Lots of lots in the train station redevelopment area. (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)
By BRIAN DONOHUE
NOTE: A previous version of this story had an incorrect start time for the meeting. It starts at 6:30 pm.
Eight parking lots. A former auto mechanic garage. A residential property with a single house on it. The town’s rundown trailer park of a Public Works facility.
The properties in the 13-acre area around Red Bank’s train station can hardly be described as an economic engine or the makings of a thriving town center. But what should it become? How will it get there?
Red Bankers will get their first look at the process and chance to sound off on those questions at a public workshop on the Train Station Redevelopment Plan Wednesday night.
A map of the train station redevelopment area. (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)
The name, perhaps, is a misnomer. Red Bank’s historic train station, protected by both its historic designation and the developer’s promises, may be the only thing that remains when construction is eventually completed. The rest is a blank slate the scale of which the town has not seen in more than a century.
In April, the borough council designated a 13-acre collection of properties surrounding the station as a “non-condemnation an Area in Need of Redevelopment” to kick off what is expected to be a multi-year effort.
Many of the properties in the area have been purchased by Denholtz Properties, which built the 57-unit The Rail, a mixed use building alongside the train station. The company has also been chosen by NJ Transit to develop its parking lots and other properties as part of a possible “Transit Village” development seen in places like Cranford and Metuchen and dozens of other towns.
But the company’s plans are still so early in the process that, as of this past spring, concept drawings had thus far yet to exist, CEO Steve Denholtz told redbankgreen in a recent interview.
“We need feedback from the town, we need to engage with the community” before such plans begin, he said. “I mean, I have ideas of my own… but it’s hard to formulate a plan until you know what the community will accept.”
The workshop begins at 6:30 pm. at the Red Bank Senior Center, 80 Shrewsbury Avenue.
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