CHERRY HILL, NJ- Opposition to a proposed adult video store on Route 70 is mounting among residents in the township’s Barclay Farm section and beyond.

People are sending e-mails, making phone calls and visiting neighbors. They’re contacting the township to ask questions and organizing community meetings to get some answers.

“It’s been spreading like wildfire,” said Theresa Mohrfeld, who lives in Barclay Farm. “I haven’t heard one person in favor of it.”

Mohrfeld and others are worried about what effect a sexually-oriented business and its clientele would have on surrounding neighborhoods and the Route 70 business corridor. They point to Kenwood Drive, a quiet, residential street that sits next to the former Kiva Printing building where the adult video store would go, and wonder how that could be an appropriate location.

“When these places move in, they don’t move out,” said Jack Murray, who lives on Kenwood Drive and owns a rental property that abuts the building.

A company called Route 70 Romantic Video and Boutique bought the property near Brace Road more than three years ago, said Robert Marks, the real estate agent involved in the sale. The company’s owner, Jim Restaino, wants to sell adult and nonadult videos at the store, as well as other items. He’s also interested in leasing the building’s basement level to a nightclub operator, Marks said.

Restaino couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

“I don’t know why the township is so heated up about it,” Marks said. “These video stores are all over the place.”

Marks said Restaino owns and operates a shop two doors down from his Route 73 office in Mount Laurel.

“He does a very nice job,” Marks said. “It’s tastefully done. I don’t see why there’s a problem.”

Mayor Bernie Platt’s office wouldn’t say much about the video store because it’s the subject of a lawsuit. His office did pledge, however, to use “every legal remedy” to fight the lawsuit.

“(Our) interests in the case are directly aligned with the residents and families of this township and we want to keep any type of deviant and unsavory business out of Cherry Hill,” read the prepared statement.

According to its suit filed in Superior Court in Camden, Romantic Video was willing to limit adult sales and rentals to 30 percent of the store’s retail area. The company claims the township’s response was to pass an ordinance in 2004 that banned sexually oriented businesses from locating within 1,000 feet of any place of public worship, school, child-care center, nursery, playground, park or community center.

The ordinance, which was amended in 2005, also prohibited such stores within 500 feet of any school bus stop.

In its lawsuit, the company argues that’s a violation of its First Amendment rights because the ordinance seeks to suppress protected speech by eliminating, through over-regulation, all possible locations where such stores can operate.

Romantic Video wants the court to first stop the township from enforcing the ordinance and then declare it unconstitutional. It’s also seeking approval of its building permit and monetary compensation.

“There’s obviously a balancing of the First Amendment coupled with the owner’s property rights,” said Bob Saldutti, president of the Barclay Civic Association. “But it shouldn’t go next to a nice street.”

“I think we have one of the best neighborhoods in South Jersey,” he continued. “Can’t we do something to move it to a different location?”

Residents will try to get the answer to that question at a meeting the civic association organized for next week. Township officials have been invited.

But council Vice President Frank Falcone doesn’t know how much more the township will do.

“The mayor and the lawyers have taken this as far as they can go and that’s just not good enough for the residents,” said Falcone, who lives in Barclay Farm. “We, the residents, will now assume this battle with fresh, new leadership.”