6 years after New Jersey community college moves to new campus, its former home sits mostly abandoned.
Six years after Rowan College at Burlington County moved its main campus from Pemberton Township, N.J., to Mount Laurel Township, the former campus sits mostly unused.
The Newark Star-Ledger reports that since the last class was held on the Pemberton Township campus in 2017, it has been largely abandoned. All attempts to sell or redevelop the property have failed.
The 225-acre campus has a library, theater, pool, several athletic fields, thousands of parking spaces, but no prospective buyers. Township officials are still hoping the campus, now filled with overgrown weeds and wildlife, will be reused or developed into something useful.
A fire in April that damaged the former Academic Building and incidents of illegal trespassing and vandalism have raised questions about the future of the property.
“People have been in there systematically stripping all the metals and taking what they can find,” said Daniel Hornickel, Pemberton Township’s business administrator. “...[I]t’s been a headache to us.”
Rowan College at Burlington County began moving its main campus from Pemberton Township to Mount Laurel in 2015. The decision to close the Pemberton campus was largely driven by the influx of students attending classes in Mount Laurel instead of Pemberton.
The Pemberton property went up for sale in 2018. Several developers have expressed interest in the parcel over the years, officials said. But for now, there are no proposals being considered for the property beyond demolishing the buildings.
After the fire in the Academic Building, college officials are considering a plan to raze the facility. If the Academic Building is demolished, the campus will still have an abandoned library and an empty physical education building. Also still standing is the vacant 182,000-square-foot Parker College Center — the largest building on campus.
The college’s Olympic-size pool, which was used by the community and local swim teams even after the campus closed, was shut down in 2019 despite efforts by community members to save it.
