The Red Bank council will try again to find a vendor for the concession stand in Riverside Gardens Parks this summer.

The council had been scheduled to award a lease for the stand to Jubilee Ice Cream LLC of Toms River, which last month came in with the higher of two bids, offering $16,800 for 2018 and $18,000 for 2019.

But the bidder dropped out at the last minute, Mayor Pasquale Menna told the council. So the lease will have to go out to bid again, he said.

Why not simply go to the second bidder? “The bid was for $1,” Menna told redbankgreen.

The stand, largely unused for two decades, was operated for the past two summers by the owners of Gracie and the Dudes shops, who decided not to rebid this year. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)