The former Catelli Brothers slaughterhouse on Broad Street is to be demolished to make way for 81 senior-living units under a plan approved last month. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Some big developments are on drawing boards in Shrewsbury:
• A former abattoir is to be razed to make way for senior housing
• Three office buildings would be demolished and replaced by new supermarket
• And hearings continue over a proposal for a gas station and convenience store.
The three Shrewsbury Avenue office buildings at center above, just west of an existing shopping center, would be razed to make way for a ShopRite, if approved. (Map by Google Maps. Click to enlarge)
• For decades, the slaughterhouse, operated by Marx Brothers Meats, operated somewhat incongruously on Broad Street between the borough’s lone school and a string of small shops, a vestige of the town’s agricultural past.
The target of periodic protests by animal rights activists, it went largely unnoticed, until a secretly recorded video emerged two years ago showing animal abuse led federal inspectors to temporarily shut down the plant, which by then was owned by Catelli Brothers.
The plant ceased slaughtering operations last February, according to the Two River Times.
Last month, the borough zoning board approved a plan for a three-story, 81-unit assisted-living facility called Sunrise of Shrewsbury to raze the Catelli slaughterhouse and a separate office building on the 2.5-acre site. The developer is Sunrise Senior Living, which operates more than 300 facilities across the United States and Canada, including Sunrise of Lincroft and Brighton Gardens in Middletown.
Information about the planned start of work on the site was not immediately available. Monmouth County records indicate the property has not changed ownership recently.
The project is the second of its kind to win borough approval in recent months. Last year, the zoning board cleared the way for  a Washington, D.C.-based  developer to build an 85-unit assisted-living facility called Chelsea Senior Living on the site of the former Shrewsbury Manor, a nursing home that operated at the corner of Shrewsbury Avenue and Patterson Avenue for 65 years until it was closed because of extensive rain damage in 2011.
• Over on lower Shrewsbury Avenue, facing the backside of a shopping center that fronts on Broad Street, the Saker organization of Freehold hopes to build a new 76,100-square-foot ShopRite supermarket on the site of three office buildings, which would be razed, according to documents on file at borough hall.
A special hearing on the proposal has been scheduled for January 30.
• Just two days later, on February 1, the zoning board is scheduled to meet again, this time for the latest in a series of hearings on a proposed QuickChek filling station and convenience store in front of a building owned by Verizon on Shrewsbury Avenue.
The plan was first filed in September, 2015 and has been the subject of numerous hearings, with objections raised by an attorney for the nearby Lukoil filling station.
