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.
An unfinished Mount Laurel Emergency Medical Services headquarters that was being built on Route 73 until the contractor halted construction nearly two years ago was taken over by the project lender on Thursday.
The lender's lawyer told 70and73.com that he remains optimistic about the EMS project after a foreclosure auction sale of nine properties owned by Catalyst Outdoor Development LLC and associated LLC companies.
"There is a likelihood that the project will proceed forward," said Timothy P. Duggan, of the Princeton-based law firm of Stark & Stark, who noted continuing discussions with Mount Laurel Township lawyer George M. Morris.Â
Last week, Morris said in an email to 70and73.com that "there remains a possibility that a new vendor purchases the project, completes the building and donates it to ML EMS Inc., as originally envisioned."
On Friday morning, Morris noted in an email: "There are still a lot of moving parts, so I am not prepared to provide the Township's legal strategy.  I believe more will fall into place over the remainder of the summer."
Duggan's client, WPC Billboard Lender LLC of New York City, emerged as the new owner of the nine properties in an auction Thursday for the equivalent of the approximately $28 million it is owed.
Although others had bid on the properties, none would bid above the lender's total, Duggan said.
Catalyst in 2021 started building the EMS headquarters at 1112 Route 73, about a half-mile north of the Church Road intersection. The Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, outdoor advertising company had offered the Township a free EMS headquarters in return for permission to install two large digital billboards on the building facing the northbound and southbound lanes of the busy state road.
In Mount Laurel, separate standalone Catalyst digital billboard displays also were to have been built on two properties near Route 38 and Route 295. Those properties also were part of Thursday's auction.
Two other auctioned South Jersey properties are in Pennsauken, where giant Catalyst digital signs message drivers on Route 70 and Route 38. Duggan said the owner of the signs would pay rent to his client, which will own the land. "We don't anticipate those signs coming down," he said.
Another two Catalyst properties on Route 42 in Washington Township, Gloucester County, were auctioned, as were properties in Flemington and Raritan, both in Hunterdon County.
Contractor Bannett Group Ltd. of Cherry Hill halted work on the Route 73 EMS building in September 2022 and sued in state Superior Court in Burlington County, saying bills had not been paid.
WPC Billboard Lender lawyer Duggan said his client is trying to find a way to make as many creditors whole as possible.
Mount Laurel government leaders had viewed the Route 73 EMS project as a way to extricate the Township from a contentious battle with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection over the status of EMS Station 368 at 1051 South Church Street, in front of Laurel Acres Park, which is protected recreation and open space.
The DEP maintains the full property — both Laurel Acres Park and the EMS lot — was designated by the Township as open space, but in 1986 the Township subdivided what today is the EMS lot and then built an EMS station on it, according to DEP press officer Caryn Shinske.
Morris has told 70and73.com that "at some point when the Township filed an earlier open space deed restriction...the entire land was placed on the recreation and open space lands list. Years later, DEP identified the issue."
The Township subdivided the property to make the EMS lot separate, but the DEP told the Township it needed to begin a diversion process for protected land, which requires years of hearings and public comment, Morris said.
Under DEP rules, with a diversion — meaning the open space designation would be diverted from the EMS lot to land elsewhere in town — the newly protected land provided had to be four times the acreage of the EMS lot.
The diversion would have allowed the Township to keep the EMS station on the property. However, general tax dollars would have been needed to purchase the new open space because Green Acres money could not be used, Morris said.
