Two new restaurants approved for Ellisburg Shopping Center by Cherry Hill planners.

Plans for a BurgerFi and another unnamed restaurant were approved for the Ellisburg Shopping Center by the Cherry Hill Planning Board on Monday night.

The project is part of a much larger plan to improve facades and other parts of the 64-year-old shopping center at Kings Highway and Route 70 — one of the first shopping centers in Cherry Hill (then called Delaware Township) when it was built, according to Richard J. Goldstein, the applicant's lawyer who is from the Cherry Hill office of Hangley, Aronchick, Segal, Pudlin & Schiller.

Goldstein said the broader plan for the whole 27-acre shopping center was put on hold because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the center's owner, Federal Realty Investment Trust, hopes to revisit the plan.

BurgerFi will be on the site of the Mattress Firm store and the unnamed restaurant will be on the site of the current US Gas gasoline station at the Ellisburg Center. The gasoline station will be demolished and the Mattress Firm store will be retrofitted for the hamburger restaurant. Both are currently occupied.

Board members voted 6-0 in favor of the plan. No members of the public testified.

Andrew Bottaro of Philadelphia, Federal Realty Investment Trust's senior director of development, said the company views the area around the "very antiquated" gasoline station and mattress store as the center's "front door." He said the restaurants would improve the center's curb appeal and stimulate new uses for the center.

BurgerFi, a chain of gourmet hamburger restaurants, was established in 2011 and is based in Florida, according to the company's website. Although the chain has 120 company-owned and franchise locations, the closest one now is in Center City Philadelphia. The Cherry Hill operation will be a franchise.

No antibiotics, no steroids and no hormones are used in the products, Lou Palermo, executive vice president of BurgerFi, told the board. It's an "all-natural, better-burger experience," he said, adding that the chain is trying to redefine the way the world thinks about burgers and that BurgerFi is short for "Burgerfication."

Neither restaurant will have drive-through lanes, according to the board. The restaurants are permitted uses for the two sites under Cherry Hill's zoning ordinance. The owner needed preliminary and final major site-plan approval and variances for lot coverage and open space.

Federal Realty Investment Trust, a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), was founded in 1962 and is publicly held, with its stock traded on the New York Stock Exchange, according to the REIT's 10K annual report filed in February with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 

A total of 104 predominantly retail real estate developments, comprising 23.7 million square feet of space, are owned by Federal Realty Investment primarily in the mid-Atlantic states but also in Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles and the Silicon Valley.

The company's annual report noted Ellisburg was purchased in 1992, has 268,000 square feet of space and was 90% leased. However, besides Whole Foods and Buy Buy Baby, the company also listed Stein Mart as a major tenant. Clothing retailer Stein Mart closed this year.

The center used to be named Ellisburg Circle Shopping Center, but now is called Ellisburg Shopping Center. The Ellisburg Circle at Kings Highway and Route 70 was demolished in 1992 and a larger intersection was built. "The Ellisburg General Store, built at King's Highway and Route 70 in the early 1800s by Isaac Ellis, was demolished in 1938 to make way for the state's construction of the Ellisburg Circle," according to a Cherry Hill history on the township website.