Downtown Investors plans to raze the house at 26 Wallace Street. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
A Red Bank developer plans to demolish a downtown house to expand a parking lot, with an eye toward future building.
Downtown Investors, owner of multiple office and retail properties in the central business district, is set to go before the Historic Preservation Commission Wednesday for review of a plan to raze the house at 26 Wallace Street.
Though the agenda posted on the borough website last week stated that the plan calls for the demolition of two houses, Downtown Investors principal Jay Herman told redbankgreen one would be razed. His firm does not own either of the residential structures on either side, he said, and has a contract on 26.
The property, located near Broad Street, would be used to add 30 spaces to an adjoining parking lot the firm owns on Linden Place, Herman said.
One of the spaces may be set aside for a drive-thru ITM, or interactive teller machine – an ATM that enables users to communicate remotely with a bank employee.
The lot would be used to support future development, most likely on Linden Place, he said.
“It’s been a long-term project to put together enough land to build another class A office building,” Herman said. The project could also include residences, he said.
The firm’s long practice, he said, has been to secure parking before building in order to attract office clients such as Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, which anchor the firm’s buildings at Linden and Broad.
Herman said that while the century-old house may look nice from the outside, thanks to vinyl siding, its is in “an extreme state of disrepair” inside, and would require “a bloody fortune” to restore.
On Friday, redbankgreen found a couple, friends of the current owners, living in the house on a short-term basis while awaiting completion of a new home under construction out-of-state.
The HPC meeting is in-person at borough hall at 7 p.m.
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