Cherry Hill residents are pushing back on a plan to develop the last patch of Holly Ravine Farm into a senior living community

Near the tricky intersection of Springdale and Evesham Roads in Cherry Hill — a suburb where developments named after farms long ago supplanted the real thing — cattle still graze in a lush spring meadow on Holly Ravine Farm.

But the bucolic vista could soon be replaced by a three-building, 175-unit senior housing complex with 200 parking spaces.

The prospect worries some township residents, especially those who remember the farm’s long-gone Cowtail Bar ice cream and Moo Zoo for kids. Others in Cherry Hill support efforts by the family that has owned Holly Ravine since the 1920s to sell their remaining 23 acres.

The township zoning board is set to vote Thursday on requests by Texas-based Caddis Health Care Real Estate for variances from use, height, and other requirements on the property. The site is zoned for detached, single-family homes.

“I live a mile and a half from here, so this isn’t a case of not in my backyard,” said Eric Ascalon, a leader of the opposition to the Caddis proposal. The “Save Holly Ravine Farm” page he set up last month on Facebook had 538 members Wednesday, although not all of them support saving the farm.

“Like a lot of people who grew up in Cherry Hill, I have an emotional attachment to this place,” he said. “Other than Springdale Farm, Holly Ravine is the only farm left in the township.”

During a visit to the perimeter of the property last week, Ascalon, a former land use lawyer, said the proposed development would increase traffic and pave over significant portions of a site that is adjacent to a creek and contains 10 acres of protected wetlands. He urged the township to find a way to preserve Holly Ravine as open space.

Robert Gilmour, 84, grew up and worked on the farm that his parents, John and Eva Gilmour, established in the 1920s.

In addition to being a farmer, John Gilmour was a longtime township civic and political leader who served as mayor from 1963 until 1971. He died in 1993, and the town’s Gilmour Park baseball field is named for him

Robert Gilmour said the family worked with the state for almost a year after his mother died in 2011 to preserve Holly Ravine.

“But it didn’t fit the state’s model of a working farm, and when we talked to the township about preserving it, they hemmed and hawed,” Gilmour said from his Atlantic County home.

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“So we put it on the market and had a developer who wanted to build 26 single-family homes, which fit the township’s zoning. But the township said it would create too much traffic.”

Calling concerns about traffic “an excuse” to say no, Gilmour said the senior living development “is going to be a blessing to the community. The company has been working with us for three or four years, and everything they said they would do, they have done.”

During the April 24 township council session, president David Fleisher said Cherry Hill had made “very active” and sustained efforts to reach an agreement with the Gilmour family, mostly during the administration of former mayor Chuck Cahn. Fleisher, who is a township mayoral candidate, declined to comment on the application before the zoning board.

The documents Caddis has filed with the township describe the Heartis Cherry Hill Senior Living complex as having a “resort-style” ambience. Two four-story residential structures would house independent living, assisted living, and memory care units, and along with a commons building would offer bistros, a fitness center, a movie theater, and other indoor and outdoor amenities.

Caddis also promised “nicely landscaped grounds and gardens,” as well as the planting of 418 trees to compensate for 36 that would be removed in construction. A landmark beech tree believed to be a century old would be preserved as a visual centerpiece.

Company representatives did not respond to voicemail or email messages left at the company’s Dallas offices. Richard J. Goldstein, a Cherry Hill lawyer representing Caddis before the zoning board, did not respond to a voicemail left at his office.

Originally called Delaware Township and consisting mostly of farms with such names as Sergi and hamlets with such names as Colestown, Cherry Hill doubled in population to 10,000 between 1940 and 1950, as suburban migration began. By 2010, the township’s population exceeded 70,000.

Cherry Hill now has just under 75,000 people in 24.2 square miles, with few large tracts available for development or preservation. Smaller-scale redevelopment projects, particularly along Route 70 west of I-295, have run into fierce resistance from local residents.

And the steady disappearance of established businesses such as the Cherry Hill Diner, which shut its doors last Sunday after 55 years to make way for a car wash, is raising public concern about a loss of local character.

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Many comments and photos posted on the Save Holly Ravine page center on the Cowtail Bar, the distinctive ice cream served there, and the animals at the petting zoo:

I remember the family. I remember the dairy bar. I remember the farm. Please don’t bury all that.

The nostalgia is deep: Don Nichols, who chairs Cherry Hill’s Historical Commission, said he once drove to a remote spot in the Pinelands to pick up a Cowtail Bar sign that had been donated to the township. It’s now at the town library on Kings Highway.

But Nichols also pointed out that the dairy bar and cluster of other buildings the Gilmours owned at the corner of Evesham and Springdale were torn down 35 years ago and replaced by a strip shopping center.

“The part of the property that everybody saw as historic were those buildings and the Cowtail Bar, which have been destroyed,” he said. “What’s left is grasslands that are not large enough to be a self-sustaining farm.”

The commission concluded in its report to the township that “we didn’t see anything historic on what was left of the site,” said Nichols.

“Would I like to see more sites in Cherry Hill preserved as open space? Sure. But it’s not the commission’s place to comment on open space” issues, he said.

Martha Wright, who grew up in the township, wasn’t a Cowtail Bar customer. But she said Cherry Hill’s “agrarian past,” including Holly Ravine, ought to be the focus of preservation efforts.

“Cherry Hill was parcel after parcel of farmland and orchards, with farmers markets and crops produced for Campbell Soup” and other companies, she said. “Cherry Hill was rolling fields of green.”

Wright also noted that the former Stafford Farm in Voorhees Township, which is diagonally across from the Shoppes at Holly Ravine, has been preserved. A winery called Saddlehill is being developed on part of the site.