Red Bank Primary School will have a new principal in September, and she’s a tweeter.

The district board of ed approved the selection of Erin Mulligan-Pierre, right, Tuesday night to replace Rick Cohen, said Superintendent Laura Morana.

The two-school district will also have a new business administrator, replacing Annie Darrow, who recently took a job with the Howell school district.

Now working as the director of curriculum in the pre-K-to-12 Keyport district, Mulligan-Pierre is scheduled to start work July 1 at an annual salary of $108,000, said Morana.

Cohen left the district in March after six years as principal to become director of curriculum in Metuchen.

Mulligan-Pierre was one of 67 candidates for the job, 10 of whom were interviewed by a selection committee comprised of primary school teachers and staff, the PTO president administrators.

The names of the top three candidates were sent to Morana, who said she was pleased to recognize one. She said she had met Mulligan-Pierre at a conference a year ago, and the South Amboy resident had in recent months visited the primary school to see some Red Bank initiatives in action.

The job of principal, Morana said, “is not the same as it was 10 or 20 years ago.

“You have to come in, with the set of expectations that are in place, having the self-confidence that ‘I am capable of leading the school in a way to produce the desired student outcomes,’” she said.

Mulligan-Pierre posted a tweet on Thursday night linking to an Asbury Park Press article about her selection with a comment, “Hey! That’s me!”

The school board also named Debra Pappagallo as business administrator and board secretary, effective July 15 or sooner.

Pappagallo joins the district from Red Bank Regional, where she has more than ten years of experience as an assistant business administrator.

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.

“The parent involvement in this school has just been amazing,” said Cohen, 38, who’s been principal for the past six years. “That gives the kids a real sense of belonging and pride.”

Superintendent Laura Morana tells redbankgreen that an interim principal is expected to be named tonight, and that a search committee will commence interviews for a replacement next week. (Click to enlarge)

The spending plan includes debt service on the estimated $1 million cost of a replacing 25-year-old Ladder 91, above. 

By JOHN T. WARD

Still a work in progress, the 2012 Red Bank budget calls for a $94 tax increase on property assessed at the borough-average $401,393, officials said Wednesday night.

The figure  reflects a 4.5-percent increase in the municipal rate, to 53.2 cents per $100 of assessed value, from 50.9 in 2011, said Chief Financial Officer Colleen Lapp.

Driving the increase is an unexpected $464,000 spike in insurance costs, “the majority of it health insurance;” tax-appeal refunds, which in the first two months of the year have already rung up to $135,000; and a contractual $118,000 increase in pay for police, said Lapp.

Councilman Mike DuPont, who heads the governing body’s finance committee, which is responsible for crafting the budget, said he’s cautiously optimistic the $20.77 million spending plan, up from $20.15 million, can be trimmed before it is due to be approved on April 25.

The fattest target for trimming, he said, is health insurance, which accounted for more than half of the overall 4.5-percent increase. “We received an increase of almost 22 percent without justification,” DuPont said.

In recent years, borough employees have absorbed higher deductibles, utilization claims have been down, and the borough has gotten refunds from the plan, he said, which makes this year’s increase “disturbing,” he said.

DuPont said he is scheduled to attend a meeting this week with administrators of a joint municipal health insurance fund in which Red Bank is a member.

“I’m saying this is not fair, and we’re not going to pay it,” he said.

The budget benefitted from a couple of turnarounds, as pension costs declined $76,000, and $170,000 that had been set aside for snow removal at the end of last year turned out not to be needed. A year ago, the town was socked with a $540,000 bill for snow removal following the paralyzing blizzard of December 26 and 27, 2010. “We got a late Christmas present this year,” DuPont said.

Debt service costs for the year are “virtually flat” with last year’s level, despite the final approval, also on Wednesday night, of a $1.1 million bond to cover the cost of replacing the volunteer fire department’s sole aerial-ladder truck.

Ladder 91, housed at the Navesink Hook & Ladder station on Mechanic Street, experienced a parts failure during testing last fall, and replacement parts are no longer available. The vehicle, built in 1987, is also now out of compliance with federal safety standards, officials said.

The preliminary budget increase complies with state caps on both spending and levies, Lapp said.

A public presentation on the elements of the spending plan will be held before the April 25 adoption hearing, but not date has yet been set, DuPont said.

Local-history librarian Elizabeth McDermott, below, with a custom-branded Eisner lightbulb in the second-floor New Jersey Room of the Red Bank Public Library, once the home of industrialist Sigmund Eisner. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

On April 15, 1937, the Red Bank Public Library – for decades an itinerant but growing collection of books and archival material – finally found a permanent home, relocating from a downtown storefront to a mansion at 84 West Front Street.

Three months earlier, the heirs of Sigmund Eisner – mass-manufacturer of uniforms for the Army, the Boy Scouts and other organizations  – had donated their late father’s mansion overlooking the Navesink River to the library.

The shared hope of H. Raymond, Monroe and J. Lester Eisner was that the house would provide a warm and dry place for reading, but also that it would function “as a bit of a museum, too,” says local-history librarian Elizabeth McDermott.

Next month, the library will celebrate its 75th anniversary in the house with museum-like displays that highlight Eisner and his transformative impact on Red Bank as an industrialist and philanthropist.

The event, says McDermott, “is completely about” Eisner.

The ornate first-floor parlor of the Eisner mansion, above, and an undated photo of Sigmund Eisner, below. (Click to enlarge)

Valued at $25,000 at the time, the house was donated partly furnished, according to a Red Bank Register account of the opening. Wicker chairs provided welcome indoor seating overlooking the river.

The house had been home to Eisner and his wife, Bertha Weis, a member of a well-established Red Bank family. An Eastern European immigrant who “came to Red Bank as a peddler,” Eisner set up a sewing machine in a rented house near Broad Street and eventually built an manufacturing empire that employed 5,000 people at its peak during the first World War, said McDermott.

Eisner’s complex of factory buildings at the West Front Street and Bridge Avenue was reported to be the largest uniform factory in the world, she said.

Some of that property is now the home to the Galleria at Red Bank, a collection of restaurants, shops and offices. Another portion, on the northeast corner of that intersection, is home to the Antique Center of Red Bank.

Antique Center owner Guy Johnson is lending some of his collection of Eisner and old Red Bank memorabilia to the library display, including uniforms and a lightbulb branded with the Eisner name, probably for use in the factory, McDermott said.

The event will also highlight the reopening of the library’s New Jersey History Room. For many years, an ornate front room trimmed in ornate Gothic woodwork served as the repository for reference and archival materials about Red Bank, Monmouth County and the state. But the rarity and delicate condition of some of the materials, including one-of-a-kind atlases and directories, called out for a dedicated, controlled-access space, said McDermott.

That space is now a second-floor room of several hundred square feet that is open to the public from 2 to 4 p.m. each Tuesday afternoon, and by appointment at other times. McDermott said it is available to anyone, and is particularly helpful to people interested in researching family and property histories.

McDermott herself has been immersed in the materials as she assembles the exhibit, she said. And one regular visitor, a volunteer in the effort to put together the exhibit, has been known to exclaim, while going through old photos, “Oh my god, that’s my great-grandfather,” McDermott said with a laugh.

The goal of the exhibit is to create “a kind of timeline” about Eisner, a philanthropist who left money in his will to his factory workers, as well as to a host of churches of various persuasions, said McDermott.

“He didn’t have any barriers,” she said.

The building got a $1.6 million renovation in 2007, reopening after a problematic 15-month closure in January, 2008. In the interim, the library operated out of retail space donated by Hovnanian Enterprises.

Here’s an article from the January 6, 1937 edition of the New York Times announcing the donation of the house to the borough: Eisners deed house to library

And here’s the announcement about next month’s event:

On Saturday, April 14, 2012, from 2 – 4 PM, the Red Bank Public Library will celebrate 75 years as the Eisner Memorial Library with a Ribbon Cutting and Reception in our newly restructured New Jersey History Room.

Our New Jersey Collection contains many unique and valuable items pertaining to the Library, the Borough of Red Bank, and Monmouth County. The Library building itself is a special place, having been previously the home of Sigmund Eisner, businessman, civic leader and philanthropist, and his wife Bertha, an influential businesswoman and civic organizer. Presented to the Borough of Red Bank in January 1937, the former mansion was opened as a Public Library on April 15, 1937, thanks to the generosity of the Eisner sons, Raymond, J. Lester, and Monroe Eisner.

Please join us on April 14, as we celebrate this historic anniversary in our beautiful building on the Navesink River. For more information, please feel free to contact the library at 732-842-0690.

By JOHN T. WARD

Three months after opening, Soul Kitchen, the pay-what-you-can-or-work-it-off restaurant on Red Bank’s West Side, is  progresssing toward its goal of feeding the haves and have-nots in equal numbers, new manager Ryan Timmons tells redbankgreen.

About 30 percent of the restaurant’s patrons pay with vouchers earned through volunteer work at Soul Kitchen or a growing roster of other non-profits, Timmons said. The goal is a 50-50 mix among diners, and “the voucher-to-payment ratio is going up,” he said.

Meanwhile, paying customers are being generous when settling up bills via the discreet donation envelopes that servers present to them at the end of their three-course dinners, he said. The suggested donation is $10, but “very few” customers leave just that amount, he said, and instead pay more to help subsidize meals for others.

Timmons is heading into his second weekend running the restaurant, having been hired away from his on-again, off-again gig as Andrew Gennusa’s right hand at Zebu Forno last week.

He was brought on board at Soul Kitchen, he said, to free executive chef Zeet Peabody to focus on the food, public outreach, and the sponsor JBJ Soul Foundation‘s goal of replicating the model elsewhere.

“We’re trying to structure this so we can put more of these restaurants in places where they’re needed,” he said.

Soul Kitchen is the brainchild of pop rocker Jon Bon Jovi and his wife, Dorothea Bongiovi.

The restaurant staff, with two outreach employees, is beginning to solidify relationships with other organizations where volunteers would earn vouchers. Already on board are the nearby soup kitchen, Lunch Break, St. Anthony of Padua RC Church and a homeless shelter at Fort Monmouth, and Soul Kitchen hopes to soon begin working with Habitat for Humanity and local arts groups.

Timmons, 32, of Fair Haven, has been working in the food service industry since he was 16, when he began busing tables and washing dishes.

As much as he enjoyed working at Zebu, he said, the offer from Soul Kitchen was something he could not turn down.

“This is why a lot of us get into this business – to see the smiling faces,” he said. “Nobody who comes here complains. They’re here for the right reasons.”

Some of the customers, he said, have not eaten in a restaurant with linen tablecloths in years, if ever.

In one of his first days on the job, he said three women who work as housekeepers volunteered to dust the restaurant, including a high wall of shelves. That night, he said, the women came in with their families and paid for their meals with the vouchers they’d earned.

At the end of the night, he said, “you leave here feeling great.”

Soul Kitchen is open Thursday through Saturday, featuring community-style seatings at 5, 6 and 7 p.m. Sunday hours are 12 to 3 p.m. Alcohol is not permitted.

By JOHN T. WARD

Framed by talk about its positive effects on lunchtime restaurant business, a plan for an office bridge between two downtown buildings won easy approval from the Red Bank zoning board Thursday night.

With no objectors present, the plan by property owner Downtown Investors drew a smattering of questions about window placement and parking, as well as praise by board members.

“I do want to say, another wonderful project by the Hermans,” said member Karen Waldmann, speaking of Downtown Investors principals Jay and Todd Herman.

The father-and-son Hermans presented a plan to join two buildings they own on the south side of Linden Place near Broad Street via the “floating” structure.

The two existing buildings and the addition, which is no mere breezeway but 2,750 square feet of office space as well, will be occupied by the retail brokerage Morgan Stanley. According to Jay Herman, “in terms of production, it will be the third-largest Morgan Stanley office in the northeast,” after New York and Boston.

The board granted the project a parking variance for a 55-space deficiency, though the Hermans said that number was both theoretical and artificially high.

A 2010 change in the formula that the borough uses to calculate the space needs of businesses put the existing buildings at a paper shortage of 69 spaces, even though in reality they have a parking surplus, said Jay Herman.

The additional footage, offset by a new parking area created on the opposite side of Linden Place in recent months, reduces the paper deficiency to 55 cars, though in fact the completed project will have exactly the number of spaces required by actual usage, he said.

After 20 years in town, Morgan Stanley had considered leaving Red Bank, he told the board, because “they have a great need to consolidate buildings.

“The good news is their preference is to be here in Red Bank,” he said.

Construction is slated to begin in early March.

By JOHN T. WARD

Three new police officers joined the ranks of Red Bank blue Tuesday night at a packed-house council meeting that also saw three veterans of the force elevated to new positions.

The new hires were touted by elected officials as an exceptional bargain for the town: unlike many of their predecessors, all three already have worked as officers in other jurisdictions. Which means they also “have already been through the police academy training, which saves the borough quite a bit of money,” said Councilman Art Murphy, who doubles as police commissioner.

The trio were culled from an applicant pool of 500 that was swollen with experienced cops who’ve been laid off because of budget issues, Chief Steve McCarthy tells redbankgreen.

Because they’re replacing higher-paid officers who retired recently, “we were able to hire three new officers basically for the price of one or one-and-a-half, if my calculations are right,” said Councilman Mike DuPont, who heads the finance committee.

Added as probationary officers in the patrol division were:

• Stanley Balmer, a former Monmouth County Sheriff’s Department officer and, before that, a Long Branch PD detective in the juvenile bureau. He has a bachelor’s degree in physical education and health for the University of West Virginia, according to a biography provided by the borough.

• Garrett Falco Jr., a former patrolman in Asbury Park who also has experience with the Monmouth County Gang Task Force. He has a bachelor’s in criminal justice from Sacred Heart University and a teaching certificate from Montclair State University.

• Jhonatan Quipe (pronounced kees-pay), a former patrol officer with the Rutgers University PD and, before that, with the Camden PD. He served four years in the Marines and is fluent in Spanish. He’s working toward a degree in criminal justice at Raritan Valley Community College.

All three got the “highest respect” from their former chiefs, McCarthy said, adding: “Most important is they’re all good people of outstanding character.”

Getting promotions were:

• Wendy Samis, who moves from investigator to detective. She’s been with the force for 10 years and was praised for her work leading the case in which 26-year-old borough resident Viridiana Beltran-Gomez went missing and was found murdered six weeks later. Samis, a graduate of the University of Delaware with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, has worked in the patrol division and as the department’s DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) officer; she’s worked undercover on loan to the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office’s Narcotics Strike Force; and since 2009, as an investigator in the RBPD detective bureau.

• Juan Sardo, on the force since 1999, also steps up from investigator to detective. A native of Venezuela, he’s fluent in Spanish and recently completed State Police courses in crime scene investigation and homicide investigation.

• Robert Clayton, a detective, moves up to the sergeant’s rank, and will take over as shift commander in the patrol division. A 20-year veteran of the RBPD, he was promoted to detective in 2002 and was the lead detective in the case of Anthony Sims, convicted of shooting two men at the Montgomery Terrace apartments in 2007. Clayton is the son and grandson of former borough police chiefs.

The Oceanic Bridge and the Rumson-Sea Bright Bridge are among the four movable Monmouth County bridges whose operations will be run by a private contractor starting next year, according to a report by the Asbury Park Press.

Reporter Joe Sapia writes that the Monmouth County Freeholders “voted 5 to 0 Wednesday to turn over the operation of the bridges to a Florida company, which a county analysis shows can do the job at an annual savings of $572,270.”

The other two bridges affected are the bridge over the Shark River Inlet between Avon and Belmar, and the Brielle Avenue bridge over Glimmer Glass in Manasquan.

From the Press:

The county’s 21 bridge workers will be offered interviews with the company, Drawbridge Services Inc. of Pompano Beach, Fla., according to discussion at the freeholders meeting. The company does not work in New Jersey and so has no employees based in-state now.

Drawbridge Services would run the bridges, providing workers and doing some maintenance, throughout 2012 for $1,485,508. The county also would have the option to renew the contract at the same price for the two following years.

Costs to the county would have only gone up in future years, because of benefits and other factors, said John W. Tobia, director of the county Department of Public Works and Engineering.

In going with Drawbridge Services, the freeholders rejected a proposal by the affected bridge workers, whose plan showed $448,000 in savings.

While 21 bridge workers are now on the job, a full crew would be 30. One way the the bridge workers proposed saving money was by using a full crew of only 27, according to Mike DiGangi, a bridge operator and shop steward of Communications Workers of America Local 1032

Additional savings would come from more efficient scheduling, according to Local 1032.

The local said that under the plan approved by the freeholders, while the current workers are county employees already on the job, the new workers would be employees of a private company.

“You’re going to get what you pay for,” DiGangi said.