A pair of new hotels will be the centerpiece on a mostly vacant Cherry Hill site that has resisted development
Cherry Hill has approved a plan for two hotels, a restaurant, a coffee shop, and a car wash at the western gateway to the township along Route 70.
An overgrown stretch of land formerly home to a gas station, a miniature golf course, and a life-size statue of a dinosaur will be redeveloped along Route 70 on Cherry Hill’s west side.
Plans the township approved July 18 call for building a pair of five-story hotels with 251 rooms between them, a freestanding restaurant, and a coffee shop with a drive-through on the westbound side of 70 between Union Avenue and the Executive Campus office park near Cuthbert Boulevard.
The Magic Touch Car Wash, in business on its own portion of the property since the 1960s, will be remodeled, and its owners will build the adjacent coffee shop in conjunction with the hotel project, said David Lee, manager of the property.
“This is a major upgrade for an important location at the gateway to Cherry Hill,” said Kathy Cullen, the township’s community development director.
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Citing the 12-acre property’s proximity to Cooper River Park, which regularly draws thousands of visitors to competitive rowing and other events, Cullen said hotels with a total of 251 guest rooms “are a great reuse of an excellent location.” The extended-stay Residence Inn proposed for the site will have 131 guest rooms and the Hampton Inn & Suites will have 120, according to documents filed with the township.
Not such a ‘Golden Triangle’
The redevelopment site east of Cuthbert Boulevard is within a much larger area that Cherry Hill planners and boosters long ago dubbed the Golden Triangle. The name endures in real estate circles but seems out of sync with the forlorn Route 70 tract.
Most of the land there has been vacant for decades and blighted by illegal disposal of fill and construction debris. It also includes an unnamed tributary of the Cooper River that is hidden from view by ragged stands of trees and invasive vegetation.
The township’s 2004 master plan cited these and other less-than-optimal conditions when it listed it as an area in need of redevelopment.
Despite its prominent location, the site has confounded would-be developers; it took KM Hotels four years to get its Cherry Hill proposal approved by the township and the state Department of Environmental Protection.
KM did not respond to voicemails or an email to its Richmond, Va., headquarters. But township officials said a series of modifications to the firm’s original plan, as well as some flexibility on the part of the DEP, were crucial to the project’s recent approval.
Balancing environmental and economic realities
A DEP spokesperson said the agency approved an exemption to the developer from a new requirement not to disturb, let alone build, within a 300-foot riparian zone along the unnamed tributary on the property.
Like the Cooper River itself, the tributary is classified as a Category One waterway because of what the classification calls “exceptional” ecological, aesthetic, or recreational significance.
Granting the exemption “balanced a viable commercial project that meets local zoning requirements while also providing enhancement and restoration of large portions of riparian zones that had been historically disturbed,” said the spokesperson, noting that the township approved the project shortly before the Cooper and its tributaries were upgraded to Category One.
The developer also is proposing to remove debris and restore native vegetation within the zones, as well as deed-restrict development on 2.7 acres of the property, the spokesperson said
Wash, wax, and a cup of java
David Lee has worked at the Magic Touch Car Wash for 13 years. He said the remodeling will be “more than a facelift.” Improvements also will include safer entry to and exit from Route 70, as well as an area for customers to line up in their cars while waiting for service, he said.
“It will be a positive to see this area cleaned up, and [the project] is going to be something nice for the township,” he said.
The coffee shop will have indoor seating as well as a drive-through and will rise to the west of the car wash. It will be developed by Route70 West LLC.
Route 70 is traversed by 85,000 vehicles daily and has been undergoing a $135 million, top-to-bottom rehabilitation along its entire length through the township. Work on the highway is expected to conclude in early 2026, according to the New Jersey Department of Transportation.
Cullen, the township’s development director, said new hotels and a restaurant reflect the Route 70 and the west side’s midcentury emergence as a first-class hospitality, entertainment, shopping, and dining district for the region.
‘A welcoming face’
The centerpieces of that district — the Latin Casino, Rickshaw Inn, and Garden State Park thoroughbred racetrack — are all gone. The only visible remnant of that storied era is the racetrack gatehouse a quarter of a mile east of the new hotel site.
Longtime west side resident Dan Cirucci has gathered 1,400 signatures on a petition in support of saving the structure and sees its preservation as complementing the new hotel development to the west.
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“That area has been an eyesore for far too long and now it seems to be taking off, which is great,” he said.
The new hotels and a refurbished gatehouse “will put a welcoming face on the community,” Cirucci said. “They will harken back, in a small way, to a time when Cherry Hill was a center of hospitality and entertainment.”