Voorhees opens Early Childhood Development Center after $18 million project; kitchen change, shared services noted

Voorhees Township School District opened the Voorhees Early Childhood Development Center for preschool students on June 2, 2025, district officials said during the board meeting. The district closed on a converted building in Gibbsboro and completed renovations so the facility could accept its first students.

District officials said the project’s funding combined $12 million from the district’s capital reserve and a $6 million Preschool Facilities Expansion Grant. “$18,000,000 dollar funding for this project was made up of $12,000,000 from capital reserve and $6,000,000 from the preschool facilities expansion grant,” the board secretary said.

The district purchased the former commercial building at 250 Haddonfield Berlin Road in Gibbsboro after a multi-step approval process that included state review and three Gibbsboro planning-board hearings required because the site’s use changed from a skating rink and medical office to a preschool. The board secretary said the building was added to the district’s long-range facilities plan with an architect’s estimated cost of $18,000,000 and that state approval and planning-board approvals preceded the April 2024 closing.

Construction work was awarded to Wetherby Construction and Renovation Corp. The original construction contract was reported at $14,598,000; three change orders and an allowance increased the total contract value to $15,244,003.76. District staff explained that the contract included a $300,000 allowance for unforeseen items and that one of the larger scope changes was converting a planned warming kitchen into a full-service kitchen to serve the building’s projected enrollment and meal needs. The board secretary said that if the kitchen modification were excluded, the change-order portion would be $72,007.85, or less than 1% of the contract.

Officials described the kitchen decision as driven by meal logistics and projected enrollment: the ECDC will house about 285 preschool seats when fully enrolled and the district expects to provide breakfast and lunch at the site once counts next October qualify the program for meal funding. For the current year, lunches are being prepared at Signal Hill while the full kitchen is completed; the district estimated kitchen finish in July 2025.

The board secretary said 93 students attended in the first week after opening and that preschool registration for 2025–26 was “overwhelming.” The district described classroom sizing and a design requirement that each preschool classroom be over 900 square feet; the renovated building contains 24 classrooms. A smaller full-size kitchen with an attached walk-in freezer placed outside the building was chosen to maximize classroom space.

Several operations items tied to the project were noted on the agenda. The district will add one school resource officer to the existing shared-services agreement with the Voorhees Township Police Department; Gibbsboro will share 21% of that cost because Gibbsboro’s enrollment at the site is five classrooms versus Voorhees’ 19 classrooms. The district also described a shared-service agreement with Camden County for solar-powered advanced school warning beacons on Route 561 (Haddonfield Berlin Road); the county requires the agreement because the signs sit in the county right-of-way, the district said. The district will own and maintain the signs and said their cost was already included in the construction contract.

Board members and administrators showed before-and-after photos of the renovation at the meeting and described classroom configurations as unique because the work was a renovation rather than new construction. Officials emphasized the partnership with Gibbsboro officials during permitting and the traffic-study work required to establish parent drop-off and bus flows.

No bond referendum was required for the project, the board secretary said. The board approved the building-and-grounds agenda items at the meeting by unanimous vote.

Clarifying details presented in the meeting: the construction contract award (Wetherby Construction and Renovation Corp.), the original contract amount ($14,598,000), an allowance of $300,000, three change orders increasing the contract to $15,244,003.76, a $6,000,000 state preschool facilities grant and $12,000,000 from district capital reserve (totaling $18,000,000), first-week enrollment of 93 students, projected preschool universe of approximately 500 students over five years, and a shared-service SRO cost split where Gibbsboro will pay 21%.

The district said additional related agenda items (change order 20.3 and finance item 18.26) were included for board approval; those items were approved as part of the buildings-and-grounds consent votes.