Several projects to renovate vacant buildings on the White Horse Pike in western Atlantic County have been slowed by state and Pinelands regulations and unexpected construction issues but are finally gaining traction.
Projects range from a Planet
Fitness set to open in a former SuperFresh supermarket in Hammonton to
an office building replacing a Mullica Township motor lodge started 30
years ago but never finished.
A North Jersey firm experienced
in renovating former hospitals into medical specialty centers has gutted
about half of the former William B. Kessler Memorial Hospital in Hammonton to build a
16,000-square-foot surgery center. It has a sleep center and other
medical providers under contract for other parts of the building.
Estimated opening dates have come
and gone, extended when Community Healthcare Associates ran into more
problems with the building than expected.
The process of getting approvals
from the state Department of Community Affairs and the Department of
Health also slowed work, said Stephen Kirby, managing partner for the
Bloomfield, Essex County-based company.
“We couldn’t save anything” of
the old operating rooms, he said. The company had hoped to use some of
the existing facility for the surgical center but had to take everything
out and even replace the studs and some beams, he said.
CHA purchased the bankrupt
hospital in 2011. Parts of The Kessler Medical Arts Complex are now
slated to open next spring, Kirby said.
Galloway Township’s Bacharach
Institute for Rehabilitation has signed on to open a sleep center with
an entrance that used to be to the former emergency room. And the
company plans to turn two wings and the second floor of the old hospital
into a 60-bed subacute care center. Patients would stay for 20 to 28
days while recuperating from surgeries such as knee and hip
replacements.
Projects on the White Horse Pike
tend to be larger and more complicated than those in downtown areas, and
some have dragged on for years.
***Also on the pike, also known as
state Route 30, the 20,000-square-foot partially built Devonshire Motor
Lodge sits on 12.9 acres in Mullica Township. The outer shell of the
building went up about 30 years ago but was never finished.
It is under contract for an
office building, but the would-be buyers have run into complications
over the on-site sewer treatment system to be used, as well as the size
of the building.
They have been providing
information on their plans to the state Pinelands Commission, which must
give it a certificate of filing before they can apply to the township
for approvals, said broker/owner Charles Maimone, of Century 21 Reilly
Realtors in Berlin, Camden County.
“They have really been battered
for a year. They have spent a lot of money on engineers,” said Maimone
of the potential buyers, whom he would not identify.
Maimone said he is hopeful the situation will be resolved with the commission in 90 days or so.
In Egg Harbor City, the four-acre
former Acme supermarket near the border with Mullica Township has sat
vacant since closing in 2002. It is now under contract, said real estate
agent Margaret “Meg” Worthington, a broker with Stephen N. Frankel Real
Estate in Ventnor.
But the potential buyers, whom
Worthington did not disclose, are conducting an environmental assessment
before the sale can be completed. A closed gas station in the vicinity
has caused some pollution problems in the area, she said.
“It would be a positive commercial use,” she said.
“It would be a positive commercial use,” she said.
The testing has started, and Worthington said she should know in about 45 days whether the sale can move forward.
The site has been under contract
at least four other times in the past, and various problems have crept
up to wreck those deals, she has said.
Hammonton, located on the eastern
border of more heavily developed Camden County, has had some recent
good luck with other large vacant properties.
A Planet Fitness exercise
facility is due to move into half of the former SuperFresh building in
the Hammonton Square Shopping Center. The supermarket has sat vacant
since 2011.
According to the town’s
construction office, Planet Fitness is using about 22,000 of the
building’s 44,000 square feet. All of the rough inspections have been
completed, a spokesperson said.
And Wal-Mart recently got
permission from the Pinelands Commission to apply to the town to add
55,000 square feet to its existing 75,000-square-foot structure.
Contact: 609-272-7219
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