Meet Kevin

A business entrepreneur with a creative flair, a problem solver who leads while listening, and a citizen who is passionately committed to the health and well being of the community are the apt descriptions for Kevin Wilkes, whose professional, academic and volunteer experiences make him superbly qualified to be the first mayor of New Princeton. 

Born in Atlanta, raised in Manhattan, Kevin Wilkes has been a resident of the area for over 35 years. He bought his first home in town in 1982 and has lived in both Princeton Township and Princeton Borough, where he currently resides. Wilkes, as an elected official, planner, architect, university lecturer, project manager, special event producer, and community organizer has acquired a holistic vision of the region that includes not only how Princeton Borough and Princeton Township can come together in the newly consolidated Princeton, but also how this newly consolidated Princeton can fit into the region in a way that is in the best interests of Princeton citizens.

Wilkes came to Princeton as an undergrad at Princeton University in 1975 and had an impression that remains to this day: “I loved Princeton the moment I arrived,” Wilkes says. “It was such a change from anything I had experienced up to that point. In fact, I was so compelled to be part of the town’s fabric that by my junior year, I moved off of campus and lived in an apartment over Nassau Interiors, and then later over Haagen Das on Spring Street.  The town was charming and historic, I worked at McCarter Theater as a part-time scenic painter and I got involved in the local theater scene designing sets for Summer Intime and for the Triangle Show.”

By 1985, Wilkes founded Princeton Design Guild as a design/build practice focused on residential architecture. While growing his firm, Wilkes completed his master’s of architecture at Yale in 1991, taught at NJIT as an adjunct, and served as the Princeton Township Building Inspector from 1991 to 1994. As building inspector, Wilkes saw a time of steep growth in Princeton, monitoring the construction of six subdivisions in the Township, the largest being the 300-unit Washington Oaks, which was initially plagued by sloppy and substandard construction—prior to Wilkes’s being hired by the Township. 

“When I came on as building inspector, achieving higher quality construction standards at Washington Oaks was my primary focus. I was challenged by my superiors at the Township to engage in a strict and forceful implementation of building code standards. At 300 homes being built in over 30 months, this was the largest and fastest residential construction site Princeton had witnessed. I was hired to promote the high standards that the Township had seen me employ in my own personal work to the fast paced world of production housing,” Wilkes says.

After seeing Wilkes’s ability to manage code enforcement for projects like Washington Oaks, the Township assigned him all of the field inspections across the Township, from the DeNunzio Pool to single-family custom homes on Princeton Ridge. 

Wilkes started Princeton Design Guild with a crew of three, but over its near-three-decade run, PDG— a full service design/build collaborative that is unique among area architecture firms in that it builds its own projects with its own fulltime staff—has completed residential and small commercial projects from Kissimmee, Florida to Manhattan. Wilkes leads a team of architects, designers, craftsmen, cabinet-makers, carpenters, masons, and metal fabricators, providing a leadership and management style that has translated over to his civic duties, which include a twice-elected seat on Princeton Borough Council and a stint as Council President.

“As a business owner, 95 percent of my work over the past 25 years has been renovating and improving existing homes, and when you work with the families who live in those homes, it teaches you to respect existing conditions and causes you to maximize the advantage of what is in place and to develop a positive relationship between new and old.  This is not just a bricks-and-mortar ethic, but also something I bring to the decision-making process on Borough Council, and it will be how I govern as Mayor of Princeton.”

Wilkes’s volunteer projects over the years illustrate a passion for building an economically and artistically vibrant community. He served on Princeton Future’s steering committee from 2004 – 2008 and chaired its Program and Projects Committee. He was one of the architects who led the Witherspoon Street Corridor Study that helped develop design standards for streetscape improvements and community preservation to enhance the quality of life for all those who live, work and visit Witherspoon Street. He also orchestrated a town-wide design charrette among leading local architects that brought forth 11 different proposals for the redesign of Merwick, the YM/YWCA site.

In 2004, Wilkes founded Princeton Occasions, a nonprofit whose mission was to design and build special event gardens featuring local art and architecture talent. The two projects—Writers Block and Quark Park—infused a collaborative spirit and liveliness into the community.

“I learned that good faith, original thinking on the conceptual level, and hard work set out by example are the three things that can take an idea to physical reality.  My friends landscape gardener Peter Soderman and landscape architect Alan Goodheart and I captivated our colleagues who worked with us by encouraging them to reach to their highest level of imagination, with simple means and by working harder at completing the tasks in front of us to set an example of performance for them to match. The political side of the project, such as it was, entailed motivating Borough officials, local merchants, property owners and managers, various architects and builders and donors to all embrace a vision of a public space in the downtown that they had never imagined before.  It was both difficult and easy at the same time; it seemed so implausible at the outset that most people agreed to make a commitment hardly believing that Peter, Alan and I would deliver on our vision.  But once we did, the sense of delight over this new space swept away the skepticism and brought instead an eagerness to occupy and enjoy this new public realm.”

Wilkes’s management of this project got the attention of then Borough Mayor Joseph O’Neill, who was fan of Writer’s Block. “It was interesting because he likened it to political organizing, but what he didn’t know was that earlier in my life I harbored political ambitions, and as a teenager I had worked for a Democratic congressional candidate and the Democratic National Committee,” Wilkes says, but added that he moved away from politics because “I feared it would not lead to a life of individual character building and accomplishment.” Mayor O’Neill changed that thinking, Wilkes says:

“He suggested that I rethink that position and look at local government as a place to use the very skills that I demonstrated in Writers Block, leadership and imagination.  I started attending Borough Council meetings and joined the Princeton Community Democratic Organization and got more involved in the political scene.”

Wilkes has received accolades from the professional design community as well – his projects have won excellence awards from the New Jersey Chapter’s of the American Institute of Architects and the American Planning Association; the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs’ Smart Growth program; the NJ State Council on the Arts, Downtown New Jersey and the Architectural League of New York.

Wilkes entered the political arena officially in April of 2008 when he was appointed to Princeton Borough Council to fill the seat vacated by Wendy Benchley – he was elected to complete her term later that year. In November 2009, Wilkes was re-elected by Princeton voters for a full term. Currently, he serves as Police Commissioner (as well as a member of Transition Task Force Public Safety Sub-Committee) and chairs the Alexander Street University Place Transit Task Force. Wilkes is also Borough liaison to the Recreation Commission, the Human Services Commission, and the Sewer Operating Committee. Past assignments include his term as Council President, and serving on the Borough’s Finance Committee. He has also served as Borough liaison to the Traffic and Transportation Committee and the Shade Tree Commission.

Today, Wilkes continues to balance the diverse interests upon which he has built his life.  He sees serving as Mayor of New Princeton as weaving the fabric of the many threads of his concerns and talents into a quilt of social justice, tolerance for diversity, economic opportunity and a sustainable partnership for all community participants.

Community arts producer

Together with many volunteers, I have created and built arts and public projects that gave expression to our town’s artistic forces: Quark Park and the Battle Monument lighting

Community-based Planner

My work with Princeton Future has generated valuable input on far-ranging issues such as growth of the downtown business district, future use of the Medical Center and Merwick sites and development of the Witherspoon Street corridor.