Why the Old Bank on Ark Road Became a Restaurant Before the Old Don Pablo's Did
The parking lot in front of ShopRite on Ark Road smells like brisket most weeknights now. Inside what used to be a PNC Bank lobby, a counter staffed by a handful of people manages orders for more than twenty restaurants that don't otherwise exist as separate buildings. Cars idle in a pickup lane where a drive-through teller window used to be.
On Nixon Drive in East Gate Square, the shopping center that sits next to the Moorestown Mall, the old Don Pablo's is still boarded up. The paint is faded in the shape of letters that spelled out a Tex-Mex chain that stopped existing as a company in 2019, one year after this particular location closed. Nothing has been built there. Nothing has been torn down either.
Both projects have been public knowledge for roughly the same stretch of time. One went from a gutted bank interior to a working restaurant in about four months. The other has now missed its own construction deadline and is heading back to the township for a second try. The difference between them has nothing to do with money, ambition, or how badly Mount Laurel wanted either one. It comes down to whether the project needed a wrecking ball.
The building at 127 Ark Road, in Larchmont Centre just off Route 38, had sat empty for over a decade before Wonder took it over. Wonder is a food hall concept built around one order pulling from more than twenty kitchens at once, and its Mount Laurel location leans on names like Bobby Flay Steak, Streetbird by Marcus Samuelsson, Tejas Barbecue, and Di Fara Pizza. The grand opening happened on October 16, 2025, with a ribbon cutting at 4:30 that afternoon and the doors opening to the public a half hour later.
What made that timeline possible is what the concept doesn't need. Wonder seats roughly sixteen people inside. It is built to be ordered from an app and picked up or delivered, which means the buildout was mostly kitchen line, refrigeration, and a small front counter, not a dining room, a bar, or a patio. A construction update in June 2025 described crews already gutting the old bank's interior and reworking the front facade for additional windows. Four months later, it was open. A third South Jersey Wonder location was already in the works that same fall, planned for The Promenade at Sagemore in Marlton.
Wonder isn't the only proof that interior buildouts move fast in this township. Monterey Prime American Grill, tucked into a former meeting-room space at the Aloft Hotel on Fellowship Road, followed a similar pattern. The high-end steakhouse concept, developed by the same restaurant group behind Moorestown's Harvest Grill, was announced in 2023 with a projected build cost north of six million dollars for the interior alone. No demolition was involved. The space existed inside the hotel already. By the time it opened, it did so without the multi-year saga that a ground-up build tends to invite, and it's been taking reservations and collecting steady reviews since.
Line the three projects up and the pattern gets easier to see:
| Address | What Was There Before | What's There Now | Build Type | Status as of September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 127 Ark Road, Larchmont Centre | Vacant PNC Bank, empty over a decade | Wonder Food Hall | Interior buildout, no demolition | Open since October 16, 2025 |
| 558 Fellowship Road, Aloft Hotel | Unused hotel meeting space | Monterey Prime American Grill | Interior buildout, no demolition | Open and taking reservations |
| 1361 Nixon Drive, East Gate Square | Vacant Don Pablo's, closed 2018 | Lazy Dog Restaurant & Bar (planned) | Full demolition and new construction | Original approval lapsed; new application expected at November's Planning Board meeting |
The same logic explains most of what's opened around town in the last year or so without much fanfare. None of these required a permit for demolition, just a lease and a fit-out crew:
Every one of those took over a space that already had four walls and a roof doing their job. None of them needed a township hearing about knocking anything down.
Lazy Dog Restaurant & Bar is the case that shows what happens when a project doesn't get that shortcut. The plan, approved by the Mount Laurel Planning Board in August 2024, called for demolishing the old Don Pablo's building and constructing a new 9,354-square-foot restaurant with room for 190 guests inside and another 60 on a patio built around a fire pit. It was going to be the chain's first restaurant in South Jersey.
Township approvals in Mount Laurel come with a two-year clock. Once a planning board signs off on a project, the developer has two years to start construction before that approval lapses. That window on the Nixon Drive site ran out at the end of August this year, just weeks before the current date. According to reporting from TAPinto Mount Laurel, Lazy Dog's team is now preparing an entirely new application, expected to go before the Planning Board in November, with the stated reason being a redesign of the existing building. The company's public relations office confirmed there's no new timeline to share yet, only that they're still interested in the site.
This isn't necessarily a sign that Mount Laurel did anything wrong, or that the project is dead. Lazy Dog's own national track record on ground-up builds is inconsistent by nature. A location in Buffalo Grove, Illinois went from approval to opening in under a year and a half. A location in Mira Mesa, California was approved around the same time as Mount Laurel's original plan and isn't expected to open until 2027, a delay the company attributed to changes in its development team and architectural revisions. Full construction projects run on a different kind of clock than interior buildouts, and that clock can reset.
East Gate Square holds a second reminder of this. Chick-fil-A's plan to relocate within the same shopping center, into a new building on the site of the former Bertucci's and Wendy's, also requires demolishing two structures first, and as of the most recent reporting on it, the project was still waiting on its first hearing before the township's board.
The next time a new sign goes up outside an empty storefront in Mount Laurel, the useful question isn't what the restaurant will be. It's what has to happen to the building first. A tenant moving into a space that already has plumbing, a kitchen hood, and four walls tends to open within months. A project that starts with a demolition permit is on a different schedule entirely, one set by planning board calendars rather than construction crews, and one that can send a company back to the drawing board even after years of forward motion.
That distinction, between a space that just needs new life inside old walls and one that needs to be rebuilt from the foundation up, is the same one that separates a straightforward renovation from a project that reshapes a home entirely. It's a useful habit no matter what you're watching change.
Reading a building for what it actually needs, rather than what a sign or an announcement promises, is the same discipline Holly Garber brings to every property she walks through, whether it's a listing being prepared for market or a home a client is weighing for its renovation potential. If you're thinking through what a property in Mount Laurel or the surrounding towns could become, and want a clear-eyed read on what that actually takes, reach out to start the conversation.
Whether you are preparing to sell, searching for your next home, planning a renovation, or exploring an investment opportunity, I welcome a confidential conversation about your goals.
