The July 22, 1975 Red Bank Register article about the new borough garage. (click to enlarge)
Editor’s note: this story was updated from an earlier version posted before the Borough Council meeting agenda was made public.
By BRIAN DONOHUE
The Mayor and Borough Council of Red Bank will vote Thursday on a plan to issue $4.6 million in bonds to finance a rebuild of its Department of Public Utilities facility on Chestnut Street.
In light of that, here’s a tidbit from 50 years ago that’s pretty fascinating – and illustrative of a time when things were done, well, differently.
It’s a story in the July 22, 1975 Red Bank Register about the Department of Public Utilities building a new vehicle maintenance garage at the facility.
The 6,100 square foot cinderblock structure was built by borough workers themselves, the report says, with then superintendent of public works Raymond English “scrounging” the materials to save money. 
It worked.
The paper emphasized what a bargain the whole thing had been, costing the borough just $40,000 to build. That’s about $239,000 in 2025 inflation-adjusted dollars.
So how’s Old Scroungy holding up on its 50th birthday?
The garage is still in use and, to a reporter who knows nothing about buildings and just looked from the outside, looks, well, okay?
A 2023 Management report prepared for the borough on the department and its facilities seemed to indicate it was in better shape than most of the structures on the property – not a very high bar, to be sure. A separate fleet management building, for example, “is in very poor condition,” the report reads. “Openings in the walls on the south and southeast corners of the building drew serious concerns.”
A rebuilding of the decrepit DPU facility has been on the top of the borough’s to-do list for years, with employees there working in temporary trailers long past their expiration date. The properties were included in the train station redevelopment area that has been moving through approvals processes over the past year.
At any rate, with the borough looking to rebuild the outdated and decrepit DPU headquarters, it’s doubtful scrounging will work in 2025.
In November, the Borough Council approved the hiring of two firms to begin the long-planned process of rebuilding the Department of Public Utilities headquarters
The council approved a $29,900 contract with Collier Engineering and Design to do topographic and site evaluation work and a $30,000 contract with Netta Architects to begin developing plans for the expansion/reconstruction. The new $4.6 million bond measure is on the agenda for Thursday night’s meeting.
We reckon the contractors are unlikely to recommend sending workers out to scrounge materials and build the buildings themselves.
Ah, the 70’s….
Red Bank Throwback is a regular feature in redbankgreen made possible by the online archives maintained by the Red Bank Public Library.
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