In Burlington County, an abandoned college campus will be demolished

Largely vacant for a decade and more recently a target for vandals, the former Burlington County College campus in Pemberton Township has been sold and will be torn down.

Burlington County purchased the 225-acre site on Pemberton-Browns Mills Road for $1 million in December from Rowan College at Burlington County in Mount Laurel.

“About six to eight buildings remain on the property, and demolition costs are projected to be around $4 million,” county spokesperson David Levinsky said.

“We plan to use American Rescue Plan Act funding the county received from the federal government to cover the expense,” he said.

Money for the purchase is coming from the county’s capital budget. The college and the county have always been separate entities.

In a statement, Michael A. Cioce, president of Rowan College at Burlington County, said the sale “allows us to focus on our goal of helping students transform their lives through education … we look forward to the [site’s] new future as county property.”

The county has no immediate plans for the property, other than tearing down the buildings, Levinsky said.

“We are taking this action to remove blight and protect public safety,” Burlington County Commission director Felicia Hopson said in a statement.

“The remaining buildings need to come down, and the property needs to be maintained,” she said, adding that the former campus will “no longer be an eyesore [or an] attractive nuisance.”

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Founded in 1966, the college opened the Pemberton Township campus — not far from the geographic center of the sprawling county — in 1971. A Mount Laurel satellite on Burlco’s more populous western side was launched in 1995.

Expanding there and being renamed in recognition of its longtime partnership with Rowan University, Rowan College at Burlington County began transferring operations to Mount Laurel in 2015.

The last classes were held in Pemberton in 2017, and the campus — which was costing the college more than $600,000 annually to maintain — was put on the market.

A housing development and a wellness center were proposed for the site. But the campus proved a tougher-than-expected sell. Wetlands along the Rancocas Creek make up all but 64 acres of the property. In 2023, a vacant classroom building where a two-alarm fire broke out had to be demolished.

Seeing the campus sold “is bittersweet,” said Jeff Anderson, 55, of Mount Laurel, who earned an associate’s degree at the Pemberton campus in 1991.

He went on to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from Rutgers-Camden and works as an analyst in law enforcement.

Anderson said he will be relieved that the empty campus will no longer be damaged by vandals. “But I’m very sentimental about the college itself,” he said.

“Going there was fantastic. A lot of the professors had Ph.D.s,” he said. “The students felt fortunate to be able to get such a great education.”