A Manhattan-based clothing store catering to women aged 16 to 36 has signed a lease in downtown Red Bank, redbankgreen has learned.

Dor L’Dor, a financial-district casualwear shop that also has stores in Brooklyn and Hoboken, will take over the space last occupied by Chelsea Home furnishings at the corner of Broad and Mechanic streets, real estate agent Karen Gagliano confirms.

A person affiliated with the store — whose name means “from generation to generation” in Hebrew — said the family-owned business expects to fit in well with fashion-oriented emporiums downtown, including its largest new magnet retailer, Urban Outfitters, which opened less than a block away in November.

The lease fills a rather gaping hole in a business district that recently saw its number of vacancies skyrocket to more than 40 but has since begun to recover. After extensive renovations to the 2,200-square-foot, amply-windowed first floor space, the business hopes to be open by mid-May.

Earlier this week, the Visual Improvement Committee of Red Bank RiverCenter gave its seal of approval to plans for new canopies and signage on the building’s exterior. The VIC serves in an advisory capacity to RiverCenter, the downtown promotion agency, as well as to the borough zoning and planning boards.

“It’s nice to see someone going in there,” says Stephen Raciti, VIC’s chairman. “We all look forward to people occupying empty stores.”

Gagliano declined to comment on the terms of the lease.

Mattress retailer Stuart Paer sold the bulding, and one around the corner at 19 West Front, for a total of $3.2 million in 2007. Subsequent to that deal, Chelsea Home relocated to Newman Springs Road in Shrewsbury.

The pursuit of happiness can take you to some pretty unexpected places — just ask Gretchen Rubin, whose own chronicle of the year she spent “test-driving studies and theories about how to be happier” has taken the former US Supreme Court clerk straight to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list.

Tuesday night, April 13, the author of The Happiness Project follows her bliss to Red Bank, where she’ll visit NovelTeas Authors Aromas & Gifts for a sold-out reading and signing appearance that was originally scheduled for what turned out to be a decidedly snowy evening back in February.

In a full-length interview that ran on our satellite site Red Bank oRBit, Rubin busted some cherished myths regarding that smiley state of being — such as the one about money not buying happiness, and that thing about “having it all.”

She also let us in on the meaning of the word “shticklet.”

You can read the full text of that conversation right here, and get up to date on more literary-minded doings happening on Bridge Avenue at the NovelTeas website.

In today’s edition of Red Bank oRBit, we review and report on the opening of Orestes, A Tragic Romp, the new version of the 2,400 year old Euripides drama (adapted by Anne Washburn) now on stage at Two River Theater Company. We’ll tell you that it boasts a sharp cast (toplined by Jay Sullivan, above) plus a savvy satirical edge — and it’s a romp made all the more tragic in that it represents the final show that departing TRTC artistic director Aaron Posner developed for the Red Bank stage.

While we’re on the aisle, we’ll bring you an update on the Performance with Passion Players, the local community troupe (headed by Debby and Mike Schwartz) who recently lost their longtime home at the Eatontown Playhouse on Route 35. We’ll tell you about the company’s spacious new digs — and we’ll let you know where you’ll now be able to find fellow E’town exiles Improv Jam — right here  in Red Bank oRBit!

Directed by son Kyle Mumford (left), the documentary Mumford’s Law is both a tribute to a father and a candid crack in the wall surrounding “a family that had to be torn to pieces before it could truly come together.” We’ll report from the film’s first public showing in Eatontown — and we’ll tell you where and when you can look in on this family gathering yourself.

While we’re in a moviegoing mood, we’ll also run down this weekend’s 8th annual Garden State Film Festival in Asbury Park; a townwide celluloid-abration with lots to offer for film buffs in general, and Monmouth County movie-mads in particular. These coming attractions are approved for all audiences, and they’re right here in Red Bank oRBit!

Novelist and educator Kaylie Jones (right) would seem to have had a storybook upbringing— but as we observe in today’s edition of Red Bank oRBit, it was an environment where “keeping up with the Joneses meant going drink-for-drink against people who could be as competitive about their consumption of cordials as they were in their passionate professional pursuits.” With the publication of her memoir Lies My Mother Never Told Me, Jones details the devastation that alcoholism wrought upon a family in which literature and liquor were given equal heft.

The author comes to Red Bank tonight for a reading and signing appearance at NovelTeas Authors Aromas & Gifts on Bridge Avenue — and we’ve got an exclusive interview, right here in the paperless pages of Red Bank oRBit!

In fact, when Orestes begins its run at Two River Theater Company this week, it’ll be subtitled A Tragic Romp — with Posner and playwright Anne Washburn blowing the dust off this landmark work in a way that’s sure to recall the director’s energized editions of Shakespeare, Shaw and other stage titans. We’ve got an interview with Posner — on the eve of what unfortunately looks to be the last Red Bank show personally helmed by the departing TRTC artistic director — today, in Red Bank oRBit!

Today’s edition of Red Bank oRBit has the details on the first-ever Axelrod Classical Music Festival, a “celebration of spring” (and ’bout time, too) that’s going on this weekend on the AxPAC stage of the JCC of Monmouth. It’s a collection of regional talent heretofore unseen on a single platform, complete with a recession-busting ticket and an atmosphere about which it’s been said “there is nothing even remotely stuffy.”

While you’re out taking that fresh spring air, you might want to take a walk by the GARDENhead; the innovative, cerebral Red Bank area band for whom projected images and Macbook post-prod are as essential as the skronk of a guitar or scrape of a violin. Dustin Racioppi introduces us to this anything-but-garden-variety duo — and tells us where we can root for them — ONLY in Red Bank oRBit!

Today’s edition of our satellite site has an interview with award winning mystery novelist, recovering newspaperman and RBC grad Wallace Stroby, on films noir, novels and the no-man’s-land between. The author of such Shore-based suspensers as Heartbreak Lounge and The Barbed Wire Kiss visits Asbury Park’s Showroom this Sunday, to present a screening of Stanley Kubrick‘s classic caper The Killing and to talk Noir with oRBit editor Tom Chesek.

We’ve got the lowdown on this hardboiled entry in the BookFLX series, along with a pre-screening conversation with Stroby, ONLY in Red Bank oRBit!

It’s a policy that’s helped the intimately-scaled indie store strengthen its brand in a world of steamrolling stripmall superstores and virtual-volume vultures. And it’s back in full force this Thursday, as POZ Magazine editor-in-chief Regan Hofmann (above) visits Fair Haven for a signing and discussion of her memoir I Have Something to Tell You — a chronicle of how a young woman who “had it all” concealed from the world the fact that she also had HIV.

The author action continues on Saturday with Little Silver’s own picture-book creator and self-styled “phoDOGrapher” Kim Levin stopping in to promote her new book DogPlay. After that, the River Road crew presents a pleasantly surprising, long-awaited homecoming by someone who’s been out of the public eye for far too long — but rather than spoil the surprise, why not just take it over to Red Bank oRBit, where this late-winter’s week continues to come on like a literary lion!

In his memoir Mornings with Mailer, author Dwayne Raymond (right, with Mailer) conjures his years as editorial assistant, cook, confidant and yes, friend to the late great novelist, essayist, poet, moviemaker and alpha-dog celeb of American letters. Raymond comes to Red Bank for a reading and signing appearance at Kim Widener‘s new NovelTeas Authors Aromas & Gifts on Bridge Avenue tomorrow evening, and we’ve got an exclusive interview with him right here, right now.

Also today, a look at two Holocaust themed events that compel the attention — a single-performance stand for the one-woman play Etty at Brookdale Community College (directed by the familiar stage/ screen/ TV actor Austin Pendleton), and a serious cinema event at the JCC of Monmouth in which acclaimed filmmaker Anne Aghion will join two generations of genocide survivors for a live discussion. It’s all happening in the early days of the week, and it’s all here in Red Bank oRBit.