82 townhomes are proposed
on the Black Horse Pike

One of the last large undeveloped corners on the Black Horse Pike in Washington Township has been put on notice for redevelopment. The property runs to roughly 20 acres at the intersection of Berlin-Cross Keys Road and the Pike, and the plan filed for it covers five commercial buildings and 103 residential units together on the same site.

The housing is the larger half of it. The notice describes 82 market rate townhomes and 21 affordable housing units, with the affordable units placed in two multifamily buildings. That mix of for-sale townhomes and affordable apartments on one application has become a common shape for large parcels in Gloucester County, where townships are working through housing obligations while road frontage still carries commercial value.

Three of the five commercial buildings have tenants named so far: LongHorn Steakhouse, Starbucks and Flagship Car Wash. The other two are restaurants that the notice does not name, one at 8,700 square feet and one a 2,300 square foot drive-thru. Starbucks would take about 2,000 square feet inside an 11,169 square foot multi-tenant building, which leaves space for tenants not yet signed. Of everything proposed, only the car wash is identified as needing conditional use approval.

The site takes in the closed TD Bank at the corner along with undeveloped ground next to it. Most recently the acreage was used for the Glow drive-thru holiday light show, which announced last year that it would not return. A small multi-tenant retail building next to the bank on the Pike is not part of the plan.

Nothing here has been heard or approved yet. A public notice is the start of the process, not the end of it, and site plans of this size usually change between the notice and the vote. For anyone who owns road frontage along this stretch, the useful part is the shape of the application rather than the tenants in it: acreage on the Pike is being drawn as housing and retail on one plan, and that is who is looking at parcels like these.

This is a public notice for an application, not an approval. The figures are as described in the notice and the plan may change before any board hears it. Reported by 42Freeway.com. This is a summary in our own words; the full report is theirs.