Plans on file in Town Hall show a First Watch breakfast and lunch restaurant and other tenants on the site of former Friendly's restaurant. CAVA is a Mediterranean-style restaurant.
The owner of the Route 70 ShopRite/Kohl's shopping center, which sued the Evesham Zoning Board of Adjustment for denying its expansion plans, will return to the board with a scaled-back request for additional stores.
Marlton UE LLC filed suit against Evesham in state Superior Court in Burlington County on April 20 after the March 20 denial, which came via a 4-3 vote of the zoning board.
Superior Court Judge Jeanne T. Covert on June 8 acknowledged the parties had agreed on a plan to resolve the court appeal and ordered that the shopping center's revised application go to the zoning board within 60 days.
Under the original development plan, Marlton UE proposed demolishing the now-closed Friendly's restaurant and building up to four stores on a 10,800-square-foot pad in place of the Friendly's.
Two of the tenants, who have signed leases, would be a First Watch breakfast and lunch restaurant and a CAVA Mediterranean-style restaurant, according to court records.Â
Previous 70and73.com articles on this news
- Evesham zoning board denies latest plan to add stores to ShopRite plaza on Route 70.
- Plaza owner wants to tear down Friendly's in Marlton, build fast-food restaurants, stores.
A pad of 6,356 square feet for up to three tenants also was proposed in the parking lot north of the Shake Shack and Honeygrow restaurants.
But a revised application to be presented to the zoning board drops plans for the stores north of Shake Shack, according to court records.
Only the new space for First Watch and CAVA, with possibly two other stores, would be built.
The zoning board has scheduled a closed session during its meeting on Monday, June 19, to discuss the Marlton UE litigation. The board presumably will schedule a hearing for an upcoming meeting.
Some board members and members of the public testifying at the hearing expressed concerns for the traffic patterns within the 26-acre shopping center at 301 Route 70 West. Plans for employee parking also attracted some criticism at the March meeting.
"The board improperly reacted to 'mere sentiments' that traffic was unacceptable," Marlton UE's lawyer, Robert S. Baranowski Jr. of the Marlton firm of Hyland Levin Shapiro, contended in the lawsuit.Â
In a 2008 case, the state Supreme Court ruled that local governments cannot act on mere sentiments, according to the Marlton UE complaint.
