Ribbon-cutting Wednesday for Route 322 bypass in Mullica Hill

Constantine Benas has hung out at the Harrison House Diner & Restaurant, at Route 322 and Main Street in Mullica Hill, since he was knee-high to its marvelous cupcake display, his father George having opened the place in 1986, when Constantine was 4 and the intersection was a semirural backwater.

"See, there's me," he said, laughing at a Little League team photo in the lobby that shows him acting like a goofball, covering his face with his forearms.

"But today, well, today is a different day," said Benas, who now runs the business with his father.

The Harrison House, named after the township in which Mullica Hill is located, sits on one of the most talked-about corners in Gloucester County. It is there that the Route 322 bypass starts - a 1.5-mile stretch that has its official ribbon-cutting Wednesday after four years of land acquisition, construction, and controversy.

"My dad and others have said this is 20 years in the making," Benas said. "I see only good things about it."

For several decades, Mullica Hill has done its best to maintain a genteel, almost cute, downtown. But as the surrounding area became more populated - particularly in towns such as Woolwich - Route 322, of which Main Street was a part, saw increasing traffic.

Sure, that meant more folks passed by Mullica Hill's antique shops, cafes, and historic buildings. But as the town became encircled by developments and office parks and strip malls, it also meant more bone-jarring tractor-trailers rumbling through.

"Quite frankly, the community started avoiding Main Street," said Pat Settar, a real estate agent at the Prudential Fox & Roach office there.

"There was nothing worse than trying to ride a bike down the street and having a Mack truck barreling down on you," said Settar, a longtime member of Mullica Hill's Beautification Committee, which is trying to spruce up Main Street with park benches and mock gaslights.

Thirteen homes and a store were demolished in the $16 million project that transformed Route 322. The bypass is intended to redirect many of the 29,000 vehicles that traveled the road each day to a more open path around the town's east end.

Most of the planned sound baffles and decorative black iron fences are up along the slightly curved stretch. Along the 300 feet where it comes close to the century-old Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church cemetery, the bypass is sunken about six feet and the sound baffle is 15 feet high.