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A former concrete plant on Centennial Boulevard in Voorhees, New Jersey, will be demolished to make way for a $50 million, 120-apartment affordable housing community after the township's planning board approved the project's site plans last week.
The Voorhees Planning Board granted preliminary and final major site plan approvals, along with a minor subdivision approval, on October 28 for The Oaks at Centennial, a two-phase development from Camden-based The Michaels Organization, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The formal applicant is Centennial Housing Associates LLC. Each phase will deliver 60 affordable apartments.
All 120 apartments, a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom units, will be reserved for low- and moderate-income households, according to application documents reviewed by 42Freeway, making the project a fully affordable community rather than a mixed-income set-aside development.
The 6.6-acre property for decades housed L&L Redi Mix Concrete, which supplied South Jersey construction projects for 55 years. The plant was acquired in December 2021 by Silvi Concrete, based in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania, and later shut down, the Inquirer reported. The site has been vacant since.
Voorhees' affordable housing report states that the property has been cleared of any contamination, addressing the question that shadows most industrial-to-residential conversions. The parcel sits between the U.S. Post Office and a CubeSmart self-storage facility, down the street from the Mansions on Main Street development, according to 42Freeway's review of the plans.
The redevelopment continues a run of residential activity in the township. The planning board on October 14 separately approved the conversion of the former Echelon office tower, a 1970s building developed by the Rouse Company alongside the old Echelon Mall, into 178 luxury market-rate apartments with shared co-working spaces and an outdoor amenity deck on the existing parking garage. That property sold in 2025 for $4.3 million.
Plans filed with the township call for four multifamily buildings plus a clubhouse, a playground and a separate maintenance building, 42Freeway reported. Phase One covers the two rearmost residential buildings along the back property line, together with the amenity and maintenance structures. Phase Two adds the two buildings closer to Centennial Boulevard. The developer advanced both phases through planning simultaneously, but presented them as two distinct 60-unit applications.
The buildings are broken into smaller sections connected by breezeways, a massing approach typically used to keep garden-style buildings from reading as monolithic blocks.
The Michaels Organization projects rents calibrated to 60 percent of area median income: $1,323 per month for a one-bedroom, $1,587 for a two-bedroom and $1,834 for a three-bedroom, according to the Inquirer. Those figures put the units within reach of households that earn too much for deep-subsidy housing but face steep market rents in Camden County's suburbs.
Nicholas J. Cangelosi, regional vice president at The Michaels Organization, has framed the project around the workforce case for suburban affordability: affordable housing in suburban towns helps essential workers in retail, healthcare and the schools live in the communities they serve, the Inquirer reported.
The 120 units are included in Voorhees' affordable housing plan, which was released last year and revised in February, the Inquirer reported. New Jersey's court-enforced affordable housing framework requires municipalities to zone for their share of regional need, and developments like The Oaks at Centennial are how suburban towns satisfy those obligations while controlling where and how growth happens.
Traffic was the predictable flashpoint. A study by Shropshire Associates LLC of Atco estimates the development will generate 43 additional vehicle trips during the morning peak hour and 60 during the afternoon peak, the Inquirer reported, figures the planning board weighed in granting approval.
With preliminary and final site plan approvals in hand, the developer can move toward construction, starting with demolition of the remaining plant structures on the site. The Michaels Organization is one of the country's largest owners and managers of affordable housing, and the Centennial project adds to its long South Jersey portfolio.
For the region, the approval is a data point in a broader South Jersey pattern: aging industrial parcels, often rail- or highway-adjacent and environmentally remediated, are increasingly the land supply for fully affordable development in built-out suburbs where vacant residential land no longer exists. Voorhees' pair of October decisions, 178 market-rate apartments from an obsolete office tower and 120 affordable apartments from a shuttered concrete plant, shows both sides of that conversion economy landing in the same township in the same month.
Neither the developer nor the township has announced a construction start date. NSPIRE Wire will track the project as it moves to groundbreaking.
The approval capped a planning process that stretched across the fall. Both the Centennial Boulevard project and the Echelon tower conversion were initially expected to be heard in September, but their hearing dates shifted, 42Freeway reported, noting that New Jersey land use law does not require republication of public notices when dates move. The Inquirer first reported on the Centennial proposal in September as it headed toward the board, and the project was ultimately heard and approved on October 28.
Voorhees posted the full project plans on the township website, a transparency step that gave residents and local reporters a detailed look at the site layout, building massing and phasing before the vote. The planning board's action covered preliminary and final major site plans for both phases plus the minor subdivision needed to configure the parcel, meaning the project cleared its principal land use hurdles in a single evening.
The Michaels Organization, headquartered in Camden, is among the nation's largest private owners, developers and managers of affordable housing, with a portfolio built over decades across New Jersey and nationally. Its involvement signals the project's likely financing path: fully affordable developments of this size in New Jersey typically stack federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits with state and county resources, and the 60 percent AMI rent structure described in planning documents is consistent with tax credit underwriting.
The firm's local roots were part of the pitch. Cangelosi's argument, that suburban affordability lets essential workers live where they serve, reflects a workforce-housing case that has become the standard frame for suburban affordable development, particularly in communities where service workers commute from increasingly distant cheaper towns.
Voorhees' October decisions illustrate how land-constrained suburbs are actually producing housing. The township added 298 approved apartments in two weeks without touching a single acre of open space: 178 market-rate units from a dead office tower and 120 affordable units from a shuttered industrial plant. Both projects reuse paved, previously developed land with existing road and utility infrastructure, the pattern planners call infill.
The Echelon conversion also shows how fluid those reuse decisions can be. Just two years ago, the same office tower was being considered for conversion to affordable senior housing, 42Freeway reported. After the property traded for $4.3 million in 2025, its new owner brought forward the market-rate luxury plan instead. In Voorhees this fall, the affordable units ended up on the industrial site instead, a reminder that where affordability lands in a suburb is often decided parcel by parcel, deal by deal, rather than by any single plan.
The projected rents translate the affordability math into monthly numbers. At $1,323 for a one-bedroom, $1,587 for a two-bedroom and $1,834 for a three-bedroom, the units undercut typical market-rate asking rents in Voorhees and neighboring Camden County suburbs while remaining structured to cover operating costs without deep operating subsidies. Households at 60 percent of area median income, in practice, include many of the teachers' aides, medical technicians, retail supervisors and municipal employees Cangelosi described.
The unit mix matters as much as the price points. One-, two- and three-bedroom layouts mean the community can house singles, small families and larger households together, avoiding the singles-only or seniors-only pattern that limits many affordable proposals. The inclusion of family-sized three-bedroom units at $1,834 is likely to be among the most-watched figures as lease-up eventually begins, since family-sized affordable units are the scarcest segment of most suburban markets.
L&L Redi Mix operated on Centennial Boulevard for 55 years, one of a half-dozen New Jersey plants the company ran in Voorhees, Southampton, Woodbury, Cinnaminson, Kingston and Clayton, the Inquirer reported. Silvi Concrete's December 2021 acquisition and subsequent shutdown of the operation left the township with a vacant industrial parcel on a visible corridor, exactly the kind of site that draws gas stations, storage facilities or fast food absent a deliberate municipal alternative. Instead, the township's affordable housing plan steered the parcel to residential reuse, and the contamination clearance documented in the plan removed the principal environmental obstacle.
The October 28 vote positions The Oaks at Centennial to become one of the more closely watched affordable deliveries in South Jersey's current pipeline, both for its fully affordable structure and for what it signals about how suburban affordable housing obligations are being met through industrial reuse.
The Voorhees Township Planning Board on October 28 approved The Oaks at Centennial, a $50 million, 120-apartment fully affordable housing community from The Michaels Organization on a former concrete plant site on Centennial Boulevard.
The board granted preliminary and final major site plan approvals plus a minor subdivision for two 60-unit phases comprising four residential buildings, a clubhouse, playground and maintenance building. All units will serve low- and moderate-income households.
Projected rents are calibrated to 60 percent of area median income: $1,323 for one-bedroom, $1,587 for two-bedroom and $1,834 for three-bedroom apartments. The 6.6-acre site, home to L&L Redi Mix Concrete for 55 years, has been cleared of contamination.
The project is part of Voorhees' affordable housing plan, released last year and revised in February, and follows the township's October 14 approval of a 178-unit market-rate conversion of the former Echelon office tower.
Together the two approvals add 298 apartments on previously developed land, illustrating how land-constrained New Jersey suburbs are meeting housing needs through industrial and office reuse.
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