Retailing gem: Morton & Rudolph jeweler shows off new digs in Cherry Hill's Liberty Bell plaza.

For the last 25 years, a familiar Route 70 landmark in Cherry Hill has been the gray, unique, corner Morton & Rudolph jewelry store at Springdale Road with the giant diamond in its sign.

That landmark soon will disappear — it's now behind a temporary fence and will be torn down for a new CVS pharmacy — but, a mile east on the south side of Route 70, an excited Morton & Rudolph team is readying a new store that will open for a while on Friday and begin observing regular hours Saturday.

Owner Jack DeAngelis apologized for his jeans and dressed-down look Wednesday as he gave a tour of the store's new design and recently constructed, bright white fixtures in Liberty Bell Shopping Center. DeAngelis pointed out that he normally dons a tie and jacket to greet customers — from young couples buying their first diamond to long-time clients ordering custom jewelry.

DeAngelis, 61, was beaming about the store, with its 2,200 square feet of a total 2,500 devoted to the showroom, and heavy emphasis on the diamonds and precious gems Morton & Rudolph has long made a specialty. Filling space vacated a couple of years ago by a cash-for-gold operation, the store sits in the middle of a strip plaza with the Spirit Shop and a Dunkin' to the right and Asian restaurants and the Liberty Bell Bank to the left.

Opening the front door, he pointed down the sidewalk of the plaza to the steel poles holding up the roof. DeAngelis said his new landlord agreed to encase each pole in brick and upgrade the plaza's main sign as a condition of the luxury jeweler moving in.

 "I really wanted to keep the business in Cherry Hill," said DeAngelis, who began hunting for new quarters in late Spring 2019. After all, it's always been a Cherry Hill fixture, with its provenance from Morton Schwartz's Morton's Jewelers in the Ellisburg Shopping Center in the 1970s and later to a Morton & Rudolph store at Kings Highway and Chapel Avenue.

DeAngelis, who was a manager at the store, bought the business with a friend about 30 years ago and later bought out his partner. He moved his store to the Route 70 and Springdale Road corner when building owners Bob and Cathie Amoroso moved their Wild Hare salon to Boca Raton, Florida. Bob died in 2014 and Cathie passed in 2017. The Amoroso's daughter owned the property until it was sold recently to the CVS developer.

"We built the image of what we always wanted to have," said DeAngelis, a Cherry Hill native who attended Joyce Kilmer Elementary on Chapel Avenue and graduated from Cherry Hill High School West. "I think we are going to have much more traffic through our store."

While the Route 70/Springdale store was high profile, the traffic at the corner and parking made accessibility "just brutal," said DeAngelis, who added that some loyal customers bought at his store, but when they needed jewelry repairs they went elsewhere because they didn't want to navigate the intersection.

DeAngelis was at work Wednesday with Carrie Robinson, the store's gemologist, designer and diamond salesperson, and Kelley German, who handles marketing and operations among other duties. Robinson has been with the store 10 years and German has been aboard three years. Amy Rodriguez, a long-time customer who has worked for three years on the sales team, wasn't in the store when 70and73.com visited for its photograph and article.

Many of the diamonds sold at Morton & Rudolph are the Forevermark brand, owned by diamond giant De Beers. Each diamond carries a microscopic identity number and comes from mining operations De Beers says observe practices that make the gems responsibly sourced. That includes fair treatment of the workers and local residents and respect for the environment and local economies in Botswana, Canada, Namibia and South Africa, where the company has mines.

In its new store, Morton & Rudolph has devoted more space to the Forevermark brand than any other store, DeAngelis said. He said there's a large Forevermark store in Walnut Creek, California, but its brand zone is 50 square feet smaller than his zone.

Forevermark was deeply involved in designing the Morton & Rudolph store and helped finance some of the cost, he said. The jeweler said he's committed to the brand because his customers and potential customers, especially millennials, have shown they care about responsible sourcing of their diamonds.

Forevermark has sent him to one mine in remote Canada, where he watched diamonds coming out of the ground, and to Botswana, where he visited the Jwaneng diamond open-pit mine, which De Beers says is the richest in the world in terms of the value of its diamond output. In 2019, Jwaneng produced 12.5 million carats in diamonds, according to De Beers.

DeAngelis was disappointed COVID-19 restrictions spoiled what would have been normal: a closing sale — usually a lucrative sale for a jeweler — and a grand opening celebration for the new store.