For residents of Beaver Avenue, the fitness center proposed for the area may be too little, too late.
Kimberly DiJohn, who has lived on Beaver Avenue for almost 10 years, said her realtor told her many prospective buyers of her home are turned off by the blight in the area.
DiJohn said there are 12 boarded up houses on Beaver Avenue — and another four on Fellowship Road. She said Mount Laurel Development, LLC, bought the houses from families over the last six years.
Lifetime Fitness recently won preliminary approval from the Mount Laurel Planning Board. The area in question includes Route 73 to Church Road and from Fellowship Road to Beaver Avenue.
DiJohn paid $125,000 for her home, refinanced and took out a second mortgage. Now she owes $178,000.
She and residents of Beaver Avenue recently signed a petition urging the township to tear down the boarded-up properties. They claim the blight is not only unsightly, but also dangerous because of transients living in them.
“There’s not many of us left,” DiJohn said, indicating there are eight families on the avenue. “They all agreed that the blight has been going on for too long.”
With the economy suffering and an uptick in crime, she said there has been a lot more activity in the vacant houses with squatters and kids hanging out, painting graffiti.
“Now it’s getting scary,” DiJohn said.
She said her house is now off the market because it had been up for a year and the realtor doesn’t want to deal with it anymore.
“There’s no use trying to sell the home with what’s going on in the neighborhood with the blighted properties,” DiJohn said.
On March 1, she is going to foreclosure mediation and is hoping her mortgage company will help her modify the loan and she can stay there.
“But if they won’t help me, I’ll have to default and walk away,” she said.
Lifetime Fitness is proposing a more than 100,000-square-foot facility with full fitness offerings, including workout rooms, a café and an outdoor pool.
“It’s hard to imagine this beautiful Lifetime Fitness with this amazing pool and everything when we’re in the situation where we’re haunted every day by boarded-up properties across the way,” DiJohn said.
“The developer stated at the last planning board meeting that he promises to remove all of the structures within 30 days of receiving a final site-plan approval for this first phase construction,” Mayor Jim Keenan, who is also on the planning board, said.
“What if this development doesn’t occur?” DiJohn asked, saying she was “shocked” when the developer told her that they’re not allowed to demolish the buildings because their financial institution won’t allow it. “I couldn’t understand that.”
She said a township employee told her he was checking on the properties and boarding them up.
“But that’s not really what we want,” DiJohn said. “We just want them torn down and taken away so that we can either sell our homes for what the value is or live peacefully on this street. A lot of people can’t even get out of this neighborhood now because their homes have depreciated so badly.”
DiJohn said she is paying $5,600 in taxes.
“That just doesn’t make sense,” she said, adding that the residents of the depressed area should get a tax break.
“No one’s really handling this development properly,” DiJohn said.
Keenan said the square block of town was, by and large, purchased by a single developer in 2006.
“The area was affected by multiple zoning sites, a total of four to be exact, so this would also make development difficult even in the best of times,” he said.
Keenan said that, while running for office in 2008, he heard many complaints by residents in the immediate area and from residents in other parts of town, concerned with the bordered up residential homes.
“I had asked the township attorney and the director of community development if the township could force the owner to take down the buildings, but was told that we could not,” he said.
In 2010, the council recommended to the planning board that the section of town be deemed in need of redevelopment, Keenan said.
According to the mayor, it was reviewed by the planning board, and their planner and a recommendation was sent back to the council to proceed with a redevelopment agreement.
Throughout 2011, meetings and conversations occurred between the professional staff of the township and the representatives of the developer.
“Agreements on what could be built in that area of town were reached, and now we are at the planning stage by requiring the developer to seek approval from the planning board with what type of buildings can be planned and built,” Keenan said. “They have elected to put forth the first phase of the plan, which lies closest to the Church Road location — which includes the high-end fitness center along with two ‘pad’ sites, which designate one pad as a bank and the other as a small retail space for office or similar use.
“To the residents in the area, these boarded up buildings have been a hazard at worst or an eyesore at best, and I am personally glad to see this area cleaned up for them and hopefully become a benefit to all of Mount Laurel as soon as possible. The removal of these buildings can’t come soon enough for the residents and town council alike.”
