Township voters overwhelmingly passed both referendum questions last week for the allowance of liquor to be sold in the township and be restricted only to the Moorestown Mall.
Voters approved the first referendum question — the allowance of liquor licenses to be sold in the township — by an unofficial count of 4,138 to 2,750 according to Moorestown Township representatives.
Voters approved the second referendum question — restricting the sale of liquor licenses to fine dining establishments at the Moorestown Mall — by an unofficial count of 3,750 to 2,876 according to the township.
It was a complete turnaround from the last time Moorestown residents had a chance to vote on the allowance of liquor in the township. In 2007 voters overwhelmingly defeated the sale of liquor licenses by more than 2,000 votes at the polls.
This time around representatives from the Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust — which owns the Moorestown Mall — campaigned vigorously since the summer to garner votes. In September, PREIT President Joe Coradino said that if the referendums were passed PREIT would purchase four of the possible six liquor licenses at a purchase price of $1 million each for a total of $4 million.
Coradino stood by the promise after the victory.
“We are planning on delivering on the promises that we made,” he said. “We will be purchasing four licenses at $1 million each.”
Coradino said PREIT representatives will also be meeting with world famous chef Marc Vetri to discuss the possibility of the chef opening up a restaurant at the mall in the future. Vetri had signed a letter of interest with PREIT with the caveat that the referendums pass in the election.
Coradino estimated that liquor could be served at fine dining establishments at the mall by August of 2012. In the present time, Coradino said PREIT will begin construction on a new 12-screen movie theater for the mall.
“I would say probably the earliest would be between August to September in 2012. Probably somewhere between August and October you’ll start to see restaurants open,” he said. “I’d love to do things faster, but you have to negotiate a lease, create construction plans, go through several phases and it’s hard to get things done quickly. Also, nobody wants to open up in July to a market that won’t be there.”
He pointed to PREIT’s decision to limit the sale of liquor to the mall as one of the biggest factors to sway public opinion on liquor licenses. Keeping liquor sales away from Main Street was a big point of concern for voters in 2007, he said.
“In spite of some of the criticism by the opposition, we did get out into the community and deliver our message between town hall calls, presentations at the Moorestown Business Association, and the rotary. We got our message out to the people and I think at the end of the day we had a fabulous grassroots team who did a great amount of work. The team was led by Seth Broder, who is still taking a lot of heat,” he said. “The icing on the heat was the change in economic circumstances. In 2007 we were all walking around and whistling about how great things were, but not a year later the bottom fell out of the economy. It swayed opinions.”
