Cherry Hill’s Hindu temple approved for major expansion adding height, classrooms, a gym, and more

BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, a Hindu temple on the eastern border of Cherry Hill, is preparing for a major facelift.

The Cherry Hill Township Zoning Board approved site plans last week during a 4 1/2-hour meeting for an 18,330-square-foot expansion that would transform BAPS Cherry Hill’s exterior and add a gym, lobby, prayer hall, improved Sunday school rooms, new parking spaces, and more.

More steps will have to be made before construction can begin, but this approval is a major move forward after what zoning officials say took more than a year of planning.

BAPS, Inc., an international religious nonprofit, has more than 100 temples across the U.S., including eight in New Jersey. Cherry Hill Township approved a zoning variance back in 2002 to allow a former vacant warehouse building on an 11-acre property at 1 Carnegie Plaza, acquired by a real estate company for $1.9 million and conveyed to BAPS, to become a Hindu temple despite the lot being zoned Industrial Restricted. The temple is run by BAPS Cherry Hill, a limited liability company.

Decades have passed since BAPS Cherry Hill opened, and the mandir, a Hindu place of worship that neighbors King’s Christian School and Remington & Vernick Engineers, still looks like a warehouse.

But the new plans propose a more decorative exterior, including the addition of three shikharas, tall spires on the roof that would reach 58 feet at their highest. Aavart Patel, the project’s architect, said the change matches more traditional styles of Hindu architecture.

The current zoning rules put the building’s maximum height at 35 feet, but BAPS Cherry Hill’s lawyer, Damien Del Duca, sought a variance allowing for the boost.

“Metaphysically, the shikhara represents the spiritual connection between the earthly realm and the divine,” Del Duca wrote in a March letter. “It guides the eyes to move from the earth upwards toward the sky — representing heaven.”

Del Duca and BAPS did not return requests for comment about the projected cost of the expansion, but Del Duca said during the zoning board meeting that the temple had raised the necessary funds for the project.

Riya Patel, a BAPS Cherry Hill volunteer and youth coordinator, testified during the zoning meeting that the temple’s current structure poses a problem for its youth classes and group activities.

“It still serves as this warehouse layout,” Patel said. “So talking about some of our weekly activities, a lot of the space that we have doesn’t have much utility.”

Neel Patel, a lead volunteer and national coordinator for BAPS, has attended BAPS Cherry Hill for the last 22 years. He said the temple has 400 to 500 worshippers on an average Sunday and offers scriptural studies, language learning, music, and sports programming for attendees from kindergarten age to adults.

The new additions would mean educational and sports programs could take place in designated classrooms and a gymnasium rather than in the current dining hall, makeshift spaces, or outside on the warehouse loading dock, which the temple converted into a basketball court. The addition of about two dozen parking spaces will accommodate extra visitors during the high holidays.

Under the current site plans, the building’s footprint would only expand about 3,000 square feet, and the remaining 15,000 square feet of additions come in the form of a second story to accommodate classrooms, offices, and the new gym.

Anand Bhatt with Arna Engineering, the project’s civil engineer, said the project will be completed in one phase, and the mandir will remain open throughout the process since construction will be limited to weekdays. The temple has little foot traffic except on Sunday.

The BAPS location in Cherry Hill came to be in 2002 when Rishi Realty acquired the vacant warehouse space from Graphic Controls Corporation for $1.9 million and quickly conveyed ownership to BAPS.

Although the property is zoned industrial and accompanied by surrounding commercial businesses, the temple faces a residential neighborhood, Point of Woods, in Cherry Hill.

Three neighbors attended the zoning board meeting via Zoom last week to voice their concerns, mostly regarding the desire to protect the property’s wetlands and limit lighting at night.

Jody and Jenn DeMarco, who live across from the BAPS parking lot and its wooded area, asked the zoning board to deny the application unless the front facade of the new temple is reoriented to face away from their neighborhood.

“It’s a matter of preference, not a matter of necessity, that they are putting this giant variance that impacts our neighborhood negatively facing our property,” Jenn DeMarco said.

In 2012, BAPS Cherry Hill received violations from the township and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection for illegally removing trees in a wetland without proper permits, but BAPS Cherry Hill said in its zoning application that the organization remediated the issue by planting more trees.

BAPS representatives said at the zoning board meeting that they would follow NJ DEP’s rules and make sure any lighting above the height maximum of 35 feet turns off by 10 p.m. Plus, BAPS Cherry Hill doesn’t anticipate increased visitor volume after the renovations, and they don’t plan to add any additional seating for its Sunday services.

Another Cherry Hill resident, Deepak Chhatwal, said he was excited about the upcoming changes.

“I’m very happy that there’ll be an organization and a space where I can express my religious freedoms, and there will be a better space for myself and my family and other neighbors who are practicing the Hindu faith.”

The six zoning board members who attended the meeting approved the site plans unanimously.

Brian Bauerle, the township’s chief of staff, said Cherry Hill still has to adopt a resolution confirming the decision and its conditions of approval at a future meeting on an undecided date.

As for BAPS Cherry Hill, the nonprofit will have to update their site plans based on the new approvals and satisfy remaining compliance items, which Bauerle said can take weeks to months. Then, the Department of Community Development can issue a zoning permit allowing BAPS to apply for construction permits.