On Tuesday, the Cherry Hill Planning Board advanced an ordinance to expand the Township’s Agricultural-Horticultural Commercial (AHC) Overlay Zone and tossed it back to the Township Council for action.
The ordinance will now be considered on a second reading at the March 10 Township Council meeting.
Owners of coveted farmland within the Township are watching closely as getting into the expanded zone would allow them to apply for state and county open space preservation funds to allow them to stay as farms.
The ordinance was first introduced at the Feb. 10 Council Meeting by Cherry Hill Mayor David Fleisher, who referred to it as another initiative to add to the Township’s open space farmland preservation acreage.
The ordinance provides for the right to farm as a permitted use and encourages the preservation of active farming in the Township.
If the ordinance is approved, the AHC zone will expand to include Springdale Farm at 1638 Springdale Road; Springhouse Farm at 1631 Springdale Road; McNaughton’s Garden Center at 351 Kresson Road; and 200 Evans Lane, a vacant lot that sits on 8.31 acres. Combined, the four properties would add 248 acres to the zone.
“This ordinance formalizes the existing agriculture and horticulture uses of these properties and will enable the property owners to apply for farmland preservation funding in the future,” Fleisher said in a statement after the Feb. 10 Council meeting.
“Without the official overlay, the land is not eligible for state or county farmland preservation funding,” added Fleisher.
Tom Measey, a manager at McNaughton’s Garden Center on Kresson Road, said in a recent interview with the Sun Papers that the expanded AHC zone would allow the McNaughton family to continue promoting agriculture in the area.
“We’re in a residential area, but this farm was here before the houses were,” said Measey. “We were grandfathered in as agriculture. As far as zoning… it protects us to keep operating as a farm.”
The March 10 Council Meeting on the ordinance will start at 6:30 p.m.
