The Grand Gets OK to Add Apartments, With Safety Caveat

Amid assurances of stepped-up security and safety measures for future ground-floor residents, one of Cherry Hill’s biggest apartment complexes got the OK Thursday night to get just a bit bigger, as the zoning board approved the addition of 20 first-floor apartments at The Grand high-rises.

Representatives from Allstate Management Corporation, the Pennsauken-based firm that runs the complex off Frontage Road, agreed to add security cameras and lighting near the entrances to the 15 apartments that will open to the outside of the building, and said they’d work with township officials to ensure all conditions are met.

“Safety is one of our main concerns,” said Allstate Management CFO Stan Borucki.

It was one of the zoning board’s main concerns, as well, with several members of the board questioning Borucki and others involved with the project about security almost from the outset, after learning only five apartments would have entrances inside the towers.

“My concern is someone being followed to their door,” said board member Ivy Rovner, who suggested the management company do everything possible to ensure security cameras could be trained toward those outside-facing apartments.

While no residents of the towers spoke either for or against the plan or raised any safety concerns, one member of the public did criticize both the zoning board and the complex’s management about the application.

Martha Wright, who’s also part of a group opposed to the in-litigation Haddonfield Lumber complex on Brace Road, slammed Allstate Management, saying they created an environment that drove away businesses, and dinged the plan for creating a complex nearly twice as dense as what’s outlined in the township’s zoning regulations.

“I am not paying property taxes so that Allstate Management can enjoy more profits by eking out rent from every square inch of their property at my expense,” she said. “[The variance] sets a bad precedent and opens the door to more variances which benefit corporations instead of residents.”

But Allstate Management representatives pointed to the fact the complex has been oversized from the beginning, when it was approved in the 1960s, and adding 20 units to the 544-unit towers makes for a minimal impact on the property.

“It can handle the increase in density,” planner William Boer said.

The new units come at the expense of about 24,000 square feet of commercial space, which Borucki said had been underperforming since the company took over in 2010.

There had been just a handful of commercial tenants three years ago, and that’s shrunk to a single engineering firm, Borucki said, leaving vast swaths of empty space at the base of each tower.

“It’s unattractive, really, given what we’ve done to the buildings,” he said.

And the company saw no way of getting commercial tenants back in those spaces, with nearly every broker turning down the listings, Borucki said.

There isn’t an exact timeline for turning the vacant space into new residential units, Borucki said, but he estimated it’ll take between six and nine months per tower—there are 11 units going into one and 9 into the other—to complete the work.