Vacant more than four years, 1 Broad Street has a new owner. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
This edition of redbankgreen‘s Retail Churn has news of a jewelry shop opening and a long-vacant, high-profile store space changing hands.
Kho&Co Stordio has opened at 152 Monmouth Street. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
• The former home of Heritage Liquors, at 1 Broad Street, has changed hands. Aace Mega LLC bought the building for $880,000 in October, according to Monmouth County records.
That’s $180,000 more than the seller, Wadsworth Properties LLC of Staten Island, paid for it five years ago. Heritage Liquors cleared out eight months later, and Wadsworth principal Eric Eremita, an interior designer and building contractor featured on HGTV ‘Love It or List It,” speculated on attracting “the likes of a Gucci or Louis Vuitton” to the space, but never had another tenant there.
The narrow, two-story building is among the most prominent downtown, given its location at the high-traffic corner of Broad and Front streets.
Athans Bozinos, a Howell resident who is Aace Mega’s manager, did not return a call seeking comment on his plans for the narrow, two-story structure, which has office space on its second floor. A filing with the borough indicates he’s doing interior demolition work at the moment, but gives no hint of a pending tenancy.
• Sophia Kho of Monmouth Beach has opened a jewelry and gift shop called Kho&Co Stordio at 152 Monmouth Street, between Pearl and West streets.
The “stordio” — a portmanteau of “store” and “studio,” Kho tells Churn — features jewelry Kho makes herself, as well as items like silk scarves she picked up on a trip to Shanghai.
The last tenant of the space was a thrift shop that seemed never to be open. Kho’s husband, David Kho, bought the building through an LLC five years ago.
