A view through a window of Sickles Market hours after its abrupt shutdown March 11. (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
The sudden collapse of Sickles Market continued to reverberate last week with a bankruptcy filing by the company that owns 6.5-acre Little Silver property where the once-thriving business was based.
In a related filing, the company’s sole owner and heir to a farming legacy with roots in the 1600s also filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors.
The late Bob Sickles Sr., left, and Bob Sickles Jr. at a farm event in 2016. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
Federal bankruptcy court records show simultaneous filings last Thursday by:
• AHS Realty LLC, owner of the Little Silver farm market property at 1 Harrison Avenue, off Rumson Road. It claims holdings worth $10.4 million, versus secured creditor claims of $4.4 million. All of the secured claims are held by Northfield Bank, of Rahway.
The company reported it has no cash, investments or inventory. The Little Silver property is assessed at $2.84 million, and listed in the filing as having an unappraised value estimated at $10 million.
• Bob Sickles Jr., the sole partner in AHS Realty, in which he identified almost $11 million in assets and $7.5 million in liabilities, both of which includes the properties and debts of AHS.
In his personal filing, the Rumson resident reported the state of New Jersey holds an unsecured claim of $767,000 in unpaid sales taxes, and a raft of business debts that he personally guaranteed.
Sickles has not collected any salary from the business in at least two years, he reported.
He could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Both AHS Realty and Sickles filed under chapter 11 of the bankruptcy law seeking reorganization of their debts, rather than liquidation.
The filings follow a similar action by another Sickles entity, TST Beverages, which owned the now-shuttered Bottles by Sickles liquor store in Red Bank. That business filed for chapter 11 April 23, reporting creditor claims of $5.2 million.
The move to reorganize TST’s debts came weeks after Metrovation Inc., the store’s landlord, obtained a court order to evict the business from the Anderson Building, at 200 Monmouth Street.
Bottles by Sickles opened along with a grab-and-go Sickles Market food store in the refurbished Anderson Building in August, 2020. But in a move that stunned customers, the 8,500-square-foot market abruptly shut down February 15.
Less than four weeks later, the 116-year-old farm-based market in Little Silver suffered the same fate. The Sickles family has agricultural roots that trace to the mid-1600s.
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