This small South Jersey town already has 20 warehouses. Residents are pushing back on a proposal for 9 more.

Keith Walton’s backyard offers postcard-worthy views of Oldmans Creek.

But if a proposal before the planning board in Oldmans Township, Salem County, becomes a reality, the farm fields across from the home Walton built for his family 20 years ago could be replaced by warehouses.

“This is what’s really at stake,” he said.

Knight Owl Holdings, a group of six limited-liability corporations based in Clarksboro, Gloucester County, seeks approval to construct nine warehouses totaling 5.3 million square feet on 574 acres of mostly agricultural Oldmans Township land.

The developer will need variances to build on large portions of the property that are not zoned for warehouses, as well as to erect some warehouses as tall as 65 feet. Full build-out is expected to take nine years.

Walton and other Oldmans Township residents are alarmed at the prospect of familiar landscapes giving way to more clusters of enormous boxy buildings and parking lots for about 3,600 vehicles and 2,100 tractor-trailers. The township already has more than 20 warehouses.

“No more warehouses” is on signs all over town, and more than 100 people showed up at an April 3 planning board hearing on the latest proposal, which set to resume Monday.

» READ MORE: N.J. residents used a grassroots campaign to thwart a warehouse developer. They fear his return.

As consumer demand for expeditiously home-delivered products of all sorts continues, grassroots pushback against warehouse projects has become common throughout the Philadelphia region, even amid the economic uncertainty for commercial real estate and Walmart’s decision to close its Oldmans Township warehouse and lay off 201 employees there.

New warehouses are being proposed from Chester County to Northeast Philly to the Lehigh Valley. And as developers have gobbled up the relatively inexpensive property in Central New Jersey, they’ve steadily shifted their attention south, as the transformation of the area around New Jersey Turnpike Exit 2 and Route 322 in Gloucester County attests.

Local residents at the April 3 meeting in Oldmans Township seemed deeply skeptical about Knight Owl’s proposal, and some planning board members, as well as board consultants, asked sharp questions of experts hired by the developer.

“This is a rural community, and we’d like to keep it that way,” said Paul Mitchell, who attended the session with his wife, Susan. The couple operate a 54-acre asparagus farm in the town’s Pedricktown section.

“We’ve already got trucks on our narrow roads, rattling people’s windows,” Susan Mitchell said.

“We’ve got noise pollution and light pollution,” said her husband. “At night, the light from warehouse parking lots makes it look like the Chernobyl disaster.”

Neither Matthew Lange, a principal of Knight Owl, nor Clint Allen, a lawyer for the LLCs, responded to voicemail or email messages left at their offices. A traffic engineer and an acoustics expert who were among those presenting evidence before the planning board said the proposed Oldmans Business Park South would not create burdensome levels of vehicular traffic or noise.

A Community Impact Statement commissioned by the developer and filed with the planning board in September included assessments by planning, environmental, and other professionals. The statement suggested that the project’s impact on traffic, as well as on wetlands on and near the development site, would be limited but would require some infrastructure improvements.

Oldmans Business Park South would generate annual tax revenue of $3 million for public schools and $486,274 for the township itself, according to the statement.

“The residents here like to see deer and watch crops grow. It may sound corny, but it’s more appealing than having to look at cars and trucks,” said Mayor Dean Sparks, a farmer whose family tree in what is now Oldmans Township dates to the 1600s.

“You would like to think these developers would go where they’re welcome,” Sparks said during an interview from his home. He farms 190 acres, mostly grain, and said he has had “at least 10 offers to sell” to various developers in recent years.

Sparks also said the township has been slow to preserve farmland but intends to protect more of its agricultural heritage from development.

“We have 20 to 25 warehouses already, and people are anti-warehouse because we see a lot of truck traffic that cuts through the center of town to get to warehouses that aren’t ours,” said the mayor.

“Our neighbor to the north, Logan Township, is fine to be wall-to-wall with warehouses. That’s their decision,” Sparks said. “But Oldmans Township is such a unique place. And the people who live here really like the bucolic atmosphere.”

With about 1,800 people in just under 20 square miles — more than a quarter of whom reside in and around Pedricktown, a village of quaint homes and a business district — much of the township does have a country feel.

But Oldmans also is sandwiched between busy north-south highways: Route 130 to the west, and I-295 to the east, with two New Jersey Turnpike exits close by. Plans call for widening the southernmost stretch of the turnpike from four lanes to six.

According to the state Office of Planning Advocacy nearly 12.2% of all jobs in New Jersey, and 15.7% of the state’s total payroll, are warehousing-related. Those are the highest percentages in the country, the office said.

A policy developed by the state’s Planning Commission in 2022 advises municipalities — where local planning policies and decisions are made — how best to realize the revenue, employment, and other opportunities presented by the warehouse boom while minimizing the downside.

But Brian M. Slaugh, a consultant to the Oldmans Township planning board, said in an interview that the ”conceptual” plan submitted by Knight Owl Holdings does not heed the state’s suggestions or the municipality’s land-use goals.

Another potential impediment to the warehouse plan is Salem County’s sole airport, which occupies about 40 acres within a commercial/industrial zone that could accommodate warehouse development without the need for a variance. Any warehouse constructed in that portion of the Knight Owl property would have to adhere to the 30-foot height limit, said Slaugh.

The airport’s owner, Steven R. Martorano, has sued the township in N.J. Superior Court, seeking to require Oldmans to update its master plan to delineate a safety zone around the facility. He also has sued Anthony Musumeci, a former township council member who sold much of the warehouse site to the developer, over water runoff that affected the airport.

“What’s the gain for the township with these warehouses?” Nancy Bond, a longtime resident, asked after the April 3 meeting.

“We have a volunteer fire company and ambulance squad and no police force,” she said, adding that the size and scope of the proposal could result in the township having to establish its own police department and purchase fire equipment.

Walton and others pointed out that much of the acreage where some of the warehouses would be built lacks water and sewer service.

And given the size of the town’s population and one estimate that 2,500 jobs would be created at the new warehouse complex, “even Salem County doesn’t have the [potential] employees they’re looking for,” Bond said.

Matthew Cassidy, 27, grew up in Pedricktown. His family owns Salem Oak Vineyards, one of a handful of successful businesses in the village — and the only place there that sells food, he said.

“I love Pedricktown, but right now it’s a food desert,” said Cassidy, a member of the U.S. Army Reserve, while offering a tour of the village center.

Several Victorian buildings, as well as a former public school, are vacant. Tractor-trailers rumble through with regularity.

But nearby streets hold well-kept and restored houses, and Cassidy said smaller-scale development possibilities get short shrift as warehouses dominate public discussion.

He’d like to open a bakery and “a little chocolate business” in a building he’s proposing to construct on a vacant lot he owns on Railroad Avenue.

“It’s a small town that’s the perfect blend of history, agriculture, and salt-of-the-earth people,” he said. “We need to support agritourism, farmland preservation, and historic preservation.

“We need to recognize that rather than selling out to the highest bidder, we have assets we can showcase.“