MOORESTOWN
While old and established, like Haddonfield or Burlington City, Moorestown has been set apart from those smaller communities by its open space.

For years, it appeared that Moorestown might duck the onslaught of development that descended on other, spacious South Jersey communities.

Moorestown had a tradition of slow growth and, more importantly, a ban on extending public sewerage east of Westfield Road.

Despite its desirablity good schools, a downtown business district, tree-shaded streets, "character" rooted as deep as its Quaker origins the township grew at what now looks like a glacial pace for two decades.

Between 1970 and 1990 it added just 539 people as mostly local builders erected houses in slow-

growing, relatively small bunches.

But there was bigger development on the horizon, in large part because of an agreement in the 1980s that opened the East End to higher-density, market-

priced development in exchange for contributions from developers to the township's affordable housing program.

The affordable housing did not get built as the township shifted to a plan of Regional Contribution Agreements. Through the agreements, Moorestown paid other towns to provide 274 units of its affordable housing obligation.

But the townhouses and other market-priced housing did go up.

Between 1990 and 2000 the population grew by nearly 3,000 people, rising from 16,116 to 19,017.

Preserving open space and curbing growth are now the key issues here as they are across South Jersey.

In 1998, voters approved a two-cent tax for open space preservation and this November they will be asked to allow Township Council to increase that tax to as much as six cents per $100 of assessed valuation.

An Open Space Advisory Committee developed a wish list of parcels it would like to preserve and the township has begun to acquire them, scoring an open space "coup" recently when it reached agreement to purchase the 130-acre Benner farm on Westfield Road, long sought by developers.

Like most towns, Moorestown waited until the horse was out of the barn before getting serious about closing the gate. Voters here defeated an open space referendum in 1989.

As a result, says Barbara Rich, a member of the township's Environmental Advisory Committee, "I'd say we only have about a year left" in the race with builders to acquire the most desirable, developable properties.

And the township is currently embroiled in a zoning controversy that Mayor Howard Miller describes as nothing less than "an attempt to break our zoning."

Toll Brothers, the developer that has already built more than 700 new houses in the East End of the township has requested some say demanded a zoning change that would more than double the number of houses it can build on a tract it owns off Centerton Road, across the street from the Winner farm.

Under current zoning the builder is entitled to erect about 30 single family homes on scattered lots, or up to 65 if he clusters the units in a Planned United Development.

Toll Brothers proposes to make the units "age restricted" (55 or older), thus eliminating any increase in school population, in exchange for allowing more units.

The original proposal was for 200 units, which the builder has now reduced to 150 in a process of negotiations with township officials.

Miller and Rich wonder why the township is "negotiating" a zoning change at all.

"Everyone agrees on flipping the zoning with the Winner farm," Miller says, referring to swapping the residential and office designations of the two parcels that sit across the road from one another, making them more consistent with adjacent uses.

But there is major disagreement on the rest of the changes Toll Brothers seeks.

"The vision of that end of town, that it would not have high density housing, is slowly eroding away," Rich says.

On a brighter note for local conservationists, the township has actually purchased one property, the 12-acre Wigmore tract at the intersection of Bridgeboro and Westfield Roads.

The purchase of the Benner farm (for more than $7 million) will not only head off development, but add an important stretch of Swede's Run to the greenbelt the township is trying to preserve along that creek.

Part of the Rancocas watershed, Swede's Run begins in Moorestown and goes through Delran on its way to the Delaware, biseting the Benner tract.

Several other open space deals are in the works.

The township has a verbal agreement to purchase four acres on Locust Street, formerly the site of a farmers' cold storage facility.

And the township is discussing the purchase of two properties on Garwood Road: 25 acres known as the DiPaolo property and 34 acres adjacent to Swede's Run known as the Traganza property.

All told, the Open Space Advisory Committee has identified 525 acres it would like the township to acquire (a figure that does not include the Benner farm, as its owner, Ruben Benner, did not accede at that time to being part of the list).

Success in acquiring that much acreage would more than double the 406 acres of open space the township now owns, most of it in parks and recreation facilities.

The townships two-cent open space tax generates about $350,000 a year for preservation. The $700,000 collected so far has been supplemented by two grants from the county's open space program -- 1.2 million last and $300,000 so far this year -- and a $700,000 state grant last year.

Of Moorestown's total area -- 9,555 acres -- a study done for the township as part of developing a new master plan concludes that a little over 10 percent of the total is open space of some kind.

The 996 total acres of open space is arrived at by adding 590 acres of "quasi-public" open space -- school property, golf courses and deed-restricted land -- to the 405 acres of municipally-owned land.

Estimates of future growth in Moorestown range from 2,000 to 3,000 more residents, living in anywhere from 700 to 1,000 new housing units.

Some officials predict the additional growth will take place over a period of 20 years.

Others feel that, barring a radical downturn in the economy, the growth will proceed much more quickly.

The township is in the process of revising its master plan, which, when completed by the end of the year, will include more definitive projections of additional growth.