Two national chains are headed
for the lots beside the ShopRite.

Two national chains have picked the empty ground beside the Woolwich ShopRite. Earlier this month the Township Committee named McDonald's and AutoZone as redevelopers of two undeveloped lots on Auburn Road at Center Square Plaza, one resolution for each. McDonald's would sit nearer Franklin Bank, AutoZone over at the Copper Road corner.

The word redeveloper is doing specific work there, and it does not mean approved. Both lots fall inside the Weatherby Redevelopment Area, which under New Jersey procedure adds a round of municipal review ahead of the township's Joint Land Use Board. What a designation buys each company is standing to negotiate in detail with the township and then to file for approvals. The clock on it runs 60 days from adoption, extendable by another 60 and beyond that by formal action of the Committee. Nothing has been scheduled before the board.

For somebody who already owns a home in Woolwich, the useful reading is about who chose the site rather than about the buildings. National chains do their own work on a location before they commit to it, weighing how many households are already within a short drive and how much traffic the road carries. Two of them landing on the same corner in the same month is a statement about the rooftops that are already there, and Woolwich has been adding them for years.

What it changes day to day is small and real: another stop on a trip most households already make to that shopping center. When buyers compare Woolwich with the townships around it, the list of what is within a few minutes is one of the first things they go through, and this adds to it. Formal site plans are not on file yet, so the timing, the layout and even the tenants can still change.