Firefighters found the blaze strongest at the northwest corner of the house, as seen from a neighboring backyard, above, and from Hudson Avenue, below. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

Two Red Bank families escaped safely as a predawn fire tore through a Hudson Avenue house Thursday.

One half of the structure, at 46-48 Hudson, was fully involved in flames when firefighters arrived on the scene shortly after 3 a.m., said fire Chief Josh Sanders.

Police patrol units, which were already there, reported that the occupants had escaped safely, he said.

Volunteer firefighters train water on the northwest corner, as seen from Clay Street. (Click to enlarge)

Four adults, two children and three dogs were in the house at the time of the fire, said one of the occupants, Ryan Howard, who was asleep in a second-floor bedroom when the fire broke out.

“I heard the kids next door screaming as they were running out of the house,” said Howard, who lived in the southern half of the two-story structure, at number 48. “Then I saw orange light.”

Ryan said he, his wife and their two dogs were easily able to exit. The couple next door, their two boys and a dog also exited safely, he said.

Firefighters described the blaze as one of the fastest-moving they’d seen in years, though they managed to largely confine it to the northern half the structure at number 46. Northwesterly winds pushed heavy smoke to the ground for blocks around.

The mid-block house is owned by Ray Rapcavage, who also owns several other rental properties on the street.

By JOHN T. WARD

Without explaining the reason for its haste, the Red Bank Council introduced an ordinance change Thursday night to ban retail businesses from remaining open between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.

The law, an amendment to the town’s noise ordinance, would not apply to any business that now operates at those hours, said Mayor Pasquale Menna. Nor would it affect bars and restaurants.

Not a word was said, however, about its potential impact on the East Front Street Welsh Farms convenience store, which is in the midst of planning board hearings over cosmetic changes as it prepares to convert to a 7-Eleven and remain open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The measure was prompted, Menna said, by a neighborhood brouhaha over Best Liquors, a West Side packaged goods store that attracted so many complaints and legal run-ins that the council revoked its liquor license five years ago.

A recent review of police and code enforcement data by police Chief Steve McCarthy led to a recommendation that the town adopt a noise ordinance barring the operation of any business within 100 feet of a residential zone, excepting bars and restaurants, Menna said.

If any council members harbored any reservations about the amendment, they did not speak Thursday night. Councilman Mike DuPont called it “a very creative way to protect our neighborhoods. I think it’s a wonderful initiative.” Councilman Ed Zipprich said it offered “a good opportunity to protect the quality of life, to protect [neighbors] from a change, a dramatic change.”

“This is just a little bit of tweaking to that helps out our residents,” said Councilman Art Murphy.

The proposed change was not listed on the council’s agenda for the meeting, and no copies of its language, which Menna paraphrased, were available.

Afterward, Menna said there was no advance notice of the introduction because the language was still being drafted shortly before the meeting. Asked what the rush was, he replied, “Get it done now.”

Reminded that Best Liquors wasn’t open all night, Menna replied, “Yes, but it was open late.”

Pressed to address the impact on Welsh Farms, Menna said that if the store changes its hours to all-night before the law goes into effect, “they will be fine.”

He also acknowledged, as the store’s attorney maintains, that town officials did not limit the store’s hours of operation when they approved it as a convenience store and filling station in 1975.

The store has never operated all night, and now closes at 10 p.m.

A public hearing and vote on whether to adopt the amendment was scheduled for May 9. The planning board next meets on May 7, but it could not be immediately learned if the Welsh Farms hearings would resume that night.

The recent opening of Lucki Clover, above, in a Broad Street space vacated last September, is seen as one of many indicators of a strengthening comeback.  (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

Without question, the losses have been significant.

Over the past six months, as the global, national and regional economies have struggled to emerge from the wreckage of the 2008 credit meltdown, Red Bank’s retail market has continued to absorb hard-to-shake-off business departures.

Primas Home Cafe. Willy’s Cheesesteaks. Soapmarket. Later this month, Surray Luggage, a Broad Street fixture, will hold a liquidation sale.

But more so than in the recent past, the downtown real estate market has been marked by two noteworthy trends: faster refilling of storefronts, and the end of several key, longtime vacancies.

What’s it all add up to? In a word, recovery, says at least one downtown Churn watcher.

Among new stores yet to open is Femme By Ashley, a lingerie and swimwear shop owned by Ashley Dupré. (Click to enlarge)

Jay Herman, a principal in Downtown Investors, which owns a dozen properties in the district, tells redbankgreen that demand is “absolutely” on the upswing. He attributes that to the end of a national bottoming-out, and to the interplay of five local elements: retail, restaurant, residential, office an entertainment.

“The downtown is leading the way,” said Herman, who recently broke ground on an expansion for tenant Morgan Stanley on Linden Place, just steps from Broad Street. “We are finding more success than is true nationally.”

Or regionally, for that matter. Herman says anyone driving Route 35 from Hazlet to Brielle and looking at the shopping centers “will find that the success in filling vacancies is not what is in downtown Red Bank.”

Here’s a lookback at some of the key activity in Red Bank’s main business district over the past six months.

• Print shop AlphaGraphics moved to 68 White Street, former home of Cigars Plus, and quickly saw the space it vacated in the City Centre Plaza, at Maple Avenue and West Front Street, leased to Yo Mon Yogurt, a self-serve frozen yogurt business owned by Michael and Jennifer Mann of Little Silver. AlphaGraphics is open for business and Yo Mon is under construction.

• David Banegas, an action painter who already had a gallery in Delray Beach, Florida, opened a new gallery/live-painting studio into the space vacated five months earlier by clothing store Bella Mystique, at 43 Broad Street.

• Nina’s Waffles & Sweets opened at 15 White Street, in a space recently vacated by Filakia Children’s Boutique.

Yestercades, a retro electronic gaming parlor, opened at 80 Broad Street, filling a giant, gaping hole that had defied filling since the failure, in 2007, of f LJ’s Total Man/Today’s Woman clothing store.

• Barefoot Bride, a gown shop that had called Fair Haven home for more than 45 years, moved to the 2,000-square-foot storefront at 65 Monmouth Street, former home Rob Amend and Michael Yavorsky’s of Red Ginger Home furnishings, which relocated to Broad Street more than a year ago.

• LoBoudoir Photography, which offers the latest in must-have hubba-hubba personal imagery, joined its sibling CLB Photography and Mike Hernandez Jr.’s Sounds to Go DJ service to take over the storefront at 21 East Front Street, a glass-fronted space last tenanted by the chic furniture seller Design Front, which left in 2009.

• Two dress shops moved in days apart, and one storefront apart, on Monmouth Street in November.

Jessy Krol’s Emilia took over 28 Monmouth, vacated in early August by Cocoon, an accessories retailer. Then,  Rue Royale Couture, specializing in prom and pageantwear, took over at 24 Monmouth, formerly held by Polish tableware dealer Adams Imports.

In between those two was David Levine Salon, which relocated to 69 Monmouth, former home of Cheveux Salon, leaving a yet-to-be filled vacancy at 26 Monmouth.

• Also on Monmouth, in the shop that formerly housed Miss Sherri’s Honey Child Music, Josephine More opened Innovative Nails.

• Kravings Frozen Yogurt opened at 90 Broad, filling another of the downtown’s most persistent vacancies.

Remember Altamonte Imports? Yeah, neither does Google. That was the last tenant in the space. Kravings owner Jill Pecoraro, bouncing back from the failure of another fro-yo franchisor with which she had contracted, shifted gears to create the new brand and outfit the gleaming, green-tiled space, which debuted in February.

• Kramer Portraits, which for the past 10 years had occupied a narrow storefront next door to the Jade Garden take-out Chinese place on Broad Street, took one of the two storefronts at 8 East Front last month. That’s the former Kislin’s Sporting Goods building, which vacated in 2005 and had no successor tenants.

As reported by Retail Churn last week, Vizzini & Company, a furniture dealer, plans to leave its anchor space in the Galleria at Red Bank on the West Side to take the second of the two storefronts, ending the building’s seven-year drought.

• Hair stylist Salon Concrete has signed to take over half the space at the 5,600-square foot 123-127 Broad Street, said salon owner Christine Zilinski. For years, the building was home to Surray Luggage, which moved to the opposite side of Broad several years ago.

• In news that broke on redbankgreen and gained national coverage, Ashley Dupré, whose infamous romps with Eliot Spitzer torpedoed his career as New York’s governor, plans to open a lingerie and swimwear store called Femme by Ashley at 15 Broad Street, a stylish storefront recently vacated by children’s boutique Lavish Kids. Outfitting of the store is underway, with an eye toward a May opening, we’re told.

• Jr’s West End, the Long Branch late-night hamburger and sandwich restaurant launched five years ago, plans to expand into the former home of Zuleyka’s Kitchen at 17 West Front Street.

• After five months of downtime, popular Red Bank coffee mainstay Zebu Forno reopened at a new address on March 1: 12 Broad Street  just a few doors down from the storefront it occupied for a decade at 20 Broad.

• Jonathan Erdelyi, a 30-year-old national racing champion, rolled out Red Bicycle Studio at 27 West Front Street. The 975-square-foot storefront was last occupied by Down to the Felt, a retailer of parlor games now operating out of 182 West Front, according to its website.

• Sunkissed Airbrush Tanning opened in a tiny second-floor space upstairs from That Hot Dog Place, in the alleyway beside the Dublin House on Monmouth Street in Red Bank.

• Lucki Clover, a women’s clothing and accessories store, opened in half the space formerly taken by Zebu Forno, at 20 Broad. The other half is set to be the home of a Boardwalk Fresh Burgers & Fries, setting up an interesting potential hamburger war with Jr.’s, not to mention existing restaurants.

• Workers were seen doing early prep work recently in the planned home of Subway Café, a 28-seat “hip” variation on the sandwich shop chain’s usual offerings, at 60 Broad Street, in a long-vacant space between the Red Bank Nail Salon and Hip & Humble Home furnishings.

• 12 Monmouth is being outfitted for Ice Costume Jewelry, which hopes to open in just a couple of weeks, store manager Ashely Goral tells Churn. The space was most recently home to Soapmarket, which vacated in January to become an online-only retailer.

• Elio Ventrella’s The Glam Bar hair styling salon – blowouts, no cuts – opened for business, after a glammy red-carpet style opening party. (That’s the salon’s designer lounge at right.) The salon replaces Butterfly Fine Arts at 116 Broad.

• Lucky Break Billiards and Café, opened at 14 West Front Street.  The gaming parlor, with five pool tables and a shuffleboard table, is situated within steps of five bars.

By JOHN T. WARD

After three decades getting a discount, Red Bank tenants could have to pick up full cost-of-living increases starting later this year.

The borough council introduced an ordinance change Wednesday night that would allow landlords to increase rents by the full amount of the Consumer Price Index published by the federal Labor Department.

Since as far back as 1978 or even earlier, local increases have been capped at 60 percent of the CPI rise when a tenant pays for heat, and 80 percent when the landlord does.

The reason for the change, said Mayor Pasquale Menna, is that no one can remember the rationale for the discount, and no paper trail for it exists, leaving it open to a lawsuit.

“If it were challenged, we would not prevail,” said Menna, an attorney who made his political bones as a tenants’ advocate in the early 1980s. “It’s defective.”

The borough is also out of compliance with a state law requiring towns with rent control laws to review their ordinances every five years, Menna said. In Red Bank, “it hasn’t been done in at least 20 years,” he tells redbankgreen.

The glaring inconsistencies came to light at an October meeting of the Rent Leveling Board, which enforces the ordinance and adjudicates disagreements between landlords of multifamily residences and tenants. Landlords had previously appealed to the council to be freed of the CPI cap.

At that meeting, a senior citizen expressed concern about the impact of full CPI increases on renters living on fixed incomes.

Menna said the amended ordinance, if passed, would require the rent board to review the law every two years.

Here’s the proposed amendment: 2012-7A hearing and possible adoption are scheduled for April 11.

The agenda for the bimonthly meeting of Red Bank’s council Wednesday night is a busy one.

On the docket:

• Red Bank RiverCenter comes in for approval of its annual budget. No details have yet been provided. Last year’s spending plan, like the two that preceded it, totaled $512,000. The business promotion agency, which manages the borough’s state-chartered Special Improvement District, is funded by a surtax on commercial properties within a defined zone and gets no money from borough coffers.

• Proponents of a community garden, who were shot down repeatedly last year in their request to farm a portion of the public library property overlooking the Navesink River, return to renew the plea, this time with a twist: that the town allow it for just one growing season.

• There’s an ordinance up for introduction to amend the rent control ordinance. There’s no information on the borough website, or the agenda itself, explaining what this is about.

• A bond ordinance to cover the costs of installing artificial turf fields at Count Basie Fields is up for final vote.

The council meets at 6:30 p.m. in the first-floor council chambers at borough hall, 90 Monmouth Street, corner of Maple Avenue.

Here’s the full agenda: Red Bank Council Agenda 032812

By JOHN T. WARD

After nearly a year of controversy, a 100-foot tulip poplar that rallied both supporters and detractors of Fair Haven’s tree preservation law is coming down.

With members saying they were swayed by the “compelling” testimony of an arborist last week, the borough planning board reversed itself Thursday night, giving builder Bob Susser of Rumson an OK to remove the tree on the site of a three-home development on Woodland Drive.

The law, written to prevent clear-cutting, prompted gnashing of teeth even among officials who relied on it to repeatedly deny Susser of Buttonwood Investors, a permit to take down the tree. They said the law was poorly written, giving them little or no guidance on how to handle appeals. One board member called it “spongey.”

Over the course of the last ten months, Susser had a permit granted; rescinded over concerns about a conflict of interest involving the borough code enforcement officer; denied by the borough administrator; and rejected on appeal of that denial by the planning board. The board also shot down Susser’s request for a re-hearing of the appeal.

Last week, however, Susser was back before the board, again asking to remove the tree or, in the alternate, to amend a site plan than the board had previously approved, before the board was drawn into the tree issue.

At the March 14 hearing, Michale LaMana, an arborist hired by Susser testified that the tree, while healthy, was at risk of “catastrophic failure” because of its bifurcated trunk, size and brittleness.

LaMana’s conclusions matched those of two other tree experts, including Bill Brooks of Red Bank, Fair Haven’s contractual tree enforcement officer. But because of the substantive similarity in testimony of the arborists, board members faced the question of whether they had the right to vote again on the matter or were barred from doing so, as several neighbors argued they were, by the legal principle of res judicata, which says, in essence: the matter has been decided and may not be voted on again.

The case was carried until a special meeting Thursday so three members who were absent from the March 14 session could listen to a recording of the hearing in order to vote. And when the matter resumed, a 4-2 majority of board members concluded that LaMana’s testimony had been so “compelling” as to merit a reopening of the matter.

In a unanimous vote, Susser finally won approval.

“They got me with ‘catastrophic failure,’” said Chairwoman Joan Jay. “It’s time to put this to bed.”

Two other board members said they had been anguished by thoughts of a tree limb falling on someone.

“I couldn’t live with myself if a large branch fell down and hit somebody in the head and killed them,” said Alison Dale.

Afterward, a neighbor asked if the borough would alert neighbors before the tree came down and have an official on site when it does.

Susser tells redbankgreen the tree will be cut down as early as next week.

He said he agreed with councilman and planning board member Bob Marchese, who contends the law is unconstitutional as it applies to property rights. Additionally, Susser said the law is flawed in that it was used to force him before a planning board, which deals with land-use matters and is not equipped to interpret or apply the tree law.

“Thank god that reasonable minds prevailed,” he said.

The tree had previously been described by experts as 60 feet or so tall, but LaMana testified that laser measurements put it at 100 feet. He also estimated that it had put down roots as early as 1930.

“I’d almost rather be incinerated than have to live down here,” says Suellen Sims, below inspecting her new home’s fallout shelter, built beneath an earthen berm alongside Harris Park. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

It survived the Cold War without so much as a scratch, but a Red Bank fallout shelter is about to prove no match for the great wave of American home renovation.

Sometime in the next few weeks, a backhoe is expected to demolish the underground bunker beside a River Road house recently acquired by Suellen and Jamie Sims, who plan an addition to accommodate her mother.

Suellen Sims in her soon to be demolished bunker. (Click to enlarge)

The Cold War was raging in 1959 or 1960 when Dr. James Clark, a Red Bank eye surgeon, decided like many other Americans that he needed a fallout shelter to protect his family from radiation in the event of a nuclear attack.

But when a manufacturer of mail-order shelters told him there was a two-year backlog, Clark decided to build his own on the Harris Park side of the house, said his son, David Clark.

“He drew it up on paper, dug the hole, designed the hand-cranked air-filtration system,” said Clark, of Fair Haven. “He built wooden platform beds, and loaded it with canned goods.”

The result, on the outside, was a handsome berm of soil, grass and pine trees trimmed with a low brick wall. Inside, about a dozen feet below the surface, was a room off about 12 by 12, set off to the right of the stairwell, because, said Clark, “radiation can’t turn corners.”

Clark, who was about 10 or 12 when the bunker was built, said his father gave him the chore of emptying water containers and refilling them each month, adding three drops of chlorine to each. The elder Clark died suddenly in 1962 of a heart attack, and in the ensuing years, the son and his pals used to occasionally hang out in the bunker.

“They’d ask if they could come down here if the Russians attacked,” he said. “I’d say, ‘sure, you and the 5,000 other people who have asked.’”

The new owners, who have never met Clark, referred to the bunker at a recent planning board hearing as a “bomb shelter,” but Clark says it wasn’t built for that kind of shock. “A bomb hits the top, everybody’s dead,” he said.

Suellen Sims said that when a real estate agent first showed her and her husband the house, the bunker wasn’t included in the listing information. “We said, ‘What are all those pipes sticking up out of the ground?’”

Turns out they’re part of the air filtering system, equipped originally with automotive air filters.

Sims, who said she had to duck under her desk and participate in air raid drills as a schoolgirl and recalls having been “terrified” during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, still finds it “weird that you would build this just for yourself and your family.”

And the shelter itself she finds “dystopian. I’d almost rather be incinerated than have to live down here the rest of my life,” she said.

With the bunker’s days now numbered, Sims says her daughter has suggested a sendoff party, complete with t-shirts bearing the message: “I got bombed in the bomb shelter.”

Red Bank-based homebuilder Hovnanian Enterprises notched a 6.7-percent sales gain in the first fiscal quarter from a year ago, the company reported Tuesday morning.

The closely-held publicly traded company continued to lose money in the quarter, but narrowed the loss to $18.3 million, down from $64.14 million a year ago, it said in an announcement.

The net loss marked the 21st time in the last 22 quarters that Hovnanian, New Jersey’s largest homebuilder, has failed to generate a profit.

From the announcement:

“We were very pleased with the 27% year-over-year growth in net contracts, the 28% year-over-year increase in backlog and the 100 basis point sequential improvement in gross margin during our first quarter,” commented Ara K. Hovnanian, Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer. “Additionally, the spring selling season is off to a good start in February 2012, with 38% year-over-year growth in net contracts and home prices remained relatively stable throughout the first quarter. We are hopeful that these positive trends continue throughout the spring selling season,” concluded Mr. Hovnanian.

By JOHN T. WARD

Eight months after selling one of Rumson’s most jaw-dropping homes for $12 million, Heisman Trophy winner and financier Pete Dawkins has picked up a relatively modest house across town.

Monmouth County property records show Dawkins and his wife, Judy, closed on a house on Highland Avenue earlier this month, paying $1.3 million.

Unlike Long Point, the Dawkinses’ former Navesink River-front estate whose driveway was nearly as long as their new street, the new place has neighboring homes just a dozen feet away on either side.

As to what he Dawkinses plan to do with the house, they’re not saying.

“That’s not something I can help you with, thank you,” a woman who answered the phone at the Dawkinses number told redbankgreen before hanging up Tuesday afternoon.

The new abode appears to represent a striking change in lifestyle for the couple.

Seventy-three-year-old Pete Dawkins, who won the 1958 Heisman at West Point, went on to become a Rhodes scholar, a career Army officer, a onetime Senate hopeful and Wall Street executive, ending his career as vice chairman at Citigroup.

In 2000, he and his wife bought Long Point from the widow of an heir to the A&P supermarket fortune for $4.5 million, and then promptly tore down the existing mansion.

When they were finished rebuilding, the 10.4-acre property featured a sumptuous 18,000-square-foot showcase main residence with 180-degree views along the river. A ginormous poolhouse that the couple wanted to build spurred a long court battle with their next-door neighbors, Wall Street trader Mickey Gooch and his wife, Diane, publisher of the Two River Times. The Dawkinses won.

The couple sold the West River Road estate last June to George Hall, a hedge fund manager and champion horse owner, grossing less than half the original asking price of $29.9 million.

The new Dawkins crib, which had been on the market for a year at $1.4 million, is a buff gray three-level built in 2008 with five bedrooms – the master of which is a not-ostentatious 19 feet by 15 – and four full baths. Listing literature said the house “exudes a Nantucket ambiance” with cedar shakes siding, two fireplaces, Brazilian cherry floors and a butler’s pantry, but its most prominent exterior feature is a two-car garage that hides the front door.

The house is also on the waterfront, but in this case on a creek that separates mainland Rumson from Barley Point Island.

Gloria Nilson, of Gloria Nilson Realtors, represented the Dawkinses in the transaction. She did not return a request for comment.

The sellers were Dennis and Suzanne Shea.

By JOHN T. WARD

Officials of the bank that owns the rights to build the Courtyards at Monmouth housing development told Red Bank officials Thursday night that the project will begin going into the ground at a blighted corner this year.

They also pledged to be better neighbors, after a demolition contractor failed to fulfill a pledge by the bank to give adjoining homeowners advance notice of demolition work last August. Neighbors complained at the time about dust that had infiltrated their homes.

“We admit it, our wrecking contractor blew it,” said Amboy Bank chief operating officer Stanley Koureyva, who apologized to neighbors who turned out for a meeting of the borough zoning board.

Amboy, whose GS Realty subsidiary won board approval for the project last April, was back on what was characterized as a minor technicality: the desire to split the project’s 45 market-rate units and 12 affordable units into separate lots by the creation of a 100-foot-long property boundary.

Bank representatives told the board the change was necessary for “financing options” that they did not detail, and said the change would have no effect whatsoever on the approved plan, or when it gets built.

The borough council last week approved a developer’s agreement with the bank that requires that the affordable units be completed before the final certificate of occupancy on the market-rate units is issued by the town.

Koureyva said that obligation will be met, even though the bank plans to sell the two parcels, “probably to to two different developers,” because Amboy is financing the buildout at the site, which is bounded by Monmouth, West and Oakland streets.

“GS Realty will never build,” he said. Instead, “we will sell it to a very responsible developer that is well known to the county.”

Two prior development plans under different owners failed to yield any progress at the corner, which is considered integral to a revitalization of the western Monmouth Street corridor linking the town’s two main business districts.

Amboy, by contrast, is “staying in this through the end,” Koureyva said.

No objections to the subdivision proposal were voiced, and the board granted unanimous approval.