Cherry Hill taking over pedestrian bridge at Downs Farm Swim Club and preserving club as open space.

A Cherry Hill Township deal with the Downs Farm Swim Club to replace and take over maintenance of a closed pedestrian bridge will also preserve the club as open space should it ever close.

The strategically placed bridge crosses a stream and connects the Downs Farm neighborhood to Haddonfield-Berlin Road over swim club property. 

"The entire neighborhood uses it for pedestrian access," Mayor David Fleisher said in an interview.

Fleisher said the club no longer could afford to maintain the bridge, so part of the club's acreage will be conveyed for no charge to the Township, which will make the bridge a municipal property.

But the twist to the arrangement calls for a deed restriction on the club that will prevent it from ever being developed.

A dozen private swim clubs are scattered across Cherry Hill. Many were built by housing developers in the Township's heavy growth years of the 1950s and 1960s.

Swim club cultures grew as whole neighborhoods crowded them on weekends and sent their children there to learn to swim and later compete on swim teams. But some clubs, which require a membership fee, are not as popular as in the past and have faced financial challenges.

Mayor Fleisher said the Township was able to learn from experience when the financially failing Kingston Estates Swim Club closed in 2020 after more than 60 years and was taken over by a bank.

The property was zoned institutional and could have been developed in the middle of the residential neighborhood, Fleisher said. However, Cherry Hill was able to intervene and purchase the property for a park and open space.

Fleisher said the Downs Farm open-space restriction was modeled with the Kingston experience in mind.

The swim club is pleased with the arrangement, he said, and a bridge replacement is expected by next summer.