A Heritage’s Dairy Store was approved last week for Williamstown NJ at the Intersection of Route 322 and Fries Mill Road.
The new convenience store will be situated at southeast corner of the intersection in a new three-acre lot carved out of a larger 22-acre commercially zoned property.
The Heritage’s will be positioned at an angle facing into the corner, and will total 3,390 square feet. Based on the site plan and size, this planned new store appears to be comparable to the larger-format store that was opened on Grove St in West Deptford back in 2017!
According to the site plans reviewed by the planning board, the convenience store property will have an entrance on both Route 322 and Fries Mill roads, as well as two interior driveways to the east, leading to a not-yet-developed commercial property.
The majority of the extended corner property beyond the approved Heritage’s (and the commercial space directly to the East) was previously approved for the 244-unit Blaze Mill townhome development. I have not covered that project, but will do so in a separate article.
Additionally, a large Gloucester County managed intersection improvement project has been taking place at the Route 322 and Fries Mill Road intersection.
It’s core goal is to provide dedicated turn lanes for cars entering the intersection. Three of the four inbound roadways feature three dedicated turn lanes for left, straight, and right turns.
While significant initial site prep work has been started for the intersection remodel (as well as large water management basins carved out) it appears that the road project has stalled. In my visit today I did not notice any construction vehicles on the site. I’ll reach out to Gloucester County to see if there’s any updates on the intersection project
Heritage’s Dairy Store – Route 322 & Fries Mill Road
So unfortunately in trying to keep my eyes open to projects proposed through a majority of South Jersey, I somehow missed that this Heritage’s Dairy Store project was on the Monroe Township Planning Board agenda for November 16th
Honestly, this week I was looking for an update on something completely unrelated, when I happened to look at the agenda for that meeting and saw the convenience store listed!
I reached out this morning to the Monroe Township Planning Board who confirmed to me that the Heritage’s Dairy Store was approved.
As I was not at the meeting, I don’t have a lot of details on the timing of the project.
I’m not hitting a lot of “home runs” with this article. Well at least you know that it’s been approved! Ha
From the site plan obtained by 42Freeway, the mostly square new construction Heritage’s store will have parking immediately around the front 3-sides of the store, as well as a second outer-perimeter set of parking spots… with a car driving lane between the two rows.
The parking spots directly up to the building (on the 3 front sides) total 22 spots. The outer perimeter spots total 28… for 50 total parking spots.
Additionally along the back of the building they have defined a rear delivery area, as well as three long tractor-trailer parking spaces.
There were some minor variances requested such as the building sitting back a little bit further from the roadway than zoning allowed. Dual row parking in the front yard required approval, and some small signage variances.
Heritage’s Dairy Stores
Heritage’s Dairy Stores are a convenience store, deli and sandwich shop based out of Thorofare (West Deptford), NJ
Heritage’s still operates a traditional deli counter where lunchmeats are sliced in store, which is something most competitors have moved away from.
They operate 33 stores in six South Jersey counties employing over 500 people
They are a rare breed of convenience store in America as they are still owned and daily operated by the original Heritage family (later generations), who live right in the South Jersey area.
Their first dairy store opened in Westville NJ on October 10th 1957. It was primarily a milk store at the time but they also sold bread, candy, cigarettes, packaged meats, and some groceries.
Heritage’s Dairy Store pioneered the convenient store movement in New Jersey and was also the first in the State to sell milk in gallon jugs. The first store opened over a decade before Wawa first came to New Jersey!
Heritage’ ‘s traces their South Jersey roots back to the early 20th century when Harold “Grandpop Skeets” and his brother Sam grew and harvested fruits and vegetables on their 100 acres of land in Thorofare.
At the time, they also sold gravel from their land to the State of New Jersey and Gloucester County for the development of roads. (Today the Heritage’s Corporate Offices and one of its 33 convenience stores are located on the Jessup Road property, which was originally their farm and gravel business.)
During the 1920s they looked to expand the business and purchased a cow in 1929 to start the milk production and delivery business.
Soon they had grown to 120 milking cows, and in 1937 Grandpop Skeets started to pasteurize the milk and later began homogenizing it before bottling.
The dairy business continued to grow and they considered opening a store in order to sell the high volume of milk that the plant produced… which gets us to that first Westville store in 1957.
The Heritage’s Dairy Company tries to manage as much of the entire store process as they can in order to keep the quality and customer experience at the highest level.
The employees directly manage a Heritage’s wholesale warehouse, their own daily store deliveries, have an internal construction and service team which builds and maintains stores and corporate offices, and they also handle their own human resources and employee development.
I’ll have more on this planned Williamstown Heritage’s Store when the dirt starts getting turned over!
Links and Location
Heritage’s Dairy Store – Williamstown (coming soon)
Route 322 and Fries Mill Road
Williamstown NJ