Day care, commercial building planned for 2.5 acres next to post office on Marlkress Road in Cherry Hill.

A Mount Laurel company wants to clear about 2.5 acres on Marlkress Road about a half-mile south of Route 70 in Cherry Hill to build a day care center and office/retail building.

The buildings would go on three lots combined next to the post office and homes on Versailles Boulevard, according to plans submitted to the Township Planning Board. A hearing is scheduled before the board at its Monday evening meeting.

Vacant structures on the site at 1197 and 1201 Marlkress Road would be demolished, according to the plans submitted by J&T Brothers LLC of Deer Road in Mount Laurel. Maria Vaida is the owner listed on the application.

The applicant seeks preliminary and final site-plan approval and variances to build the 10,000-square-foot "Children of America" day care center for 185 children, a 5,000-square-foot playground and a 4,800-square-foot office/commercial building with up to four tenants. Some types of commercial businesses that may be located there include a gym, yoga or karate studios, or professional offices, according to the plans.

Plans show a variety of 27 trees that include locust, spruce, ash, oak, cedar and hickory would be removed from the property. Five of the trees are two feet or larger in diameter. Five trees along the southern property line would be retained.

Some trees may have been removed already. A review letter from the Township Community Development Department asks for "testimony regarding the extent of the tree removal that was undertaken in the spring of 2022 around the existing structures/buildings."

Hours of the day care center would be Monday through Friday from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., according to a letter to the Township from Theodore Wilkins of Mount Laurel-based Colliers Engineering & Design, the applicant's engineering firm.

A maximum of 20 employees would work at the day care center and about eight at the commercial building, Wilkins wrote. He said traffic estimates are 70 trips in and 60 trips out during morning peak hour and 61 and 72 in the afternoon peak hour.

A Township concern is getting a full evaluation of any pollutants on the site, according to correspondence on file. 

Twenty-five potential areas of concern are on the property, which once held a home and a landscaping business. All of those areas should have been investigated, but were not, wrote Rohan Tadas, project manager at Mount Laurel-based Environmental Resolutions Inc., which works for the Planning Board.

"The investigations to date are inadequate to fully address and characterize all potential areas of concern for the site," Tadas wrote in his June 13 letter. Tadas noted that the state requires a review by a Licensed Site Remediation Professional (LSRP) of all properties proposed to be used for educational facilities, which include day care.

In its response, the applicant said it does not object to the concerns and conditions and that it would hire a LSRP as a condition of preliminary and final site-plan approval.