A digital rendering of the building approved for 72 Bridge Avenue. (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)
By BRIAN DONOHUE
A developer planning to demolish two homes and a restaurant and build a four-story, 20-unit condominium building by the Red Bank train station got the green light from the Red Bank Planning Board Wednesday.
The two homes on Oakland Street slated to be demolished in the plan. Below, the layout of the new plans including the seven parking spaces that will be redesigned as green space instead. (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)
The building at 72 Bridge Avenue will include two affordable housing units, a gym, a green roof and coffee shop that would become the fourth place on the block between Monmouth and Oakland Street to get a cup of Joe.
Scaled down from a previous 37-unit proposal which got the thumbs-down from the zoning board last year, Developer Warren Diamond’s plan for the property bordered by Bridge Avenue and Oakland Street largely conforms with the higher-density zoning in the area around the train station. The board voted unanimously to approve it.
“I think in this instance, you see a real sense of compromise,” said former Mayor Ed McKenna, the attorney representing Warren’s company, American Opportunity Zone Fund LLC.
The plan needed just a single variance for a smaller than required setback from the sidewalk. Even with that variance, the new building will actually be built several feet farther back from the sidewalk than some of the existing buildings on the block built before such zoning rules were in place, such as the one now home to Mi Lupita’s restaurant,
The board’s only quibbles centered around a topic that might have some long time Red Bankers looking up for pigs flying in the sky: too many parking spots.
Under borough zoning laws, the project was required to provide 30 parking spaces. But besides a 47-car garage for residents of the complex, Warren’s company, had proposed a small seven-space parking lot near the entrance on Oakland Street.
But at the board’s request, architects agreed to redesign that area as green space with trees and vegetation. Board members cited the relatively abundant parking in the area, including the NJ Transit parking lots. Although slated for a large scale development themselves, they currently often sit largely empty due to post pandemic declines in train ridership and other trends.
Board members also couched their position as part a larger shift in urban planning, away from car-centric development and towards encouraging people not to get in their cars at all.
“I think we need to change the narrative that parking is not a given right,” board member Megan Massey said. “Just because you want to park in front of the coffee shop doesn’t mean that you’re automatically going to get that space. And so do we want this new development, right across from the train station..do we want to be promoting, hey everyone gets a space and your spouse does too?”
“This is supposed to be promoting walking and biking and access to transit,” she added, “Not “hey can I get in my car so we can all complain about the traffic in Red Bank and then quickly park outside of the building that I want to go to.”
Several residents of the neighborhood in attendance weren’t buying it.
“I don’t know where this all surplus parking you guys are talking about is,” said Wendy Giguere, who lives nearby on Monmouth Street and said people often struggle to find parking in the area.
When Planning Board Chairman Dan Mancuso pointed out the often-empty parking lots on the east side of the railroad tracks, Giguere replied: “That’s on the other side of the lot. So people have to go all the way around the block?”
To that, board member Massey replied: “I understand the perception that there’s a parking problem, but there really isn’t, if we all have the ability to maybe walk a block or two.”
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