Fair Haven resident Ben Hamilton, right, noting that “there are more dignitaries here than audience,” said he knows business owners who have been “suffering in silence” over the duration of the closure and will be glad to have it back in service. (Photos by Stacie Fanelli. Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

Adding yet another twist to what’s already the most convoluted building request in recent Red Bank history, the borough zoning board ruled Thursday night that a proposed 72-room hotel on the Navesink River exceeds height limitations.

In a trial-like case that turned on questions of property frontage and where streets begin and end, the board rejected the contention by Hampton Hotel developer RBank Capital LLC that the hotel site fronts on Route 35, rather than Rector Place, and should be subject to a height limit of 85 feet above mean high tide, rather than 60 feet.

The board’s 6-1 rejection of those arguments appear to mean that Rbank will have to either shear off several floors of the six-story structure or start its application all over again, abandoning a series of hearings now on hold at the planning board.

The zoning board was not ruling on the overall merits of the hotel plan, which had been the subject of planning board hearings that began last September.

Rather, the zoning board convened solely for the purpose of hearing an “interpretation” challenge by objector Stephen Mitchell, who contended that the height of the proposed structure, at 82.2 feet above mean high tide of the adjoining, put it in violation of limits for the waterfront development zone in which it would be built.

That, in turn, meant that the case should have been heard all along by the zoning board, which has different and arguably stiffer standards, Mitchell contended.

Lawyer Marty McGann and engineers for Rbank argued that though the former Exxon property has 47 feet of its southern border on Rector Place, it should more properly be seen as fronting on Route 35, and that a different height standard should thus apply.

The board, with little discussion and some apparent uncertainty, agreed with Mitchell.

Only board member Karen Waldman took Rbank’s side.

“Yes, I agree it’s on Rector Place,” she told redbankgreen afterward. “But I don’t think it ought to be treated like the rest of Rector Place,” which is lined with residences. “I think it’s separate and distinctive.”

Here’s Mitchell’s comment on the outcome, via email:

I never had an issue with developing the site with a hotel. My problem with the Hampton Inn plan was that it was too tall, too big, and too intense of a development for the 1 acre site. Tonight’s Zoning Board interpretation only bolsters my opinion. Now, let’s see if the Hampton Inn comes back with a more responsible and conforming design.

By JOHN T. WARD

Red Bank’s streets are about to be abloom in yellow, and not solely from the spring return of the forsythia.

The town is giving away more than 2,200 bright yellow recycling bins to borough residents in an effort to create some identifiable uniformity to the re-use effort.

Town officials began giving the 20-gallon, lidded barrels out to senior citizen residents several weeks ago, and have now widened the availability to all residents, Maria Rotolo of the public utilities office tells redbankgreen.

To obtain one, residents have to call the department at 732-530-2773 or visit the office, on Chestnut Street opposite the armory ice rink. Residents have the option of picking up the barrels or having them delivered. The town will also remove any old containers that residents had been using for recycling, Rotolo said.

The barrels come at no direct cost to residents. A $17,925 grant from the Monmouth County Solid Waste Advisory Council covered the cost of the first 1,500 barrels, and the public utilities department pulled $8,800 from its budget to pay for an additional 726, said director Gary Watson.

While the total 2,226 barrels is fewer than the 3,000 single-family households in town, “not everybody wants one,” Rotolo said. “We’ve had people tell us they don’t want one, for whatever reason.”

Red Bank uses single-stream collection of recyclables, in which paper, plastic, glass and aluminum is picked up together and sorted afterward. Here’s some info on that: Red Bank Single Stream

By JOHN T. WARD

The developers of proposed 72-room Hampton Inn in Red Bank insist the property on which the hotel would be built is not on Rector Place.

Problem: they previously agreed that it was.

Easily the most multifaceted and complex case to confront  borough land use officials in years, the hotel, which would be built on the site of a closed Exxon station at the foot of the Cooper Bridge, has spawned three lawsuits and long-running, simultaneous sets of hearings at the planning and zoning boards.

At issue at the zoning board is a challenge by borough resident Stephen Mitchell, backed by a competing hotel group, who has asked that the board determine whether the main case was mistakenly sent by officials to the planning board. By his reckoning, the proposed six-story hotel violates the height limits of the waterfront development zone, and thus needs variances from the zoning board.

Mitchell’s challenge has led to three sessions resembling a trial, with lawyers for the opposing sides frequently clashing over rules of evidence and the relevance of questions in cross-examination.

On Thursday night, the thing got even more bizarre, as a witness for the hotel testified its property is not in any way on Rector Place.

Though borough tax records, the post office and a flurry of legislative activity over the property in 2009 all identify the site as 80 Rector Place, an engineer for developer Rbank Capital LLC insisted Thursday night that not only does the site “front” on Route 35, but that it has no frontage whatsoever on Rector Place.

His proof: agreements between the borough and the state Department of Transportation, as well as a finely detailed roadway jurisdiction map. All, he said, show that a 40-foot stretch of the property long identified as being on Rector actually fronts on Route 35.

Exiting the property from that area would put a pedestrian smack on state property, not Rector Place, which is a Monmouth County road, says hotel lawyer Marty McGann.

The issue is key, McGann said, in  determining how to apply a measurement formula in a zoning ordinance to gauge whether the proposed hotel is too tall.

To prevail, though, McGann will have to overcome a wealth of contradictory evidence, including borough tax and other designations.

He’ll also have to reverse the stance taken by of his own client three years ago.

That’s when Rbank Capital sought, and obtained, a decision from the borough council that, despite its street address, the property had previously been included by mistake on a list of residential properties along Rector Place in an ordinance that aimed to preserve old homes. At no time, however, did Rbank representatives claim that the property had no Rector Street frontage.

McGann said the existence of the documents cited Thursday night was unknown at the time.

But Mitchell’s lawyer, Ron Gasiorowski, made clear he regards the frontage issue as a red herring. The ordinance, he maintains, makes no reference to frontage in its formula for determining where to measure a building’s height. Instead, he said, it requires a line be drawn between the river and “the nearest parallel roadway,” which he says is Rector Place.

And just as McGann maintains that the post office designation “is based on public convenience” and has nothing to do with zoning, Gasiorowski claims the highway jurisdiction agreements have nothing to do with zoning, either.

The hearing was tentatively scheduled to resume May 17.

By JOHN T. WARD

For six months, Salt Creek Grille owner Steve Bidgood has watched with guarded optimism the progress of work to replace the 100-foot-long bascule on the Oceanic Bridge over the Navesink River.

Denied since October the benefit of traffic the 72-year-old bridge was built to carry between Middletown and his side, Rumson, Bidgood’s foremost concern has been that the job wrap up, as advertised, by the start of the busy summer season – Memorial Day weekend.

“I’d love to see them do it,” Bidgood told redbankgreen this week, eyeing the elegant bridge framed by the restaurant’s windows. “If they do, I might even buy them dinner.”

It’s looking as though Bidgood will need to reserve a large table.

Monmouth County Engineer Joe Ettore, whose office is managing the project, tells redbankgreen that the Oceanic’s target reopening date remains Thursday, May 31.

An earlier reopening is possible, he said. But don’t count on it.

“We are doing everything we can, working with the contractor, to come in with the best possible date for reopening,” Ettore said Wednesday. “But there is critical work that remains, and that critical work has to by necessity take place at this late point in the project.”

Eighty-five-to-95 percent of the structural work is done, he said, but critical testing of the electrical and mechanical systems remains.

Ettore said the project “had a very tight window in which to complete a substantial amount of work” on the moving parts of the 2,752-foot-long span – by far the county’s longest. The timetable was designed to minimize the adverse economic impact on businesses that are reliant on bridge traffic, he said.

Aided by a snowless and unseasonably mild winter, it appears not a day of the summer season will be lost, Ettore said.

“The fact that we’re on-schedule is a real good sign, and we’re very happy with the contractor’s performance,” he said. The contractor on the $3.6 million job is Iron Bridge Group of North Brunswick.

Funding for the project came from the state, which prohibits early-completion incentives, Ettore said.

The repaired bascule is expected to have a useful life of 20 years, he said, but the long concrete approaches to the bascule are already overdue for replacement, a project that’s not expected to get into construction for at least three more years.

Local and county officials are hoping to persuade the federal government to fund another low-level drawbridge, rather than a high-arc, fixed span that area residents say would adversely affect property values and the aesthetics of the river.

The opening of a new bridge “is at least six years away, and it’s not inconceivable that it could be 10,” Ettore said.

Documents explaining the repair job can be found at the engineering department website.

Red Bank’s most prominent downtown clock may be stuck in winter, but a spring season less than a month old is already aching to turn into summer, it seems.

After a couple of (more) warmish days Friday and Saturday, temperatures are expected to hit the mid-70s Sunday, and climb past 80 on Monday, according to the National Weather Service.

Here’s the forecast:

Today: Sunny, with a high near 62. Northwest wind between 8 and 10 mph.

Tonight: Mostly clear, with a low around 43. West wind between 7 and 9 mph.

Saturday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 68. West wind between 7 and 11 mph.

Saturday Night: A chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 52. Southwest wind around 14 mph. Chance of precipitation is 50%. New rainfall amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible.

Sunday: Partly sunny, with a high near 75. West wind between 11 and 16 mph.

Sunday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 59.

Monday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 81.

Monday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 62.

Tuesday: A chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly sunny, with a high near 77. Chance of precipitation is 30%.

Tuesday Night: A chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 54. Chance of precipitation is 40%.

Wednesday: A chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 64. Chance of precipitation is 30%.

Wednesday Night: A chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 48. Chance of precipitation is 30%.

Thursday: Partly sunny, with a high near 62.

A narrow borough-owned lot with a disused pumping station on it needs water access before it can be transformed into a community garden, town officials say. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

The battle over a proposed Red Bank community garden abated Wednesday night when its main proponent appeared to accept to an offer of a vacant East Side lot as its location.

Now, it’s just a matter of finding water.

Led by garden organizer Cindy Burnham, garden backers came away from a March 28 borough council meeting scratching their heads over the governing body’s latest in a yearlong series of rejections of their request for a pilot plot on land adjoining the public library parcel, on West Front Street overlooking the Navesink River.

Though the gardeners say the location is ideal – wide-open, underutilized and centrally located – they’ve encountered persistent opposition. Elected officials and members of the town administration have raised questions about the potential need for state Department of Environmental Protection permits, parking, and the dedication of prime riverfront property to the use of a select few residents, among other objections.

At that meeting, council members Kathy Horgan and Ed Zipprich suggested the gardeners instead break ground on a town-owned lot on Marion Street, just a few steps west of Eastside Park, and the site of a disused pumping station.

At the latest meeting, Wednesday night, Burnham questioned the availability of water at the Marion Street lot.

Public works director Gary Watson said he would look into the feasibility of a metered water hookup. Zipprich said he was also looking into whether a pumphouse on the property might be outfitted with gutters and a rain barrel for supplementary water.

Officials flatly rejected Burnham’s suggestion of allowing a single gardener to have key-controlled access to a nearby fire hydrant to water the garden twice a week.

Burnham also asked if a strip of broken asphalt might be removed, and said a soil sample had been taken to test for contamination of the site.

But for the first time, she signaled that the fight over the location was lost.

“We’re going to take it, but we don’t feel this is the appropriate location by any means,” said Burnham, who lives in Fair Haven and owns property in Red Bank. And when she began revisiting her frustration over the council’s rejection of the West Front Street site, Councilwoman Sharon Lee cut her off with, “Thank you, Cindy,” and Burnham took a seat.

Afterward, though, Burnham fumed that the water issue, and thus the start of planting, was unresolved, and that she would continue to press the council.

“Sombody has to be the heavy, somebody has to be the bitch,” she told redbankgreen.

The site is bounded on either side by residences, and the owner of one, Cecilia Davis, spoke against the proposal, citing concerns about the security of her home.

Fair Haven Fields, opposite Rumson’s Meadowridge Park on Ridge Road, would be maintained by Rumson under the deal.  (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

Three years after the wheels came off a politically charged plan to merge the police forces of three area towns, two of them have found another, less contentious route into shared services.

Fair Haven and Rumson have agreed to provide key maintenance services to one another in what they’re billing as a “groundbreaking” deal announced Wednesday morning.

Under terms of the deal, Rumson will dump its residential brush at Fair Haven’s processing center and get engineering services for small jobs from Fair Haven’s in-house engineering office.

Fair Haven, meanwhile, will no longer maintain its own parks and other borough-owned properties, handing off that responsibility to its neighbor to the east, Rumson Mayor John Ekdahl tells redbankgreen.

Rumson will also provide street-sweeping and storm sewer catch-basin cleaning services to Fair Haven under the deal.

“The big pickup for us is brush,” said Ekdahl. He said borough DPW trucks made some 500 trips to a farm in Tinton Falls last year to dispose of residential brush, with each round-trip taking about an hour and a half, consuming gallons of gas and putting wear-and-tear on costly vehicles.

Under the agreement, “we cut that trip down to seven minutes,” he said. “For us, that’s the sweet spot of this deal.”

The number of trips typically number between 350 and 400, but was boosted by the cleanup after Tropical Storm Irene last August, he said.

Though Fair Haven will wind down its DPW operations, no jobs will be lost as a result of the deal in either town, Ekdahl said.

The pact, billed as an expansion of an agreement under which the two towns shared building inspection services, arose from regular discussions between their business administrators – Theresa Casagrande in Fair Haven and Tom Rogers in Rumson – Ekdahl said.

Official discussions began about six weeks ago, when Mike Halfacre was still Fair Haven’s mayor, and continued “without interruption,” Ekdahl said, after Ben Lucarelli replaced Halfacre, who resigned to take a job in the Christie Administration.

Lucarelli could not be reached for immediate comment, but in the press release called the deal “a wonderful opportunity that will benefit the residents of both of our communities.”

Rumson will also have access to the services of Fair Haven Engineer Rich Gardella for projects such as upgrades on the Rumson DPW facility. Rumson will continue to retain T&M Associates of Middletown as the consultant to its council and planning and zoning boards, Ekdahl said.

Ekdahl said the savings to taxpayers under the agreement, which is expected to begin early next month, “will be hard to quantify until we’ve had about a year of experience.”

He said Fair Haven would be able to avoid the purchase of a street sweeper, which costs about $500,000, and that savings on gasoline, labor and other costs associated with Rumson’s brush removal would be significant.

Here’s the press release issued by the two towns: Press Release – Interlocal Agreement

Here’s the Fair Haven resolution: FH Resolution

And here’s Rumson’s: Rumson Resolution

Furniture retailer Vizzini & Company plans to relocate from the Galleria to 8 East Front. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

A longtime major vacancy on East Front Street in Red Bank is about to end, adding momentum to an economic resurgence on and near Broad Street.

Vizzini & Company, a furniture dealer, will leave its anchor space in the Galleria at Red Bank on the West Side to take the second of two storefronts at 8 East Front, the former home of Kislin’s Sporting Goods, Retail Churn has learned.

The move was confirmed by Jeannie Maloy, manager of Root, on Maple Avenue, an affiliate of Vizzini. She said the move is expected to occur within a month.

Joe Mazzarino, who owns both Vizzini and Root, could not be reached for comment.

Brown paper already covers the windows at the former Vizzini store at the southern end of the sprawling Galleria shopping, dining and office complex. No word was immediately available on whether the Sourlis family, which owns the complex, had lined up a new tenant for the space.

The Kislin’s building got an extensive overhaul after the sporting goods store closed in 2005, ending a century of continuous operation. Luxury apartments were created on the upper two floors of the red brick structure. But the two storefronts on either side of the main entry at street level went begging.

The drought ended last month, when Kramer Portraits, which for 10 years occupied a narrow storefront next door to the Jade Garden take-out Chinese place on Broad Street, relocated to the storefront on the east, taking 2,500 square feet.

In recent months, East Front has seen CLB Photography and Sounds to Go DJ service fill a gaping hole at 21 East Front. On the west side of Broad, Jonathan Erdelyi has opened Red Bicycle Studio, and Lucky Break Billiards started racking ‘em up last week. On the drawing board is Jr’s.

The additions come as the northern end of Broad Street has seen vigorous renewal. Zebu Forno reopened after a relocation to 12 Broad, and the space it vacated, at 20, has already seen the opening of Lucki Clover women’s clothing, with Boardwalk Fresh Burgers & Fries planning to open in coming weeks.

In other Churnings:

Char Steakhouse has begun gutting the former Ashes Cigar Bar for a major makeover inside and out. A late summer opening is expected.

Work is also underway at the former home of Lavish Kids, at 15 Broad, where Ashley Dupre is planning to open Femme by Ashley lingerie and swimwear.

Listings on Craigslist and the Restaurant Brokers website the Muscle Maker Grille on West Front Street is for sale. Asking price: $129,000.