And on and on it goes. Where it ends, nobody knows.
We’re talking about the warehouse boom. Burlington County is in the middle of one and it seems to be picking up steam.
We have given this topic a great deal of coverage. In the span of just three days, we published two more stories and can only conclude that warehouses sure love Burlington County.
We’d love to know if that love is being spread all over New Jersey or is it just concentrating here.
The most recent proposals are a 634,000-square-foot logistics center off Western Drive in Westampton, which the township Land Development Board has approved, and a 705,000-square-foot warehouse/distribution center bordering Route 130, Delanco Road and Mount Holly Road in Edgewater Park, which has been introduced.
Add them to the 19 million square feet of warehousing approved in the county in the last six years — 6.6 million last year alone. Feeling the love yet?
Many of these warehouses have sprouted up in residential and agricultural areas, eliciting understandably strong reactions from residents about quality of life and traffic. We expect these latest ones to generate similar responses.
The Westampton property is 40 acres of open space behind the Towne Crossing Shopping Center off Route 541. It was originally planned to have 456 multi-family rental units, so it’s difficult to say which one would be worse.
It doesn’t help this warehouse proposal that another one is being considered not too far away in neighboring Burlington Township on the 360-acre site of the former Burlington Center Mall.
As we know, warehouses mean trucks and tractor-trailers, on top of hundreds of workers’ cars. And not all roads are equipped to handle them. Route 541 is a busy four-lane county road, but the warehouse location is very close to the New Jersey Turnpike and Interstate 295. While there are houses nearby, whatever traffic is created by this development will be funneled mainly — and directly — to those major highways. Arguably, it’s one of the more sensible places for a warehouse.
The Edgewater Park site, a former peach farm, could pose bigger problems. It too is near a large warehousing operation in town, Burlington Stores, but its immediate neighbors are two residential developments (an apartment and a condominium complex) and a middle school.
Also troubling is the developer is seeking a whopping 521 parking spaces (80% higher than what is allowed under municipal ordinance), 174 loading berths and 217 trailer parking spaces.
Giving large vehicles direct access to and from the site onto Route 130 seems improbable, but Delanco Road and Mount Holly Road are poor feeder roads. We anticipate residents, parents and school staff will express their profound lack of love for it.
Obviously, warehouses are being built because there is a need, as more and more of us become online consumers. They represent an unfortunate trade-off we must contend with when we opt to shop in our pajamas on our living room sofas. But we’re not the only ones.
Which prompts us to ask: When will Burlington County finally be all warehoused out?
When developers show up at our various municipal doors, it would be tempting to lock the doors and post signs reminding them that New Jersey has 19 other counties that do business. Gloucester? Hunterdon? How about wide-open Salem? What’s not to love?
