RED BANK: URBAN OUTFITTERS BUILDING SOLD
One of Red Bank’s landmark commercial buildings has a new owner, redbankgreen has learned.
Two other downtown buildings have also changed hands recently.
RED BANK: BROAD STREET ‘VAULT’ SOLD
After a long-overdue sprucing-up and revival as office space, a prominent building in downtown Red Bank changed hands late last month, redbankgreen has learned.
RED BANK: BUILDING VALUE DOUBLES. HOW?
The building at 14-16 Broad Street doubled in value in just two years. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Talk about rapid inflation: a downtown Red Bank commercial building doubled in value over the last two years, according to a recent sale.
What’s Going On Here?
RED BANK: MINORITIES AND HEALTH IN FOCUS
Parker Family Health Center executive director Suzy Dyer with clinic founder Dr. Eugene Cheslock during Wednesday’s discussion. (Photo from Zoom. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Despite progress in recent decades, minority group members are still impacted by “medical apartheid,” a health professional said at a Red Bank Public Library discussion Wednesday night.
Panelists and about two dozen viewers took stock of some healthcare challenges faced by the disenfranchised during the latest entry in the library’s ‘Let’s Talk About Race‘ series.
RED BANK: MERCHANTS BLAST FEE HIKE
Red Tank Brewing owner John Arcara speaking at Wednesday’s council session. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
The Red Bank council voted Wednesday to boost the fees charged to restaurants to maintain tables in parking spaces converted to streateries.
The action followed claims by two business owners that the hike was onerous.
RED BANK: STREATERIES ON HOLD
Borough workers created a streatery outside Bombay River and Tacoholics restaurants on Broad Street in July, 2020. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
At the Red Bank council’s first in-person session in more than two years last week, a lone member failed to advance a pandemic-era fix said to be favored by two merchant organizations: street eateries.
RED BANK: RIVERCENTER TAPS DOWNTOWN PRO
Bob Zuckerman has run business-promotion organizations in South Orange, where he’s now an elected official, and Westfield. (Photo by Matt Glass. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
A downtown-management professional with extensive experience in New York and New Jersey has been tapped to run Red Bank RiverCenter, the organization announced Thursday.
Bob Zuckerman replaces Glenn Carter, the onetime borough planning director who served as RiverCenter’s executive for less than a year prior to his retirement earlier this year.
RED BANK: MEAL PROVIDERS TEAM UP
(Press release from Soup Kitchen 411)
It wasn’t the first time they’ve collaborated to feed community members, but on the mild April Monday morning, the smell of delicious meals was almost unparalleled. The vegetarian sandwiches featured roasted red pepper hummus with lettuce tomatoes and cabbage, while the meat sandwiches had just about any and every type of meat carnivores crave—ham with mustard aioli, monterey jack cheese, mixed greens, tomatoes; turkey/pastrami with creamy horseradish, monterey cheese, lettuce tomatoes; grilled chicken with roasted red peppers, basil aioli and arugula, all in hearty ciabatta bread.
RED BANK: LUNCH BREAK COLLECTS PROMWEAR
(Press release from Lunch Break)
Lunch Break, the food pantry and social service resource center in Red Bank, is accepting formal-wear donations for female and male students from Feb. 1-March 31, 2022 at its facility, 121 Drs. James Parker Blvd., as part of the Sixth Annual Prom Drive and Give-Away.
RED BANK: LUNCH BREAK IN HOUSING MERGER
Lunch Break Board President Philip Antoon and Family Promise of Monmouth County Board President Jessica Stepanski sign ceremonial document incorporating Family Promise into the Lunch Break network of programs. (Photo courtesy of Lunch Break. Click to enlarge.)
Press release Lunch Break
Addressing the systemic problem of homelessness in Monmouth County has long been on Lunch Break’s radar. Community members without adequate housing have sought the resource center’s help with life’s basic necessities, among them, shelter.
RED BANK: GUITARS, TOYS & TABLES CHURN IN
Relic Music owner Mike Nicosia with one of the Dunable guitars his shop carries. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Amid a booming market for six-stringed instruments, a boutique retailer of electric guitars has opened in downtown Red Bank.
Also in this edition of Retail Churn: a new combo toy and sports memorabilia shop, and a Ukrainian maker of custom tables and jewelry making its United States landfall, both on Broad Street.
RED BANK: EBANKS OFFERS PLANNING PRIMER
Community planning director Shawna Ebanks speaking at the library Thursday night. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
About 15 Red Bank residents got a brief seminar in municipal planning and zoning at the public library Thursday night.
But presenter Shawna Ebanks, the borough’s director of community development, steered clear of third-rail issues such as tax abatements.
RED BANK: TOWN HALL OPEN BY APPOINTMENT
After 17 months off-limits to visitors as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, offices in Red Bank’s borough hall have reopened on an appointment-only basis Monday, the town announced Monday.
RED BANK: LUNCH BREAK REOPENS ITS DOORS
Lunch Break’s kitchen staff stands ready to again serve in-person guests. (Lunch Break photo. Click to enlarge.)
(Press release from Lunch Break)
After 15 months of operating as a take-away facility because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Red Bank’s Lunch Break is again offering its guests seated meals onsite, the food security and social services resource announced Wednesday.
LITTLE SILVER: COVID SHUTS WEIGHT ROOM
After a Red Bank Regional High School student tested positive for COVID-19 this week, the Little Silver school’s weight room was closed for additional cleaning, an official told players and parents Thursday.
RED BANK: BOARD TAPS BOWERS-CRADER
Samantha Bowers-Crader with her father, John Bowers, at the Mayor’s Ball in 2018. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank RiverCenter‘s new chairperson is filling a seat held three decades ago by her father.
RED BANK: CARTER TO LEAD RIVERCENTER
Glenn Carter and OceanFirst Bank’s Robin Fitzmaurice at the Mayor’s Ball at the Oyster Point Hotel in 2018. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
A familiar face has been hired to run Red Bank RiverCenter, the downtown promotion organization: former borough planning director Glenn Carter.
RED BANK: MASTER PLAN UPDATE BEGINS
A southward view of Broad Street from 2012. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank embarked on a full-scale rewriting of its Master Plan for the first time in 25 years Monday night.
At a meeting via Zoom that lasted less than 12 minutes, the planning board initiated what could be a two-year process of rethinking the town’s zoning for the next generation.
RED BANK: KIRKPATRICK QUITS RIVERCENTER
Laura Kirkpatrick addressing the Red Bank council in March, 2020. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
[See UPDATE below]
By JOHN T. WARD
For the second time in just 17 months, the downtown promotion organization Red Bank RiverCenter is losing its executive director.
After just one, pandemic-filled year, Laura Kirkpatrick has resigned as operational head of the agency that manages the borough’s special improvement district, redbankgreen has learned.
RED BANK: STUDENTS HELP FEED THE HUNGRY
Brigid Hempstead, right, with her twin sister Siobhan and teacher Brian Nesci planting vegetables on the lot last Saturday. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
On a vacant lot in Red Bank, students from Red Bank Catholic High School are mixing the ancient lessons of agriculture with new technology to help tackle food insecurity amid a global pandemic.
They’re also hoping to create a new model for food-sharing.
RED BANK: ADULT SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE
Press release from the Eastern Monmouth Area Chamber of Commerce Educational Foundation
A scholarship for higher education is life changing, just ask Laura Burns, a school teacher in Hazlet, who wanted to continue graduate work to reach her goal in school administration. As a middle school language arts and social studies teacher, Laura (at right) dreamed of taking the next step but realized the financial hurdles to make it happen would be an obstacle. She applied to the Eastern Monmouth Area Chamber of Commerce (EMACC) Educational Foundation for its annual scholarship and the rest is history or her story.
LITTLE SILVER: RBR SET FOR MP4 AND BEYOND
Closing out its third marking period last week, Red Bank Regional High School shared photos over the weekend of the recently completed addition to the Little Silver school, above and below.
LITTLE SILVER: RBR BACK TO REMOTE CLASSES
[See UPDATE below]
Red Bank Regional High School will revert to an all-remote schedule Friday because of “high rates of community transmission” of COVID-19 and other factors, Superintendent Lou Moore announced Thursday evening.
RED BANK: WORRY LINGERS AMONG DREAMERS
Clockwise from top left: Adriana Medina Gomez, Itzel Perez Hernandez, Yaritza Ortega, Karina España and Karla Ortega. (Photos from Zoom. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
As it became clearer in the weeks after the November 3 election that Joe Biden would become the 46th president of the United States, Adriana Medina Gomez‘s phone began ringing more than usual.
“Among our clients, there was a sense of, ‘OK, Biden won, now what? What can I do to get legal?'” said Medina Gomez, a legal assistant in the Red Bank office of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker social justice organization. “Like immediately, the calls started pouring in about that.”
RED BANK: HOSPITAL TO OWN GARAGE
The garage, built in 1983, became the subject of a lease-purchase deal between the town and Riverview 17 years later. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
It’s a mere formality, but Riverview Medical Center is slated to become the owner of Red Bank’s only publicly-owned parking garage Friday.
At its regular meeting Wednesday night, the borough council authorized officials to sign off on a property transfer worked out when the current council president was in middle school.
The deal adds to the nonprofit hospital’s growing portfolio of real estate.