Works by Kathy Polenberg, above, and other local artists are showcased as part of the rejuvenated Red Bank Art Walk event on Friday.  

It looked for a while as if it might never regain its footing — but after sitting out the past couple of years, the Red Bank Art Walk makes its return this Friday, hot on the heels of the borough’s selection (by Smithsonian Magazine) as one of the top three Best Small Towns in the USA for culture and quality of life.

A three-hour, self-guided tour through the downtown Green and points west, the Art Walk is both rejuvenated and reconfigured in its 2012 incarnation, with a new cast of participants joined by several “non-traditional spaces” where Art Happens, from restaurants and retail stores to at least one transformed place of worship.

Going on between the hours of 6pm and 9pm, this first in a projected new series of events is being spearheaded by a relatively recent arrival to town — Gallery U and Boutique, the rather Unique and Unorthodox artspace that opened its doors at 80 Broad Street last year.

Jon Fried and Deena Shoshkes of  legendary NJ band The Cucumbers make a rare Red Bank appearance at Gallery U on May 11, during the Red Bank Art Walk.  

A companion to an existing Gallery U in Montclair, the Red Bank space is managed by Robert Langdon and operated by Livingston-based Universal Institute Medical Rehab Therapy Center, a facility specializing in the treatment of patients with brain and spinal cord injuries. UI established the two galleries as part of their vocational training program for adults with traumatic brain injuries, and quickly generated buzz that centered around the success of the program’s therapeutic aspects, as well as the high quality of the art featured in such well-received group shows as Awakenings — a recent exhibit that incorporated pieces created by the Institute’s disabled clients.

That show was curated by Ben Danzi of Rumson, and featured contributions from Eileen Kennedy of Red Bank, as well as Long Branch-based Kathy Polenberg — herself a former head injury patient, and a seemingly tireless creator of indoor/outdoor art, theatrical scenery, residential flourishes and other amazing stuff in evidence throughout the greater Green and beyond. The artist known as “Polekat” returns to Gallery U for Promenade, an event that boasts a live musical performance (and super-rare Red Bank appearance) by Deena Shoshkes and Jon Fried, co-founders of The Cucumbers — a reborn combo familiar to fans of the 1980s Hoboken scene, as well as listeners of the late and lamented WHTG-FM.

Also featured in Promenade are works by Alexandra Alger, Lisa Budd, Jill Caporlingua, Bill Cohen, Lauren Curtis, John Darvey, Karissa Harvey, Kathleen Heron, Jonathan Hernandez, Robert Langdon, Marci Shrewsbury Lopez, Adena Macri, Onix Mora, Marilyn Rose, Kristian Sacca, Randy Schaeffer, and Erik von Ploennes.

Elsewhere on the Art Walk, Bolivia-born “action painter” David Banegas offers live demonstrations of his specialty at his Banegas Fine Art Gallery (43 Broad Street), while Gallery 135 inside Monmouth Street’s Red Bank Community Church presents a first look at one of Red Bank’s best kept secrets: a newly rebranded exhibit space curated by associate pastor and contemporary artist Reverend Gerda Liebmann. Up at  McKay Imaging Gallery , an exhibit of “New and Unknown” works by Red Bank legend Evelyn Leavens is open for public perusal (see redbankgreen‘s feature on that ongoing installation, LEAVENS GETS LINEAR).

Also on the tour will be such long-established borough spaces as The Art Alliance of Monmouth County and Beacon Fine Arts Gallery on Monmouth Street, as well as Chetkin Gallery on Wharf Avenue. They’ll be joined for the Art Walk by such art-friendly restaurants as Front Street Trattoria, No Joe’s Cafe, Good Karma Cafe, and Jon Bon Jovi’s nonprofit JBJ Soul Kitchen. In fact, all participants in the Red Bank Art Walk are encouraged to contribute non-perishable food items to donation boxes set up at various venues on the Walk, with a collective donation being made to Foodbank of Monmouth & Ocean following the event.

Strolling art aficionados can pick up free street maps of Red Bank along the route, highlighting Art Walk locations, and, as an additional mark of distinction, each venue will also be displaying red balloons outside their doors.

As the headline suggests, the weekend that awaits is jammed with the potential for good times.

We’ve got the fifth Red Bank Townwide Yard Sale, this one making a migration from fall to spring.

We’ve got one of the inaugural events of this year’s weeklong Paint the Town Pink festivities to raise awareness about breast cancer and the importance of early detection.

And capping it all off, rain or shine, is the first-ever Red Bank International Flavour Fest, an outdoor celebration of the wide variety of cuisines available year-round at Red Bank restaurants.

And Mother Nature appears to be in a mood to cooperate.

Details, as they used to say when that was still a two-syllable word, are just below.

SATURDAY: Red Bank Townwide Yard Sale
Location: all over town. Maps available at the Red Bank Public Library and at many of the participating homes.
Time: Officially, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., but sellers can set their own hours.

From an email update from Beth Hanratty, president of the Friends of the Red Bank Public Library, which has hosted the event since 2010:

lots of records, books and air conditioners

SATURDAY: Pink Hat Tea Party
Pilgrim Baptist Church
172 Shrewsbury Avenue
Doors open 10:30 a.m., Event 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Don’t miss this important Paint the Town Pink event, presented by Riverview Medical Center. Gather all the special women in your life to join us for an educational and entertaining Pink Hat Tea, with a hat and apparel fashion show courtesy Geneva’s Boutique of Neptune, a speacial presentation from Adi Smolinsky, M.D., a Riverview Medical Center OB/GYN, education about Paint the Town Pink’s mission of the importance of annual mammography, and more! Refreshments will be provided by Jameson’s Ultimate Southern Cooking Restaurant in Neptune. Don’t forget to wear your pink hat!

*Pink Sale Event. Deck your pink all year long with our exclusive Paint the Town Pink gear and goodies for sale at this signature event.

This event is FREE but registration is required. RSVP: 1-800-DOCTORS

SUNDAY: Paint Everything Pink Community Day
Riverview Medical Center parking lot
1 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Pink your town, pink your house, pink your family. Everything is pink at our family-centered, free Community Day! Featuring many of the same pink “zones” families have come to expect as well as exciting new ones, this year’s event will feature:

Kids’ Fun & Games: Rides, arts and crafts, face painting – all the things your kids have come to love! And don’t miss photos with Dr. Bernard from the Pawsitive Action Team at
K. Hovnanian Children’s Hospital.

Pink it Yourself Man Cave: In line with this year’s theme of Men in Pink, our “man cave” will offer the men in your life an area just for them. Activities will include DYI demonstrations from the Home Depot, interactive games, and of course our exclusive Real Men Wear Pink t-shirts.

Rockin’ Country Thunder 106.3: Bring out the country in you! With live music from a local country artist, this local-favorite station will have you dancin’ in your boots. Your kids will love our pony rides and everyone can enjoy some good old fashioned root beer!

And that’s not all! Enjoy some snack-food favorites and other sweet treats, and beverages from a number of local pink partners, and don’t forget to stop by our educational tables to pick-up important information about Paint the Town Pink’s mission of raising awareness of the importance of annual mammography.

Special Pink Cotton Candy and Snow Cones presented by Arrow Limousine.

SUNDAY: Red Bank International Flavour Festival
White Street Parking Lot
12 p.m. to 7 p.m., rain or shine

Here’s the National Weather Service forecast:

Saturday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 68. Northeast wind between 10 and 13 mph.

Sunday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 68. Northeast wind around 9 mph.

By JOHN T. WARD

The building appears to sigh and lean, as though aware of its fate. Inside, nooks and corners that once teemed with the cast-offs of the decades have begun to empty out.

It’s a sad time at Monmouth Antique Shoppes, one of the anchors of Red Bank’s vaunted Arts & Antiques District. Eviction notice in hand, owner John Gribbin has informed his 23 remaining dealers that they, like he, must be out by the end of the month, ending a 29-year run.

“It’s not the best time for me to talk,” Gribbin told redbankgreen Tuesday, as he had also last week. “I’m trying to find a home for me and my dealers, and it’s not easy going.”

More than a dozen of the displaced shops are finding a new home just a few doors east, at the Gizzi family’s Riverbank Antiques. (Click to enlarge)

The wood-frame building, at the southeast corner of West Front Street and Bridge Avenue, was once part of the Eisner uniform factory complex – “a sweatshop,” said Gribbin. Now, it is slated to be razed to make way for the MW West Side Lofts project, a mixed-use assemblage of luxury rental apartments, street-level retail, live-and-work artists’ spaces, a parking garage and a Triumph Brewing Company restaurant.

No permits for the demolition or ensuing construction have yet been issued, according to a borough official. But Monmouth Antique Shoppes and Ambiance antiques, which occupies a neighboring building owned by the lofts developer, have been told to clear out. They were recently given 60 days notice, almost six years after the lofts plan won approval.

Unaffected by the action is Guy Johnson’s Antique Center of Red Bank, which occupies two sprawling buildings, including the giant barn-red structure at the intersection’s northeast corner and a second warehouse opposite Brothers Pizza.

The diaspora has proven to be an awkwardly welcome boon for Carla Gizzi, who runs her family’s Riverbank Antiques business just a block east of Gribbin’s. She’s busily making arrangements to accommodate more than a dozen displaced dealers.

“I feel horrible for John, but it actually enables us to stay in business, and we’re keeping these dealers in Red Bank,” Gizzi said. “We’re consolidating and enabling them to stay.”

Among those making the move are Reggie Hawn and Cheryl Figliola. Hawn, who’s been at the shoppes for less than two years, said she’s “looking forward to the day when we can all reunite under one tent,” reforming a group of dealers with complementary specialties.

“What made us successful here was that we’re all collectors first,” said Figliola, a 17-year tenant of the shoppes. “Everyone found their own niche.”

Gribbin said he doesn’t know where he and other dealers, who together operate as a sort of cooperative, selling each other’s goods when dealers are absent, will wind up. But he sees his business’s departure as part of an inexorable slide toward oblivion for the antiques district.

“As to me, I’m leaving Red Bank,” he said. “This industry has been a major draw for the town, and it’s going away slowly.”

Just across the street, another storefront formerly occupied by an antiques dealer stands empty following the recent departure of Plum Cottage, which relocated to Fair Haven.

Like the past two autumn Oysterfests, Red Bank Flavour’s new International Flavour Fest on Sunday will bulge at the belt line of the White Street parking lot. (Click to enlarge)

It’s panning out to be a busy spring for Red Bank Flavour.

The promotional partnership of borough-based bistros, bars, boites, bakeries, breakfast nooks, banquet halls and better take-out vendors heralded the turn of the season with the return of the Dine Downtown campaign in March. Then in April, the culinary alliance presented a special Broadway in Red Bank showcase that reinforced the notion of the town as dinner-and-show destination.

On Sunday, the Flavour pack joins with Red Bank RiverCenter and a host of local and corporate sponsors for an event with a broader, even global, reach: the first annual Red Bank International Flavour Festival.

Dublin native Steve Reilly and Shore reggae masters Random Test help lend a global vibe to the Red Bank International Flavour Fest, this Sunday afternoon on White Street. 

Presented in the White Street municipal parking lot (scene of September’s Guinness Oysterfests) from noon to 7pm, the rain-or-shine shindig is pitched as “an international culinary experience” that also boasts “international beer and wine,” plus family-friendly activities and a full menu of live music on two stages.

Some 30 of Red Bank’s most proactive purveyors of fine foodstuffs will be offering attendees samples of their wares, as “culinary cultural attaches” for the likes of France (Bienvenue), Ireland (The Dublin House), China (Temple Gourmet), Thailand (Siam Garden), Mexico (SurfTaco), ever-eclectic America (Dish) and points well below sea level. There’s also the expansive international vision of Gary the Soupmeister and Readies, plus gourmet pizza (with other Italian favorites) and the kind of sweet-tooth diplomacy that recognizes no national borders. A full listing of participating vendors (with website links) can be found here.

In a further flavourful twist, the featured entertainment also carries with it an World vibe, with an International Stage showcasing reggae partystarters Random Test, Dublin-born rocker Steve Reilly, Latin/ Salsa showstoppers from The Funktion, and a round-the-world performance by the students of Red Bank’s Kathryn Barnett School of Dance. An All-American stage features local favorites Quincy Mumford and Kirk & The Jirks, as well as Bon Jovi-likes Runaway (take it here for a detailed music schedule and links).

Admission to the Red Bank International Flavour Festival is $5.00 for adults (kids 12 and under free), with proceeds benefitting Red Bank RiverCenter and the Red Bank Regional Buccaneer Athletic Foundation.

The Flavour keeps on lasting, all this spring and throughout the summer, as the grassroots alliance plots the return of the monthly Red Bank Food and Wine Walk promotions, the first of which pounds the pavements on Sunday, May 20 — and about which more to come in the paperless pages of redbankgreen.

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.

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

Monmouth County officials say they have solved the daunting sidewalk-to-nowhere conundrum they faced in designing a new bridge to connect Red Bank and Middletown at West Front Street.

The fix? Create a walk-and-bike path that will bypass the narrow rail trestle on the Red Bank side, Monmouth County Engineer Joe Ettore said Wednesday.

In what was billed as a preview of a fuller public presentation to come in the spring, Monmouth County Engineer Joe Ettore told Red Bank’s mayor and council that the revised plan for the new Hubbards Bridge also calls for a construction timetable that will detour traffic around the span for just three or four months of the projected 18-to-24-month buildout.

And when it’s all done, the borough will end up with a new parcel of green space overlooking the upper Navesink River, he said.

The new span, scheduled to go out for bid to contractors in the fall, is to replace a “temporary” steel span installed a decade ago, which is to be re-used elsewhere, Ettore said. Construction is expected to begin in early 2013, with at least one lane of the existing bridge remaining open, except for about four months toward the end of the project, when traffic will be routed to the nearby Cooper’s Bridge on Route 35.

That’s possible, he said, because the new bridge, while anchoring in the same places as the existing one, will be built slightly north of the current span.

The job is expected to cost in the vicinity of $12 million, and will be paid for completely by federal funding, Ettore said.

Ettore’s presentation was an update on one he gave in September, 2009, covered here by redbankgreen. That plan remains in effect, but with some new features.

• As previously proposed, the new two-lane bridge will have four-foot-wide shoulders and six-foot sidewalks on both sides. But under the former plan, the southern sidewalk was to have come to an abrupt end on the Red Bank side, because the narrowness of the train trestle there prohibited it from continuing to Shrewsbury Avenue. That would have forced walkers and bikers to cross the heavily trafficked bridge itself.

The solution, Ettore said, is for the county to acquire a strip of land adjoining the New Jersey Transit rail line from Red Bank Marina for the creation of a stepped series of ramps leading up to the railroad grade crossing on Shrewsbury Avenue. The ramps will comply with Americans with Disabilities Act standards for accessibility, he said.

“The biggest challenge is the grade,” he told reporters afterward. The sloping ramps will be interspersed with stretches of landing, he said.

The county hopes to acquire the land through negotiation from the marina’s owner. “He’s, unfortunately, severely impacted” by the project, Ettore said.

• Because a retaining wall alongside a residential property at the northwest corner of West Front and Rector Place was causing sight-line issues, the county has already acquired that property and plans to demolish the house there, Ettore said. The retaining wall will be removed and the property will be regraded to eliminate the issues, he said.

“The ability of the county to acquire that, we feel, is going to be a huge benefit to the 17,500 vehicles that cross that bridge every day,” he said.

When the project is completed, the parcel, less than a half acre in size, which has access to the riverfront beneath an adjoining rail bridge, will be deeded over to the borough for use as open space, Ettore said.

• The full closure of the existing span is expected to occur in early 2014, after the Christmas holidays of 2013, and in expectation of the bridge reopening before the start of the summer season, Ettore told the council. Afterward, he acknowledged to reporters that such a timetable would require the job to be completed in 18 months or less, rather than 24, and said the county was shooting for a closure period between February and April of 2014.

A public review session, with full construction drawing and a question-and-answer session, will be held, possibly at borough hall, sometime in April, Ettore said.

Elected officials praised the plan, and Ettore’s office for working with borough officials and keeping them apprised of changes. Mayor Pasquale Menna was effusive in thanking Ettore for minimizing the shutdown period, for his concern about green space, and for the architecture of the bridge, which will pick up on the brick and antique lamppost elements used by the state on the Cooper’s Bridge.

Councilman Mike DuPont said the plan “seems to promote not only transportation, but to create some pedestrian walkways and bikeways, with access to and from the river.”

Five months after securing state Register of Historic Places status, Little Silver’s 347-year-old Parker Homestead has been added to that list’s national counterpart, the Asbury Park Press reports Thursday.

The borough’s oldest surviving homestead, which includes a main house and three outlying barns, the Parker property was acquired by the borough from Julia Parker, the last descendant of the original family, who passed away in 1996.

Former Mayor Suzanne Castleman, who died in July, was a driving force behind the acquisition, heading a board dedicated to the home’s preservation.

From the Press:

The most pressing issue at the homestead now is stabilizing and repairing three barns on the property, estimated to cost $500,000. However Mayor Robert C. Neff Jr. said the listing on the national register now makes the homestead eligible for federal grants to do that work.

The board is scheduled to meet March 8 at 7:30 p.m. at borough hall.

Federal money will be used to replenish beaches in Sea Bright and Monmouth Beach. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

Sea Bright is in for some sand to replenish oceanfront beaches torn into by Hurricane Irene last August.

Congressman Frank Pallone of Long Branch announced Wednesday that the borough, along with neighboring Monmouth Beach, would share in $12.3 million worth of federal funding for sand replacement.

The work, to be 75-percent paid for by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is expected to begin in the fall, Pallone said in a press release.

The project isn’t free to borough taxpayers, but was much hoped for by local officials. Here’s the  text of an email from Mayor Dina Long in response to questions sent by redbankgreen Thursday morning:

My understanding is this replenishment will finish monmouth beach and continue north through sea bright. I hope it will cover our entire beachfront but that’s not clear yet. Our beach erosion is most severe in the south near monmouth beach, so we are  relieved to hear this news! As you know this project is through the army corps; the federal funding will be 75% and the remaining local share will be made up through a combination of state county and municipal funds. I expect sea brights portion to come in around 300 to 400k, which we must include in our budget this year. We have been lobbying congressman Pallone for sand for quite some time, more urgently after we lost our dunes in the hurricane. He’s been a great advocate for sea bright!

From Pallone’s announcement:

Last month the Army Corps of Engineers completed a contract that replenished a portion of the beach in Monmouth Beach that went forward due to funding secured by Pallone in 2011.  The $12.3 million secured by Pallone in 2012 will allow the Army Corps of Engineers to complete the rest of Monmouth Beach and Sea Bright.  Significant erosion has occurred in these areas over the last few years which can put homes and businesses in jeopardy when a storm hits the coast.

The money was approved as part of the fiscal year 2012 appropriations legislation passed in late December that funds the government through the end of the year. Pallone worked with the Army Corps of Engineers to request that funding be allocated to this project. The Army Corps of Engineers will begin the beach replenishment project later this year.

By JOHN T. WARD

After more than 350 years of rather quiet contentment in Little Silver, Sickles Market is taking it to the old country.

The market, whose roots on the same Rumson Road property date back to a farm started in 1660, is organizing an October tour of gardens, cheese-making shops, olive pressers and other artisanal food producers on the Italian island.

For $6,000 per person, up to 12 travelers will get to indulge in “an exclusive insider’s culinary and cultural view of Italy,” says says Kirsty Dougherty, who was hired recently as Sickles’ director of tourism training..

That’s right: Sickles is in the travel biz now. Dougherty says the idea for the foodie tours grew out of store owner Bob Sickles’ own global jaunts to find new products and supply lines for his increasingly international market – à la the Tunisian condiments rolled out at the store two years ago.

Sickles plans to run three trips to differing regions of Italy in 2013, Dougherty.

“These are very much food lovers’ tours,” Dougherty tells redbankgreen. With their behind-the-scenes focus on food from where it’s grown to the plate, the excursions “are targeted at the gourmet palate,” she says.

The October tour, led by Sicilian food broker Gioacchino Passalacqua, includes nine nights of luxury hotel stays; chartered bus travel to and around Palermo and two other cities; meals at “hand-picked” farms, chocolatiers, restaurants and more. Airfare is not included. Take it here for complete details.