How a developer's massive Route 70 building project in Cherry Hill will restore the environment.

A developer of two hotels and a restaurant on Route 70 in Cherry Hill spent four years navigating newly expanded New Jersey environmental rules and local zoning law before getting the go-ahead to build.

The Township approved the plan this month, and the natural setting in an area around a tributary of the Cooper River on the property near South Union Avenue will be restored and protected by a deed restriction on development.

Old asphalt and concrete surfaces, gravel, debris and invasive plant species will be removed from around the stream. Plantings on the site will include 282 canopy trees (60 to 100 feet at maturity) and 257 smaller trees (30 to 50 feet at maturity), according to the development plan.

"To say the least, this has been a challenging and multiyear effort to secure DEP land-use approvals for these redevelopment projects," Craig L. Patterson, senior environmental scientist at Marathon Engineering & Environmental Services Inc. of Swedesboro, told the Zoning Board of Adjustment.

Patterson represented developer KM Hotels LLC of Richmond, Virginia, before the zoning board and his firm wrote the environmental impact statement submitted to the board. Another company, Route 70 West LLC, will rebuild a car wash and construct a coffee shop on the nearly 12-acre site.

Around the same time that KM Hotels began planning the development, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection designated a section of the Cooper River as a Category 1 waterway — a classification indicating the highest level of the water quality.

With the river's improved water quality, celebrated by the community, came much more stringent regulations to protect it. Instead of a 50-foot riparian zone along the property's stream, the new rules dictated a 300-foot zone, which is the land along the banks of the waterway.

"A 300-foot riparian zone encompassed much of the site and had the strong potential to end the redevelopment project," Patterson told the zoning board.

Patterson said that in negotiations with the DEP that regulators recognized the hardship for the developer because of the money already invested in the project. The state agency agreed to green-light the project if it moved as close to Route 70 as possible, he added.

To do so, KM Hotels purchased a small Route 70 lot owned by Cooper University Health Care that would have been a doughnut hole in the site and reconfigured its plans for a 131-room Residence Inn by Marriott, 120-room Hampton Inn & Suites and a 120-seat upscale restaurant.

The site clean-up "will eliminate a substantial number of detriments that currently exist...including illegal dumping, removal of deleterious materials from former uses" and result in a "more pleasing environment," said Brian S. Peterman, principal at Peterman Maxcy Associates in Gibbsboro. He was the engineer representing the developer.

Site is a longtime redevelopment area

For 20 years, Cherry Hill Township has targeted the property on Route 70 and nearby lots for new development.

The properties next to the westbound lanes of Route 70 from Cuthbert Boulevard to Cornell Avenue were designated as an area in need of redevelopment and the designation was included in the Township master plan.

"Existing properties along Route 70 are antiquated and inefficient uses of land," the December 2004 redevelopment plan stated. "Many of these uses were developed in the 1940s and 1950s, with no common theme of architecture or efficient layout."

Representatives of the developers at this month's board meeting said the current project is the first to emerge in the last 20 years.

Over the decades, parts of the property now being developed have held a landscape supply storage lot and retail garden center, a miniature golf course, a gasoline station, a travel agency and a rental car outlet.

The only business now operating on the site is the Magic Touch Car Wash, which is dilapidated and has outdated traffic flows, including a wash tunnel emptying cars near Route 70. The car wash will be rebuilt and traffic flows, including better queuing, will be redesigned under the plan. The remains of an old gas station will be removed.

The riparian zone and stream on the north end of the property will account for more than 25% of the total property size, according to the developer's representatives.

Storm water drainage from Route 70 and the property now is "unrestrained" and, under the development plan, the site will have two infiltration/detention basins to discharge into the wetlands on the property, according to the development plan.

Denis Cummings, senior project manager for PT Consultants Inc. of Bellmawr, who has been hired by the developer as the Licensed Site Remediation Professional (LSRP) to work with the DEP, said contaminants from the former gas station — believed to have opened in the 1960s — appear to be migrating to the west and under the existing car wash.

Cummings said the release from the old gas station is typical of pollution from similar stations that have been in place for decades. Groundwater will be monitored and soil pollution may be addressed through excavation or capping to remediate the problem, he told the board. The remediation will be concurrent with the development of the site.

Board members voted unanimously, 5-0, on July 18 to approve both the hotel and the car wash plans. The hotel plan had been approved by the board in 2020, but the changes required by the DEP meant the developer needed to submit an amended plan. The Township zoning resolution approving the project four years ago included an unusually high 100 conditions of approval.

Project draws some criticism

Board members who commented on the development said it will be an improvement for the property.

However, member Greg Bruno said he was displeased with the design of one of the hotels, contending the original design went from attractive bricks to "a five-story box that's being proposed today."

"To me, it just doesn't fit with the neighborhood," Bruno told fellow board members. "Right across the street are brick buildings...up and down the Route 70 corridor are brick buildings."

Bruno added: "This is a Gateway property (for Cherry Hill), and I'm sorry to say this elevation (design) was a disappointment."

Martha Wright, a lifetime Cherry Hill resident and community advocate, told the board that she had concerns about lighting and landscaping near Route 70.

"I'm delighted to see that the creek and the tributary are being remediated and that you're doing planting back there," Wright said during public testimony. "But this is a Gateway project to our community and I am extremely concerned about the streetscape."

Wright added: "The landscaping on Route 70 is frankly rather scant and the landscaping within the confines of the developed area is also scant due to the lack of space." She also expressed concern over 24-hour lighting at a time when there is a dark sky movement with a goal of reducing commercial lighting.

Engineer Peterman acknowledged Wright's remarks on landscaping, saying that "it was really a balancing act that we had to try to balance to get the design to work and still protect those environmentally sensitive areas."

Previous 70and73.com coverage

• A homicide, a drowning all part of history of Route 70 site that may get two hotels, restaurant.
• Residence Inn, Hampton Inn developer gets preliminary Cherry Hill approval for Route 70.
• Zoning board approves renovated car wash, coffee/doughnut shop on Route 70 in Cherry Hill.
• Residence Inn, Hampton Inn developer gets preliminary Cherry Hill approval for Route 70.
• Self-storage facility on Route 70 in Cherry Hill? Zoning board sees it as bad fit for gateway.
• Two hotels, restaurant, coffee shop and car wash would go on Route 70 in Cherry Hill.