Plans are underway to build 78 market-rate townhouses on three sites near Camden’s Delaware River waterfront.
Market-rate, owner-occupied properties are a new direction in a city that has seen a building boom in recent years, mostly in subsidized and affordable housing.
Each project is led by Camden-based The Michaels Organization, with investments from the family of South Jersey Democratic power broker George E. Norcross III and the family-owned supply chain company NFI of Camden.
Michaels, a national residential developer, is overseeing the redevelopment of Ablett Village, a World War II-era housing project in the city’s Cramer Hill section. Norcross, chairman of the Cooper University Health Care board of trustees, has been involved with several commercial projects in Camden.
2026 Google Earth with annotations by Jersey Digs
The first market-rate project from the group – Camden Transformation Partners LLC – got Planning Board approval in June to construct 18 townhouses near the Rutgers University-Camden campus. The properties are expected to sell for around $500,000 each.
“This is just a microcosm of things to come,” Nicholas Cangelosi, Michaels regional vice president for development, said in July of the approved project.
Camden Transformation Partners is scheduled to appear before the Planning Board in September for approval of 23 four-bedroom townhouses at Water and Pearl streets, next to the Ben Franklin Bridge with unobstructed views of Center City Philadelphia.
Fourth-floor 10-by-15-foot terraces would be at the front of the townhouses with 5-by-12-foot decks in the back.
The group also will seek approval for 21 townhouses behind the ones with Delaware River views. The third part of the project, before the board, calls for 16 townhouses about a block away on Penn Street, between Riverside Drive and Victor Place, across from the Hilton Garden Inn.
