Mount Laurel may turn nine hotels into affordable housing. One owner says the plan ‘doesn’t make sense.’

Sitting on the neatly made bed, Vijay Shroff looked around the hotel room as no lodger would.

Shroff pointed out the wall air-conditioning unit, noting it was replaced along with those in the hotel’s 107 other rooms this summer. He gestured toward the bathroom, recalling his investment in a bathtub that will last decades next to his installation of a relatively expensive pressure-assisted toilet.

To Shroff, the Red Roof Inn he and his family own off Route 73 in Mount Laurel “is my long-term investment,” something he could hand down to his two college-age daughters.

But, to Mount Laurel Township, the small hotel, along with eight others in town, are properties that township government may condemn and demolish to make way for apartments. The apartments could add a total of 826 units to the town’s commitment to have developers build affordable housing under a court-ordered doctrine that had its beginning in Mount Laurel.

Affordable housing obligations in New Jersey have had a long history since 1975 when the New Jersey Supreme Court required municipalities to provide their fair share of affordable housing in the lawsuit filed by the Southern Burlington NAACP against Mount Laurel Township. This year, the fourth round of planned affordable housing was completed.

The lawsuit’s outcome, which has come to be known as the Mount Laurel Doctrine, has resulted in construction of more than 75,000 new affordable housing units over the years, according to the nonprofit Fair Share Housing Center, which works in the courts to track each municipality’s proposals.

Shroff, originally from India and a resident of Mount Laurel for 25 years, owns three targeted hotels: the Red Roof, the Track & Turf Motel on Route 73 and the Hyatt House on Crawford Place.

He learned of the township’s plan to possibly buy his hotel, which could be done through the power of eminent domain, from a news article someone passed along, he said.

Redevelopment plans for the Red Roof Inn and the nearby Rodeway Inn on Route 73 have been endorsed by the township’s planning board and will go before township council on Tuesday evening.

The redevelopment plans “are the first in a series of redevelopment studies that the Township will be performing over the next few years to determine if the lands are appropriate for redevelopment projects that can accommodate affordable housing developments,” Mount Laurel Township Solicitor George M. Morris of the Parker McCay law firm said in an email.

Besides Shroff’s three properties and the Rodeway Inn, the other hotels targeted in the affordable housing plan are the Econo Lodge on Fellowship Road, Clarion Hotel & Suites – Wyndham on Route 73, the Grand Resort Hotel – Hotel ML on Route 73, La Quinta Inn & Suites on Clover Road and Knights Inn on Route 73.

Like other highly developed municipalities, Mount Laurel has scrambled to find properties suitable for developing multifamily residences that include affordable housing.

Neighboring Evesham Township, for example, worked with a developer to acquire the one-story and struggling Marlton Crossing Garden Offices. The offices recently were demolished, and the planning board has approved construction of 325 apartments, with 49 of them designated as affordable housing.

Jag Davies, communications director for the nonprofit Fair Share Housing Center that reviews all municipalities’ proposals for affordable housing, said his organization could not comment on Mount Laurel’s hotel redevelopment plan.

“Mount Laurel, like many towns, needed to be creative to find solutions to the court mandated affordable housing obligations,” Morris, the township’s lawyer, said. “Redevelopment and effective reuse of distressed properties simply make more sense,” he added.

The redevelopment plans for both the Red Roof Inn and the Rodeway Inn list code violations and police and fire activity at the low-priced hotels.

Photographs of what the township alleges are maintenance problems are in the 678-page redevelopment study of the Red Roof Inn.

Between January 2021 and this April, the Mount Laurel Police Department recorded 258 arrests and 440 service cases, according to the Red Roof redevelopment study by Harbor Consultants of Cranford, New Jersey. The most-frequent incidents were assault, theft/larceny and narcotics-related cases, the study stated.

In June 2025, the Mount Laurel Fire Department told fire personnel, fire inspectors, and code enforcement staff that they must have a police officer on the scene with them before entering the Red Roof Inn, according to the redevelopment study of the hotel.

Morris said the condition of the properties “is a factor in determining if the lands actually qualify for a redevelopment designation.”

Red Roof owner Shroff said a Mazda cannot be compared with a Bentley and that it is the same in the hotel business.

His property, which he says over the years has averaged a 75% occupancy rate, is low-cost, said Shroff, who added that the hotel cannot be responsible for the behavior of its customers.

Like any business owner, Shroff said he would consider offers from the township that reflect the value of his property. He maintained the value is in the land under the Red Roof Inn and the prospect of using it for commercial development on busy Route 73 may make it prohibitively expensive for residential use.

“I don’t know how much they want to offer and even [if] they offer I don’t think this location is ideal for housing,” Shroff said of his hotel where the parking lot adjoins the parking lot of a Walmart.

Shroff said he doesn’t understand why the township is considering highly commercialized Route 73 for affordable housing.

This is not an area where you want to put affordable housing, he said. “It doesn’t make sense.”