The Woolwich Joint Land Use Board is having a second (continuance) hearing tonight, Thursday August 3rd… to consider a request for an 854,500 sf warehouse which is being proposed by a developer for Auburn Rd.
Expecting a large public attendance at the meeting, this second “Part 2” hearing has been moved to the Kingsway Regional Middle School in the West Gymnasium, located at 203 Kings Highway, Woolwich Township, New Jersey 08085 at 7:00 pm
The first meeting for this project took place at the end of June, and by 11:30pm the developer had not completed presenting the project. With this second (continued) meeting on August 3rd, the developer will finish their project presentation, and then the public will have a chance to speak… including attorneys who were hired by the community, paid for by funds raised via GoFundMe.
Oldmans Creek Holdings – Auburn Road Warehouse
The project is being proposed by Oldmans Creek Holdings LLC, which based on documents provided as part of the review process indicates they are based out of Boca Raton FL.
The full property is located at 1314 & 1366 Auburn Road and is approximately 70 acres of land across two lots.
Currently a smaller portion of the property is home to US Drop Forge, which if this warehouse project were approved and developed, the US Drop Forge Facilities would be demolished.
This property is a targeted opportunity for the warehouse developers as over the years much of the surrounding properties have been rezoned for more residential uses. But since an active light-industrial business has been operating for several decades on the Auburn road lots, the proposed warehouse properties remained zoned as light-industrial.
The project is identified as The Oldmans Industrial Park, but it appears to consist of just one large building which will fill the entire two tax-lot property space.
An existing communications tower located in a notched-out separate property, will remain.
It is my understanding that as a part of this proposal the two larger properties for the proposed warehouse would be combined into one tax lot.
From the public notice the full project will includes:
- 854,450 +/- square foot warehouse building(including 20,000 +/- square feet of office space)
- 75 +/- loading dock spaces
- 482 +/- passenger vehicle parking spaces
- 166 +/- trailer parking spaces
- storm water management facilities, landscaping, buffering, sound attenuation measures and other related site improvements
Looking at Google Maps overhead imagery I could see that the surrounding properties are either farmland or residential.
Almost 3 miles up on Oldmans Creek Rd is the lower portion of the Pureland Industrial Park where an Amazon Fulfillment center is located.
A mile north of the Amazon warehouse is an exit to Route 295 (at Center Square Rd).
I was curious as to who the company is behind this project, as I like to add additional facts about their capabilities as well as offer them an opportunity to offer additional details on the project.
Realizing that most of these development projects have a local LLC which is owned by a larger organization, I set out to track them down, and reach out.
But I could not locate a New Jersey Business Entity record for “Oldmans Creek Holdings LLC” via the State’s provided business search feature.
Additional research does connect the LLC’s address to a Florida residential home, whose owner is involved in several other real estate ventures and appears to also be proposing warehouses in Hillsborough NJ.
Resident Concerns
Residents in Woolwich and surrounding towns have organized against the warehouse location, and have rallied together to raise funds to fight the approval, and hire their own attorney and experts.
A recent Courier-Post article written regarding the first meeting states that even the Mayor Craig Frederick (who is also a board member) had previously said that local government does not support that location, and even questioned witnesses regarding traffic impacts in that first June hearing.
Last fall I chatted with one of the neighborhood community leaders who helped jump-start the community involvement, and today is still a core part of informing and rallying the community against the project.
She tells me the community first heard of the project last October via a public notice, ahead of a planned Fall meeting.
With not much time ahead of that originally scheduled meeting, what first started as texts “amongst the moms” quickly grew into a Facebook Group which grew to 700 members that first day, and now has 1,500 members.
They have since held several community informational meetings.
The group also started a GoFundMe to raise funds to hire their own attorneys and experts. As of today the GoFundMe is at $20,000 with a goal of $25,000! (Donate here).
I can see from group posts that recently they had spent their initial $15,000 on the experts, and asked to raise additional funds as the hearings were continued.. and supporters quickly added $5,000 more.
A core concern for many in the community is the proximity of the planned warehouse to the Harker Elementary school. I was told by the community representative; The “500 ft off property line” dashed line runs right through the 5th grade hallway.
Traffic and highway access is also a concern to residents. In my project description at the start of this article I explained that truck access to the proposed warehouse is several miles from a major highway on/off ramp… and trucks would have to drive on local roads to access.
According to the Courier Post article, a project traffic consultant hired by the developer stated that the number of truck trips will prove to be relatively low for a warehouse operation. That comment drew criticism.
Links and Location
Woolwich Auburn Road Warehouse Hearing – Part 2
Kingsway Regional Middle School – West Gymnasium
7:00 pm
203 Kings Highway
Woolwich Township, New Jersey 08085
Community Facebook Group : NO Warehouses Next To Harker School Woolwich