From a satellite, Evesham Township (in orange) looks like it has a lot of land to spare. However, more than half of the acreage is in the Pinelands and development is limited. The North and West sides of the Township are the targets for affordable housing development.
View Evesham from space and the town has miles and miles of lush green land from border to border, with plenty of it open.
While much land is open and green, it's going to stay that way for as long as the Pinelands Protection Act severely limits development in the 55% of the town designated as Pinelands Management Area.
And that's the problem the Township faces as it hunts for space for new residential developments that would help fulfill the obligation of the municipality in the upcoming fourth round of affordable housing under the Fair Share Act, which grew out of the Mount Laurel court decision and requires housing for households with low- and moderate-income households.
"Outside of the Pinelands, essentially you're running out of vacant and available land to be building more affordable housing," the Township's affordable housing consultant, Christopher N. Dochney of Consulting & Municipal Engineers of Camden, told the Planning Board at its meeting Thursday night. "We've been looking in the town in the areas that would be developable considered the lack of vacant and developable land," he told the board, which must first approve an affordable housing plan before it goes to Township Council.
Evesham's obligation in the fourth round of affordable housing, lasting from 2025-2035, is to provide 220 units of affordable housing, a total that after a "vacant land adjustment" has fallen to 133 units, he told the board, adding that the Fair Share Housing Center has agreed to the lower number.
Dochney in his May 5 report said the Township has focused on vacant parcels "as well as underutilized properties such as office parks with high vacancy rates, older shopping centers with vacant spaces and clusters of properties in close proximity to downtown Marlton and the highways."
Read 70and73.com's earlier coverage of the affordable housing plan here.
But in scouring the Township for options other than open land, Dochney proposed one site for affordable housing that came as an unpleasant surprise to the property's owner.
In proposing an option to redevelop the Crispin Square Shopping Center at Church Road and Church Street into residential housing, Dochney wrote in his report: "This parcel is an older and larger shopping center that has had its anchor tenant space sit vacant for many years."
One of the owners, A.J. Magistrelli of Wharton Hardware and Supply of Pennsauken, says to forget about Crispin Square as a solution to the Township's land shortage.
"We have never been approached by anyone about potentially redeveloping our property into a housing development," he told 70and73.com in a statement on Friday morning. "We have long leases in place with many of the tenants in Crispin Square, and we've recently had new tenants open for business in the shopping center. We have no intention of changing the use of our property."
Magistrelli said Crispin Square's owners understand the Township's need to find affordable housing sites, but "Crispin Square is not an option."
On Thursday, the Planning Board was scheduled to hold a public hearing on the affordable housing plan, which can be read here.
However, Dochney told the board that tweaks in his report would be needed. The hearing and a Planning Board decision now is scheduled for the June 5 meeting.
After meeting with the Fair Share Housing Center, "we are making a few revisions to the plan that are a little bit more substantial than just correcting a few typos," he told the board. "We are going to renotice, resubmit everything and come back to you in June with a cleaner plan."
