great aunt of the firm’s CEO. The trailer will occupy half of the former PNC Bank site on Main Street.
