Big apartment complex going before Cherry Hill planners

While real estate developers moved quickly to bring stores and restaurants to Garden State Park, the $388 million residential, office, and retail development atop the former horse-racing track in Cherry Hill, housing construction has been slow going.

But now developers are moving forward on a controversial apartment complex, making room for more than 1,600 residents, township officials said.

Edgewood Properties, one of five real estate firms with a stake in the redevelopment, is preparing to begin construction on a series of three- and four-story apartment buildings. The proposal is scheduled to go before the township Planning Board tonight.

Edgewood Properties spokesman Peter Rushing said in a statement that the real estate firm was preparing to begin construction once it received final approval from the township. "Garden State Park has developed into South Jersey's premier destination," Rushing said.

"The fact that Garden State Park has continued construction even in the worst economic time in American history since the Great Depression demonstrates our commitment," Rushing said.

First approved by the board in 2006, the complex is arousing concern among some residents over the strain on Cherry Hill's schools and other facilities.

School district spokeswoman Susan Bastnagel said schools in some parts of town had room for growth, "but on the west side, there's not a whole lot. We'll see what happens."

Township spokesman Dan Keashen said officials were working with the school district and other entities to minimize the impact of new residents, many of whom won't be moving in for years.

"The tax revenue from this will far exceed the additional services," he said.

The development of residential property at Garden State, which encompasses housing ranging from $250,000 condominiums to townhouses to subsidized apartments for low-income families over its 221 acres, was delayed by the recent plunge in the real estate market and a 2003 Superior Court court ruling in which developers were ordered to provide housing for low-income families, said David Benedetti, Cherry Hill community development director.

"Given the turbulence of the residential real estate market, a lot of developers are looking at revising their projects," he said. "From what I've heard from developers, the rental market is very strong right now. People can't afford to buy homes."

But the renewed activity has reinvigorated long-simmering criticism that the development has deviated sharply from the "downtown" atmosphere Cherry Hill residents were promised when development began in 2002.

"They had a lot of renderings that were done in watercolors and very vague," said Roxanne Shinn, a longtime resident whose husband sits on the county Republican committee. "A firehouse across from a high-rise building, and there was going to be a huge swath of open fields with an amphitheater and playing fields. Where's all that stuff now?"

Those plans were drawn up while Susan Bass Levin was mayor of Cherry Hill, but after Mayor Bernie Platt was elected in 2002, the concept of the development changed.

Gone was the majority of the park space. And the small cafes and restaurants were replaced with national retailers such as Home Depot and Best Buy.

"The previous plan just really didn't fit. You couldn't make it work," Benedetti said. "It became more of a hybrid plan. The commercial real estate market very quickly gravitated to larger stores. The typical downtown store, like where I live in Collingswood, that's just not where the retail market was going."

For some residents, the redesigned development represents a lost opportunity for Cherry Hill to establish a true town center among the highways and strip malls that crisscross the township.

Alene Ammond, a vocal and frequent critic of Platt's administration, keeps a newspaper clipping of a pedestrian mall in Burlington, Vt., where residents are photographed walking through snow-covered streets lined with cafes and galleries.

"This is what we could have had," she said.