The properties that are to become a parking lot in the yellow box.
Audi Cherry Hill's subsidiary, M.B.J. Associates LLC, is scheduled to appear this evening (Thursday, January 23) before the Cherry Hill zoning board seeking permission to construct a 122-car lot for its inventory without sidewalks or curbing around the property.
An open caucus for the meeting begins at 7 p.m. The public meeting begins at 7:30. Information on M.B.J. Associates' plans are here.
"The applicant requires/requests a relief of condition from providing sidewalk and curbing around the site, which the applicant indicates is due to a hardship related to roadway slopes and that no sidewalk network exists in the area," according to a review letter from the Township Department of Community Development.
The review letter suggests permission to avoid sidewalks will require some justification.
"It is the Department's preference that some semblance of curbing and sidewalk be provided, where feasible, particularly as creating connections to the Cooper River Park provides a community benefit and works towards the Township's Complete Streets Policy," according to the letter.
The following appeared in 70and73.com's coverage of the zoning application on November 3, 2023.
Despite protestations from residents, the Cherry Hill zoning board late Thursday night approved a use variance that would allow a car dealer to demolish two houses in a residential zone and replace them with a parking lot.
The long-vacant houses and the property on Park Boulevard between South Delaware and South Cornell avenues would give way to a 122-car lot for new inventory and used cars at Audi Cherry Hill, according to the application from M.B.J. Associates LLC, part of the business that operates several dealerships in Cherry Hill.Â
In a 6-to-1 vote, members of the Township Zoning Board of Adjustment granted the applicant a use variance to build the commercial lot in a zone restricted to residences. Several members said that only six residences are left along that section of Park Boulevard across from Cooper River parkland and that commercial properties surround the area.
The sole vote against the project came from board member Gregory Bruno, who accused the applicant of imposing a "pattern of decay and neglect" on the community in the last several years.
In 2020, the zoning board approved part of an expansion plan by M.B.J. for a showroom it owns on Haddonfield Road near Route 70. The car dealership wanted to move its Jaguar and Land Rover operations into the building from Route 70, across from the Old Orchard development.
However, the board did not permit M.B.J. to tear down two houses it owns on Wynwood Avenue to make room for a parking lot. The two properties have been boarded up for the last three years.
After the vote, Bruno suggested that the applicant now might do something with the Wynwood Avenue properties. He was quickly cut off by board Chair Jonathan Rardin.
M.B.J., part of Cherry Hill Imports, is a long-time family business in town that was founded in 1978 and owns six dealerships in the Cherry Hill area: Audi, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Volkswagen.
PREVIOUS 70AND73.COM COVERAGE: Cherry Hill car dealer group asks for zoning OK to raze two homes for parking lot on Park Boulevard.
The use variance granted Thursday was the first step: M.B.J. Associates now must return to the board for site plan approval.
The properties are near Route 70 and the Township has previously approved plans for a car wash neighboring what would become the Audi parking lot.
But the board's justification for the use variance was strongly disputed by residents who testified at the hearing.
"It is another nail in the coffin of this area," community advocate Martha Wright of Munn Lane told the board. "You are degrading the environment. It's a parking lot."
She said nearly 60 trees will be lost to the parking lot, although the applicant has proposed replacing some of them.Â
"It is not an appropriate use," Wright, who quoted extensively from the Township Master Plan, said of zoning regulations that govern the properties. "The benefit is only to the applicant."
Frank Maloney, of Chambers Street, who with his Locustwood neighbors has fought commercial incursion by dealerships told the board: "We're supposed to have standards."
"They're beautiful lots," he said of the residential properties that M.B.J. owns on Park Boulevard.Â
Like board member Bruno, Locustwood resident Carlos Ruthner of Mercer Street told the board that only recently had M.B.J. removed brightly painted boards over windows on its Wynwood Avenue properties.
The condition of the houses makes "our neighborhood look trashy," he testified.
Amanda DiMattia, managing member of the car dealerships and part of the ownership family, told the board that the Audi dealership needs the parking lot to continue to grow.
M.B.J. bought the 806 Park Boulevard property in December 2019 for $170,000 from mortgage holder Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation and acquired the neighboring 802 Park Boulevard property in a sheriff's sale for $175,000 in May 2020, according to Camden County property records. Each house was built around 1954, according to the Township.
DiMattia said the dealership saw the availability of the vacant homes as an opportunity to grow because the two lots are close to the dealership. The residential lots are across South Cornell Avenue from the Audi property.
In his presentation, M.B.J. lawyer Damien Del Duca, of the Haddonfield firm of Del Duca Lewis & Berr, said the two properties are in a "remnant portion of a residential district."Â
Dealership representatives at the meeting also said car carriers would not unload on the new lot and that cars would not be located by using the horn alarms on key fobs.
