Planning Board in Cherry Hill to hear controversial Woodcrest warehouse plan on Monday.

ICYMI: Proposal is on Monday's (March 7) agenda. An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the loading docks would face the apartment complex.

Plans for a controversial warehouse project near the PATCO Speedline's Woodcrest Station are scheduled to go before the Cherry Hill Planning Board on March 7.

NFI Real Estate of Camden has applied to build a 162,150-square-foot warehouse on the 110 Woodcrest Road property, with 37 loading docks — 36 of them for tractor-trailers.

The warehouse will be next to the Victory West "luxury apartment" complex of 370 units in six buildings now under construction next door. Plans now call the project "Victory at Woodcrest Station." It will include 53 affordable units.

A warehouse proposal is a sharp divergence from original expectations for the site of the former Victory Refrigeration manufacturing plant, which is within walking distance to the Woodcrest Station.

In 2013, the Cherry Hill Township Council declared the site as an Area in Need of Redevelopment, a state designation that encourages development of a property and can include tax breaks.

And in 2018 the Redevelopment Plan adopted by Township Council called for "a walkable, mixed-use neighborhood." Under the redevelopment plan, the west side of the property was to become the Victory West apartments, and that project now is underway.

The east side, called Victory East, was "envisioned to become a commercial area, with uses such as office, retail, hotel, restaurants, amusement venues and senior-living communities to complement Victory West and serve area residents and workers," according to a review the plan prepared by Robert F. Melvin, of Pennoni Associates Inc., in October 2021 for the Council.

But Melvin's October review asserted that the Victory East plan was no longer economically viable.

"Studies into its redevelopment potential revealed that there is not currently a market to support the commercial district concept" in the original plan, he wrote.

» REVIEW THE WAREHOUSE PLAN: The developer's proposal on the Planning Board website.

The change in the redevelopment plan to permit a warehouse was recommended by the Planning Board last year and approved in December by the Council.

To some Cherry Hill residents, the change in plans for the property, owned by FMP Mount Laurel LLC of Haddon Township, was a blunder and dashed the dream for a small community near the Speedline station.

"In my view it would be an enormous mistake to change this plan and adopt this in favor of a warehouse," resident Alexander Esposito told Council members at a public hearing before the change was adopted at the December 7 meeting. "A warehouse is probably the poorest use of that parcel in proximity to transportation like the high-speed line station."

Rena Margulis told the Council that settling for a warehouse on the site is like selling a stock portfolio at the bottom of a stock market. The market for some real estate, such as office buildings, is low now but the nation has been through the COVID-19 pandemic, she said.

"There are a lot of reasons to be opposed to this ordinance," said Margulis, who cited environmental concerns and the lack of transit-oriented development.

Margulis said a warehouse is a big box and would pay a fraction of the property taxes to the town and to the school district than would another form of commercial development.

"Any other community would put transit-oriented development" on the site, but instead the Council is locking the town into 30 years of not having a high-value building there, she said.

Community activist and resident Martha Wright also took issue with the change: "I believe that the Planning Board erred in approving this use change."

"We have an opportunity to position Cherry Hill so that it stays on the cutting edge of urban policy," Wright told the Council. "And if you approve this use change you are squandering that opportunity in perpetuity."