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Wawa at 5-Points Washington Township Project is Still Active. An Update

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Wawa at 5-Points Washington Township Project is Still Active. An Update
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The planned Wawa for the 5-Points intersection of Washington Township is still moving forward, based on recent information from the developers, and a representative from the Gloucester County Planning Board.

It is expected that within the next 2-3 months the property and fully approved plans will be “turned over” to Wawa, for them to then finalize the approval to build.

Recently a Washington Township Facebook group had a very active thread regarding the planned Wawa, where several said “the project is dead”… but no one seemed to have any details.

I was overdue for an update (our last being April 2021) but seeing all the resident commentary and strong comments about the fate of the project, I felt it was time to do some digging.

We all have to remember that this process is happening during the Covid pandemic, especially the early height of it in 2020 when things were shut down. This absolutely was an impact on the approval process. Additionally, material costs had spiked significantly over the last 2 years.

42Freeway depiction of Wawa placement at 5-Points Washington Township

Wawa at 5-Points Washington Township: Years in the Making

For a quick background on this project, we first reported about the plans for this Wawa back in November 2018 when we noticed a commercial real estate site was advertising for additional tenants on the property, and included the Wawa plans in the “sell sheet”.

This was also the first time it was reported that Blackwood-Barnsboro Road would be adjusted to accommodate better traffic flow at the 5-points intersection, as well as create the land necessary for the Wawa.

The newly created larger property sits directly at the 5-points intersection at the edge of Deptford, with The Bank of Princeton on one side, and Egg Harbor Road on the other side.

The newly moved Blackwood-Barnsboro Road sits along the back of the property, and frames out the now larger development site.

That all being said, the rumors of a Wawa at 5-points had been swirling for years, with several of the intersection corners previously speculated as potential location.

Site of planned Wawa at 5 Points Washington Township.
View is from the new Blackwood-Barnsboro Road looking across the property towards 5-points intersection.

The Blackwood-Barnsboro road realignment was under heavy construction at the time of our May 2020 post and video, and it wasn’t long before the roadway and new traffic light were fully functional.

Also, about 6 months ago a Burger King restaurant was proposed for the same property, to be positioned next to the planned Wawa. That Planning Board meeting was scheduled to take place on January 18th, 2022….

Mark from 42Freeway REALLY wanted to attend this Burger King meeting, but was unable to make it, so I don’t know the status just yet. I am checking with the Washington Township Planning Board on that project’s status.

Current Wawa 5-Points Status That We Have

Back in April 2021 I posted a Wawa update featuring two projects; Deptford and Washington Township.

Simply, back then we called out that the current developer and the County had not come to an agreement on the site plan. And I am confident that has held true all this time.

The real fun is in the details of why… which I don’t have all of them, but what I pieced together is:

Well first, specific to Washington Township Planning Board, the Township had quickly approved the project… but a project like this Wawa requires approvals from several government entities.

Our 42Freeway post last year put the delay with the Gloucester County Planning Board approval process… but didn’t cast any direct blame.

That being said, I had made an OPRA request for documents around the approval,.

The documents did call out that the County was looking for additional specifics regarding the site plan… a clear and concise plan for roadwork, and drawings submitted electronically. Basically “what is the core plan?”

This is important to the County as both Egg Harbor Road and Blackwood-Barnsboro Roads are owned and maintained by the County, and because of this their approval is needed when new development connects to their roadways.

While I don’t know the level of it’s impact, we have to remember a Burger King is also proposed for the property, and the parking areas will connect. That Burger King was scheduled for a Planning Board review just 2 weeks ago, so maybe that had an impact?

Developer

We are hopeful that we can turn over the site to WAWA 90-120 days from now

Wawa 5-Points Developer

The “turnover” means that the site has been properly leveled and fully approved. Once that stage happens, development of the building can typically happen very fast.

As an example, in that April 2021 post I call out the turnover process and state that for the Deptford Super Wawa it had just taken place, and then very quickly crews were on-site at Deptford preparing the ground for development.

Just six months after the “turnover”, the Deptford Wawa opened.

As I’ve said before, many times for these new construction projects all of the delays are in getting the approvals worked out.

Gloucester County Planning

Last week we also spoke to a representative of the Gloucester County Planning Board, via the phone.

Their summary of the approvals matched the developer’s statement, with a little more detail

Paraphrasing “We have a discussed agreement on the plans with the developer for the Wawa, but the developer now has to prepare the final official documents and drawings and submit for final review. We expect this to happen over the next 3 months or so”

One thing that I speculated on previously was, do the proposed warehouses in Deptford have any impact on the Wawa… considering required changes at the 5 points traffic light intersection. Does it add extra planning and negotiating to the project… considering 47 and 41 are State Highways (Egg Harbor Rd and Blackwood-Barnsboro roads are County owned and operated)

When we asked the County Planning Board representative the question, they said they had no interactions with NJDOT at all. The county is 100% looking at the approvals for how the Wawa connects to the County roads… which requires a fully completed and submitted site plan.

So we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on upcoming Gloucester County Planning Board meeting project reviews, to see when Wawa 5-points is up for final consideration again.

The County Conservation mulch and soil business sits next to the Wawa property. There are some additional changes taking place there with that business… more to come later.

Proposed Wawa at 5 Points Intersection Washington Township
Egg Harbor Road at 5-Points
Washington Township New Jersey