Politics & Government

Mayor Chats About Liquor Licenses, Main Street Improvement, Budget

Mayor John Button spoke to the Moorestown Business Association Wednesday morning on a wide variety of topics.

As the guest speaker at the Moorestown Business Association’s monthly meeting, Mayor John Button touched on several topics, ranging from liquor licenses to Main Street revitalization to the budget.

The following are a few of the mayor’s comments.

On PREIT's plans for the mall

"We’ve invited (PREIT president) Joe (Coradino) to come to a council meeting to advise the public firsthand, and probably you’ll see that the first meeting in February … The idea is this: The restaurants all want street time on 38, just like as you see at Cherry Hill (Mall), so the custom at our mall will be the same … (PREIT's) not planning to add a parking garage. They’re planning to have valet parking for a couple of those restaurants, as they do at cherry hill."

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On council's plans for liquor license revenue

"I’ll be surprised if you see council take and turn around and give everybody a $50 tax rebate or something. That would be a pretty poor operational decision from my standpoint. I think you’ll see council look for ways to use that money over time to the ."

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On the effect to downtown of adding alcohol-serving restaurants to the mall

"I think right this minute what happens is people go up to Main Street, if they want to take their bottle of wine and sit in one of these great restaurants we have here, and they have a wonderful night; and if they don’t want to do that, but they want to buy a drink outside … they go somewhere else. So from that perspective, I think what will happen now is that somewhere else may be in Moorestown. I don’t think it changes the dynamic."

On the

"I’d love to see them put in the concept that the Ritz used to have, where they have some different movies as opposed to the kind of things that Loews (Cherry Hill) has. I made my voice heard, but that’s off the table. I just said, ‘Hey, this would be great. I think you’d see lots of Moorestown (residents) at the theater if you did something like that.'"

On

"I welcome a dialogue with you folks, and with others, about what we’re going to do here. We need to turn our attention to Main Street … Parking certainly is one of the issues. There’s been talk about having a coordinator for main street ... I think we’re getting ready to plunge ourselves into that conversation … We’re looking for Moorestown to thrive and be a very business supportive environment. We’ve done some things around water connection charges and that kind of thing to try and do that, and so I think, hopefully, we’re becoming easier to do business with than we have been in the past."

On the budget

"One of the fortunate things we have happening for us budget-wise, is that as we dive into some of these things that we’ve been talking about—the municipal complex, the fields, things like that—first of all, Moorestown was very low relative to other towns in terms of our overall debt. We’re in a good position, but that debt falls off markedly in 2013. So (this) year, if we get going as we plan with the municipal project, we may have a one-year spike in 2013, but then our debt falls off markedly."


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