Warehouse near Fellowship Road approved by Mount Laurel Planning Board.

Plans to demolish an office building off Fellowship Road in Mount Laurel and build a 191,216-square-foot warehouse have been approved by the Township Planning Board.

Board members voted 9-0 on November 10 to permit owner Prologis Inc. to build a new warehouse in place of the existing 114,676-square-foot, one-story office building.

"We're experiencing unprecedented customer demand in New Jersey for industrial space in general and class A industrial logistic space in particular," Ekrem Bermek, Prologis' development manager, told the board.

At the same time, he said, the existing office building has had low occupancy levels for a long period.

Bermek said his company has a relatively low vacancy rate of 2% for its current warehouse space in New Jersey.

The 16.82-acre site between East Park and West Park drives is an excellent location for a warehouse because it is only about one mile from Exit 4 of the New Jersey Turnpike, he said.

No members of the public commented on the plans at the Planning Board hearing.

Wetlands and a pond on the east end of the site would not be touched, said the applicant's engineer, Michael Citerone of Taylor Wiseman & Taylor in Mount Laurel. The wetlands border the New Jersey Turnpike.

Some trees along the parking lot on West Park Drive would be removed, but replaced with other shade trees, he said.

No prospective tenants are listed in the application, which says the warehouse is being built on speculation.

Prologis, a logistics real estate developer based in East Rutherford, seeks preliminary and final major site-plan approval and parking and sign variances. Prologis, a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange, had revenues of $4.76 billion in 2021.