Plans to revitalize Black Horse Pike stall

In early 2008, Neil Desai, a Philadelphia planning consultant, began talks with Camden County towns and businesses on the Black Horse Pike about transforming the old route to Atlantic City into a modern shopping thoroughfare.

They threw around ideas such as building a gateway to welcome motorists coming off the Walt Whitman Bridge and replacing the hodgepodge of 20-foot-high billboards for lunch specials and strip clubs with aesthetically pleasing signage. Maybe there could even be a marketing campaign with a new logo of a black horse rearing up.

The pike - also known as Route 168 - "has no cohesive identity. It's kind of a free-for-all, depending what the zoning laws in each town are," said Desai, who works for Brown & Keener.

Two years later, redevelopment of the roughly five-mile stretch between Haddon Township and Runnemede has stalled, a victim of the recession and conflicting ideas about what the pike should be, said Andrew Levecchia, senior planner at the Camden County Improvement Authority, which hired Brown & Keener with a $120,000 grant.

The regional project - which also would include Audubon Park, Audubon, Mount Ephraim, Haddon Heights, Bellmawr, and nearby Brooklawn - "never had the enthusiasm we envisioned. Towns participated early on, and it just never caught on," he said.

"The real problem is the Black Horse has several different personalities, and getting everyone on board to one idea just didn't happen," Levecchia said.

Across South Jersey, redevelopment plans have fallen into limbo. The old Pennsauken Mart site remains vacant four years after it was bulldozed to make way for a hockey arena. In Haddon Township, construction of a condominium complex on a former industrial site has no start date.

A variety of factors have contributed to the delays. But one common problem, Levecchia said, has been the difficulty developers have had in obtaining credit since the start of the global recession.

"Once the economy turns around, you'll see there's a number of willing investors," he said. "Redevelopment is a good mechanism for municipalities to reconstruct a property, whether it's blighted or not producing the sort of [tax revenue] they believe it should."

Constructed in the 1920s, the Black Horse Pike was designed to give Philadelphians headed to the Shore an alternative to the then-heavily trafficked White Horse Pike, said Bob Del Sordo, a lawyer and amateur historian in Runnemede.

After World War II, the roadway became a stimulus for development of the farmland through which it passed.

"Runnemede goes back to the 1700s, but it was just a series of farms until the pike came," Del Sordo said.

"It was the same all along the pike. The road made the towns, and the towns developed around the road."

Faster-moving arteries, such as the Atlantic City Expressway, took traffic from the Black Horse. But the road remained a commercial corridor, evolving into its current conglomeration of strip malls, fast-food eateries, motels, and shopping centers, with the occasional home in between.

Other parts of the region have seen a boom in commercial development, with a flood of national chains. "Despite several major recent developments, the economic vitality of Black Horse Pike has generally declined," according to a recent report by the consultants, who were hired to assess the pike's revitalization potential.

"We did a survey, and the primary thing people are looking for is appearance, appearance, appearance. Aesthetics are a huge part of drawing people to shop," Desai said.

For some business owners, the turnpike's steady stream of traffic makes it a desirable location regardless of its appearance.

Randy Benipal, the owner of several gas stations in and around Princeton, chose a location on the Black Horse in Runnemede when he decided to open a sports-memorabilia store three years ago.

"From 2008 to 2009, business was up 120 percent," he said. "I get customers from all over, from Delaware and Maryland. When I get someone buying Ravens stuff or Redskins stuff, I ask where they're from, where they're going, and they're on their way to Atlantic City. I don't know why they don't take the shortcut."

Independent businesses such as Benipal's have become less desirable in a retail environment increasingly dominated by chains, Levecchia said.

"The mom-and-pop has gone by the wayside," he said. Municipalities want medium- and big-box stores that contribute to their tax base, but they "generally end up in the more trafficked areas. It leaves these smaller towns trying to find local businesses to fill their tax base. That's part of the ratable-chase issue in New Jersey."

In its report, composed after a series of local meetings, Brown & Keener detailed suggestions for a comprehensive redevelopment, including improving signage and traffic flow, and retrofitting shopping centers and strip malls into pedestrian-friendly retail hubs. But lacking consensus among the eight municipalities, there are no current plans to implement the ideas.

Runnemede Mayor Virgina Betteridge isn't waiting. The Black Horse slims to two lanes in her borough, which she says has the only traditional downtown on the pike. Runnemede has decided to add antique-style lights, trees, and benches along the stretch.

"I realize the value of this corridor and its ability to attract people," Betteridge said. "Until the malls came, the whole Black Horse Pike corridor was the only shopping mecca."

One place on the pike to attract the sort of stores many towns covet is Audubon Crossings, an Audubon shopping center anchored by a Wal-Mart and filled with national chains.

On the other side of the road is Barb's Harley-Davidson, run by Barb Borowiec for 23 years. Having watched the pike evolve, she was curious when she got wind of a possible redevelopment.

After attending one meeting, Borowiec largely stayed out of the process, unsure whether she agreed with the planners' vision.

"I don't see it as a place to stroll. I see this more as a Route 70, you know," she said. "The cars and the motion - it's great."