Landlord: BellCrest to Remain Retail Shopping Center

If you are wondering what the future of Fischer Boulevard’s BellCrest Plaza might hold, recreating the site as an affordable housing complex is not in the immediate plans.

Rumors that it might turn into a site for affordable housing are a no-go, at least for now, said the retail plaza’s landlord.

“There are no plans for affordable housing at the site at this time,” said Chad Warnken, director of development at K. Hovnanian Industries, BellCrest’s landlord.

Warnken said the company is committed to keeping BellCrest a retail site. “It is a retail center, and we want to maintain the retail center and do whatever we can to make it a viable retail center.”

Anchor store Foodtown vacated BellCrest in June 2010, and Blockbuster moved out shortly thereafter. The Fischer Boulevard location of Blockbuster was part of a company-wide closing of 1,000 sites, but the closing left the remaining tenants in the center questioning the future of the site.

According to Jay Lynch, township planner, it is possible Hovnanian could apply for a zoning variance to allow for residential use, but said it's not likely that they would want to.

BellCrest is currently zoned as a highway business zone, according to the township’s zoning map.

“Affordable housing on that property would be costly,” Lynch said. ”With a center that’s already developed, it’s extraordinarily difficult to tear it down” and switch it to a residential area. Lynch said it would likely defeat the purpose of making the property affordable, and the company would have to present its case at a public hearing, and the town would have to review the master plan.

One applicant, Nobility Crest LLC, sought a variance when it took an age-restricted housing plan and asked officials to amend the plan into affordable housing units with no age restriction.

Last month, the Zoning Board of Adjustment approved a Nobility Crest project with an amended variance to build a strip mall, town homes and affordable-housing units on Route 9, north of Cox Cro Road. The project will erect a 53,000-square-foot shopping center, two 25-unit apartment buildings and 200 townhouse units.

Warnken said Hovnanian hired Fameco Real Estate L.P. as its exclusive broker for the property, but said he could not comment or name any of the potential future tenants of the shopping center.

that without anchor stores in the plaza, they have been losing business and aren’t sure they will renew their leases with Hovnanian.

Steven K. Winters, a sales associate at Fameco, said the company is still in the stages of signing the licensing agreement with Hovnanian, and the company cannot comment on the types of stores they will begin marketing the plaza to until the documents are signed later this week.