EMS vehicles outside the Mount Laurel Emergency Medical Services station on South Church Street that was in jeopardy.
Whether for medical issues, falls or even more serious emergencies, the Mount Laurel Emergency Medical Services several times a day is dispatched from the 1051 Church Street station to the neighboring Holiday Village 55-and-older developments.
EMS Director Michael Beringer said the ambulance station is ideally located, able to quickly respond to calls from the senior citizens.
Yet the station — one of three in Mount Laurel — was threatened with a shutdown by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, which beginning in 2016 maintained the building stood on open space between Laurel Acres and Mill Run parks. This was not permitted on protected open space and the use had to go, the state told the Township.
The Township countered that a deed filed years before was in error by including the EMS property at 1051 South Church Street on protected open space.
Last month the Township got the good news: the DEP was withdrawing its complaint after meeting with Township attorney George M. Morris and Assemblywoman Carol A. Murphy (D-Mount Laurel) who argued against the DEP ruling and showed aerial photos of the property and how the EMS building has long been located there, Township Manager Meredith Riculfy told 70and73.com.
Mount Laurel elected officials and EMS personnel Tuesday afternoon outside the station that was challenged by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
On Tuesday afternoon, Morris, Murphy, Township Council members and EMS personnel gathered in front of the station for a celebratory photograph.
The battle over the EMS station has been just one chapter in the saga of trying to find the right locations for ambulance crews, who this year Beringer estimates will make 8,000 calls — up 8% from last year and up 27% from 2021.
In 2018, Catalyst Outdoor Development LLC approached Mount Laurel and proposed to build three digital display billboards including one on Route 73. The company said its Route 73 sign could sit on a new EMS station that would be donated to the Township.Â
The shell of the unfinished building on Route 73 that was intended to be a Mount Laurel Emergency Medical Services station. Two large digital billboards would have been under the roof.
The new, free building was seen as a potential replacement for the station the DEP wanted shut down. But financial problems plagued Catalyst and the project's lender foreclosed on several of Catalyst's properties, including the EMS station that has sat as a half-finished hulk since the foreclosure.
Now new owner W.P. Carey wants to complete Catalyst's original project and build the three digital displays and vows to donate a completed EMS building to the Township, Morris said.
The latest twist, however, is that competitor Interstate Outdoor Advertising has been granted three permits by the New Jersey Department of Transportation for digital displays that would be near the Carey billboards, thus preventing Carey from building under state rules. The state permits that were granted Catalyst have expired.
Morris, on behalf of the Township, is challenging Interstate's permits with the DOT, contending that the company secured the permits in part because it was denied digital billboards by Mount Laurel in 2008. The Township zoning law prohibits digital boards, but Township Council had declared the areas of the three Catalyst boards to be redevelopment zones, which meant the zoning ordinance did not apply.
"The above issues have all been outside of Mount Laurel's control, yet it is the Township and its residents that suffer the most," Morris wrote in an October 28 letter to NJDOT, urging the agency to issue permits to "allow the EMS facility and two other locations to move forward."
If the Route 73 EMS station ever opens, the ambulance crew in that section of town would be moved from shared space at the Mount Laurel Fire Department station on Church Road, EMS Director Beringer said. That crew makes many ambulance runs to car accidents on Route 73, Route 295 and the New Jersey Turnpike.
The other of the three stations is EMS headquarters on Masonville Road. Each of the three has an ambulance crew. Average response time is six to seven minutes, which is less than national averages, Beringer said.Â
Beringer said his department has 19 full-time Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT), one part-time EMT and 15 EMTs who are paid per diem. The department also has about a dozen active volunteers, he said.
