What's next for former Cherry Hill swim club reduced to rubble?
CHERRY HILL – A former swim club here, which once billed itself as the township’s first and finest, now is the highest and driest.
A demolition crew has turned two pools into piles of rubble at the former Kingston Estates Swim Club, a private nonprofit that closed in 2020 after sinking into debt.
Workers are removing an equipment building, a shed, a basketball court and other amenities as part of the township-funded $1.4-million teardown.
The project also includes remediation of soil at the four-acre site and the removal of dead and dying trees, according to the township.
Two large structures — a clubhouse and a pavilion — will survive demolition.
The project will deliver “an open grassed, passive and safe recreation area behind the clubhouse,” according to a recent Facebook post by Mayor Susan Shin Angulo.
The township acquired the longtime “home of the Seals” for $425,000 in October 2020, with officials saying they wanted to prevent development of the large tract within a residential area.
The site, zoned for institutional use, had faced a sheriff’s sale after the club fell behind on a 2006 loan that had funded construction of the clubhouse.
The swim club was Cherry Hill’s first when it opened in 1956 in the newly developed Kingston Estates neighborhood off North Kings Highway.
Over the decades, local families gathered there for swim meets and shuffleboard, picnics and ping pong, barbecues and bocce.
But as membership fell in recent years, the club fell farther and farther behind on a $400,000 construction loan obtained from Commerce Bank.
TD Bank, which acquired the loan after buying Commerce, initiated foreclosure proceedings in 2020.
The bank rejected the club’s request for more time for a turnaround effort, noting the pool’s membership and revenue had fallen each year from 2017 through 2019.
That decline caused "a net financial loss in each of those years," club officials said in a letter to members in 2020.
Twelve private swim clubs continue to operate in Cherry Hill, according to the township’s website.
Online tax returns from recent years indicate often-erratic finances for several of those pools.
For instance, Willowdale Swim Club had deficits totaling almost $44,000 over a three-year period, 2017-19, for which its tax returns are available at Guidestar.org.
Four clubs — Barclay Farm, Covered Bridge, Fox Hollow and Wexford Leas — had deficits in two of three years.
Two clubs — Erlton and Cherry Valley — had surpluses in each of their three years, while Haddontowne had a deficit in one.
Online tax information was not available for the Charleston, Downs Farm, Old Orchard, and Woodcrest clubs.
Jim Walsh is a senior reporter with the Courier-Post, Burlington County Times and The Daily Journal.
This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: Demolition underway at Cherry Hill's former Kingston Estates Swim Club
