RED BANK: STATION CRAVES DUNKINS
The station at the corner of Newman Springs Road and Shrewsbury Avenue would be razed and rebuilt to include the doughnut shop. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Five years after their plan to add a 7-Eleven to an existing Shell station in Red Bank was shot down, the site’s owners are going back before borough zoners with a new plan: a Dunkin’ Donuts as part of a gas-‘n-go.
The circulation plan shows the proposed flow of vehicles within the site. (Drawing by Dynamic Engineering PC. Click to enlarge.)
Their proposal, filed in April, calls for the demolition of an existing car wash and convenience store at the Shell station on the northwest corner of Newman Springs Road and Shrewsbury Avenue.
They would be replaced by a 2,000-square-foot, 12-seat Dunkin’ Donuts with a drive-thru lane along its western edge, plus a two-island “fueling station” beneath a canopy.
The proposal shows Shell signage, though there’s no mention of that brand in the written text of the proposal.
New Jersey business records indicate that Waseem Chaudhary and Amjad Tabbsum are the principals in the site’s owner, 390 Red Bank LLC. Chaudhary did not respond to a phone message left by redbankgreen Wednesday afternoon.
The plan needs a number of variances for setbacks, lot coverage and other issues. A zoning board hearing has been scheduled for August 2.
In 2013, the zoning board rejected a plan by Chaudhary to replace the car wash with a 7-Eleven store. Board members said it was “too dense.”
The station is just a half-mile away from a Dunkin’ Donuts shop on Newman Springs Road at the southwest corner of Broad Street, in Shrewsbury.
It’s also half a mile from what might have become a Wawa megastore and gas station at the northwest corner of that intersection. But last month, amid a series of contentious hearings, property owner Frank Sala, who owns the Auto Exotica luxury car showroom where the Wawa was to have been built, withdrew the proposal, citing delays caused by opponents.
Among the objectors to the plan was Gulshan Chaabra, owner of the Exxon station at the northeast corner of Shrewsbury Avenue and Newman Springs. He hired former mayor Ed McKenna as his lawyer to fight it.
The intersection also has a Lukoil filling station on the southeast corner, in Shrewsbury.
