Gloucester Township Roofing has handled roofing in Woodbury for more than 20 years, from leaking porch roofs on single houses to reroofing questions on buildings that hold dozens of apartments. The work starts the same way on either one: we find where water is actually getting in before we price anything, which means a look in the attic or top-floor space as well as on the roof itself.
Owners hear a straight answer first on whether a roof can be repaired, and only after that do we talk about replacing it. When replacement is the right call, the written estimate is itemized so it can be set beside another contractor’s bid and compared fairly. Nobody should have to guess what a single lump-sum number covers.
This page is about the part of the city’s roofing work that most contractor pages skip: the large apartment building, where a new roof is a financed project decided by an owner and a manager and carried out while people live underneath it. If you own a house here, the same crew and the same habits apply, and the sections below still explain how we plan the work.
Where Woodbury’s Apartments Are
A city with real apartment buildings
Woodbury counts 4,718 housing units in the Census Bureau’s 2024 five-year survey, and 511 of them sit in buildings of 50 or more units. Of those 511, 464 are rented. For a city of roughly 10,000 people that is a meaningful share, and it means a noticeable slice of residents live under roofs that no single household controls.
Renting is common across the city, not only in the big buildings. The same survey counts 1,457 renter households among 4,206 occupied homes, about 34.6 percent. When a tenant reports a stain on a ceiling, the call reaches us through an owner or a property manager, and the person who approves the repair is rarely the person whose bedroom is getting wet.
Two-unit houses and small rentals
Between the single house and the large building sits a layer of small rentals. Two-unit buildings hold 381 of the city’s units, and 298 of those are rented, with another 238 rented units in three- and four-unit buildings. On these properties the owner usually makes the roofing decision alone, often from a distance, and depends on clear photos and a written scope to decide.
For a small-rental owner, we photograph what we find on the roof and in the attic and send it along with the estimate. If the old shingles come off and the decking underneath has rotted, those boards are photographed and shown before they are replaced, at a per-sheet price already fixed in the contract. No surprise line gets added at the end.
What changes on a large roof
A building with 50 or more apartments rarely carries the same roof as a house. Large residential buildings commonly use low-slope systems such as EPDM rubber, TPO or PVC single-ply membranes, or torch-down modified bitumen, and some pair a low-slope main roof with pitched sections over entries or wings. The right repair depends on which system is actually up there, so we confirm it on site before recommending anything.
Flashing does much of the work on these roofs, at parapet walls, equipment curbs, pipe boots and drains. When we redo a roof, flashing at those points is replaced rather than smeared over with caulk, the same rule we follow at a chimney or skylight on a house. Sealant over tired flashing tends to fail again, while new flashing is what keeps the top floor dry.
Looking for roofing closer to Haddonfield? See Roofing in Haddonfield.
Colonial Park Apartments and Its 2014 Roof
200 apartments on South Evergreen Avenue
The clearest public example of how a Woodbury apartment building gets a new roof is Colonial Park Apartments at 401 South Evergreen Avenue. The Housing Authority of Gloucester County lists it as a Section 8 New Construction property for elderly residents, with 200 one-bedroom apartments, 20 of them modified for people with physical disabilities. State parcel records place the address inside Woodbury City.
Eligibility is set for elderly households whose incomes do not exceed 60 percent of the area median, so the residents are seniors, many of them home during the day. Any roofing work on a building like that has to be planned around people who cannot simply leave for the week while a crew works overhead.
How the 2014 renovation was funded
The financing is laid out in the audited statements of the Seniors Housing Development Corporation of Gloucester County, a component unit of the county housing authority. On February 25, 2011, the corporation sold Colonial Park for $8,810,000 to a tax-credit partnership, Colonial Park, L.P., to secure more funding for major renovations. That figure is the sale price of the building, not the cost of a roof.
The renovations were completed in 2014. According to the same statements, the main components were the installation of a new roof with solar panels and a redesign of the apartments’ kitchens and bathrooms. The roof came first on that list, and on any building the roof is what protects every improvement made beneath it.
What the public record leaves out
The documents do not describe the roof itself. They do not name its system, slope, membrane or contractor, and they do not break out what the roof alone cost. We have no connection to the building, its owners or the housing agencies involved, and we mention it here only because it is a documented case of a Woodbury apartment roof handled as a capital project.
Paying for and Deciding on a Large Roof
A capital project, not a weekend call
Colonial Park’s path shows the pattern. The owner did not simply call a roofer when the roof wore out; it changed the ownership structure to raise money, then bundled the roof with interior work into one renovation finished three years after the sale. On a large building, a roof is usually a budget line planned years ahead rather than an emergency purchase.
That timeline changes what an owner needs from a roofer early on. Before any money is raised, someone has to know the roof’s real condition, which areas are leaking now and which can wait, and what a full replacement would include. Our inspections are written for that stage, with photos and a plain statement of whether repairs can carry the roof to the planned project date.
Who signs off
On a single house the owner decides. On a large apartment building the decision can pass through several hands: an owning partnership, a management company, a lender or investor, and in subsidized housing a public agency or its nonprofit affiliate. At Colonial Park, the development corporation continues to oversee management and owns the land under the building, which it leases to Colonial Park, L.P.
We work with whoever holds the authority on a given building, and we ask early who that is. A property manager can usually approve an emergency leak repair, while a replacement may need an owner’s vote or a lender’s review. Knowing that before the estimate is written saves weeks of revisions later.
Estimates built for a review
A bid that goes in front of a board or a lender has to be readable by people who have never stood on the roof. Ours lists tear-off, decking, underlayment, flashing, ventilation and gutters as separate lines, so a reviewer can line it up against a competing bid item by item. Where rooftop panels or equipment must come off, removal and reinstallation are planned into the schedule from the start rather than discovered on the day.
Reroofing Over Occupied Apartments
Notice and phasing
A large reroof happens over people’s homes. We plan the work in sections so that only part of the roof is open at a time, and we give the manager a schedule that can go to residents ahead of each phase. In a senior building that notice matters even more, because residents need to know when there will be noise overhead and which entrances or parking areas will be blocked.
Each open section is dried in before the crew leaves for the day. We watch the National Weather Service forecast for zone NJZ017 Gloucester, issued from the Mount Holly office, and do not open more roof than can be closed before weather arrives. A leak into an occupied apartment during a reroof is the outcome the whole schedule exists to prevent.
Tracing leaks in a building full of tenants
When a top-floor apartment reports water, the stain on the ceiling is rarely directly under the opening. We check the roof surface and the space beneath it, including any attic or ceiling access the building has, and follow the water back to where it actually enters. Only then do we say whether a repair will hold or whether the area belongs in a larger project.
That answer comes in plain terms. If a section of flashing or a failed seam explains the leak, we say so and price the repair, even when a full replacement is on the owner’s long-range plan. A manager can then fix the problem now and keep the bigger project on its own schedule.
Keeping the grounds safe each day
Residents walk the same sidewalks and parking lots the crew uses. At the end of every work day we clean the grounds, driveways and gutters and run a magnet sweep for roofing nails, which matters on a property where residents use walkers or wheelchairs. Debris chutes and dumpsters go where the manager agrees they will not block an entrance.
Woodbury houses get the same care
Most roofs in Woodbury still sit on houses, and the habits above carry over to them. Where a house has slate or cedar, we repair it with matching material when it can be found, and new shingle colors are chosen with samples held against the actual brick, stone or siding. Contracts follow New Jersey’s home improvement rules, including the right-to-cancel notice.
After a storm, we photograph the damage and write it up for the owner’s own insurance claim, whether that owner is a household or a building partnership, and we will meet the adjuster on site when asked. Every job, large or small, starts with the same first step: finding out what is really wrong with the roof before deciding what to do about it.
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