02272023 CH DODGE HOUSES

Two houses on Wynwood Avenue owned by Cherry Hill Dodge, with siding removed earlier this year. The dealership wants to demolish the structures to add a parking lot.

 Neill Borowski | © 70and73.com | February 27, 2023

The owner of Cherry Hill Dodge this week updated its complaint against Cherry Hill Township in its federal lawsuit, which seeks to force the municipality to let the Route 70 auto-sales business demolish two houses and expand its parking lot. 

Foulke Management Corp., Charles Foulke Jr. and Lenny Reality LLC, the entity that owns the houses and property on Wynwood Avenue, documented the latest refusal of the Township to restore its two demolition permits for the structures.

In the amended complaint, the plaintiffs single out neighbor Frank Maloney, whose property adjoins the dealership, and residents of the Locustwood neighborhood, which opposed the dealership's expansion.

The dealership's complaint states that Foulke agreed "under duress" to the conditions of the approval for the parking lot expansion by the Township Planning Board in October 2020.

The plaintiffs' suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Camden. They noted that they also have since filed a lawsuit against the Township in New Jersey Superior Court in Camden County over the Cherry Hill zoning board's unanimous rejection in September of the Cherry Hill Dodge request to reinstate the demolition permits.

Originally, the permits were rescinded in February after Township zoning officers responded to complaints from residents of the adjoining Locustwood neighborhood that the dealership was continuing to use car horns as a way to locate vehicles in its lot.

In 2020, the dealership agreed as a condition of Planning Board approval to expand to stop using car horns and alarms, to stop taking customer and service department test drives in the Locustwood neighborhood and to prevent delivery trucks from stopping in the busy Fulton Street exit from Route 70.

The dealership, which has operated at its current site for the last 56 years, bought the homes in February 2018 in preparation for the 75-space employee parking lot.

Locustwood resident Maloney, whose family home on Chambers Avenue is bounded on three sides by the dealership, is targeted in the amended complaint.

"Mr. Maloney and his cohorts created a neighborhood association known as the Locustwood Neighborhood and during the hearing on the parking lot application, Mr. Maloney and his cohorts objected to the parking lot application despite the fact that the car dealership is a permitted use" for the property, according to the dealership's lawsuit.

Foulke Management and the other plaintiffs said in the amended complaint that "Cherry Hill Dodge has been operating at this location since 1967, which is long before Mr. Maloney or any of the residents from the Locustwood Neighborhood became residents."

In addition, the plaintiffs allege that Maloney has "repeatedly used the officials and employees of Cherry Hill Township to attempt to extort Mr. Foulke in paying him in excess of (a) million dollars for his property."

Maloney told 70and73.com this week: "We never discussed money with the dealership."

Cherry Hill Dodge made a purchase proposal 18 years ago, Maloney said, but there was no interest in selling the house because the appraiser had come up with a "very low" value.

"Cherry Hill Township in an attempt to appease Mr. Maloney and the neighboring residents, told Mr. Foulke that his application would never be approved unless he agreed to a number of unreasonable and impossible conditions unrelated to the application, but related to the business operations of Cherry Hill Dodge which at the time was operated on a separate property and not a party to the application before the Planning Board," the amended complaint states.

The Cherry Hill Dodge plaintiffs stated in the complaint that they deny violating any conditions of the Planning Board approval and that their due process rights were violated because they were not able to respond to the complaints before the permits were rescinded.

"The recission of the zoning permits has left plaintiffs with properties that have two partially demolished houses on them and are not usable for any purpose, let alone the commercial purpose of a parking lot for which they are zoned and have been approved by the Cherry Hill Planning Board," the complaint states.

They continued, in the amended complaint: "Defendants have no intention of ever allowing plaintiff to utilize its property and instead have de facto rendered the property green space for Mr. Maloney and the Locustwood neighbors without compensation to plaintiff thereby depriving plaintiffs of their constitutional rights in violation of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution."

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