The conjoined buildings at center, above, have changed hands, along with the liquor license. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank’s Downtown restaurant and night club, a major nightlife draw, has new owners.
The West Front Street business has been closed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Laura Kirkpatrick addressing the Red Bank council Wednesday night. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Laura Kirkpatrick has been named executive director of Red Bank RiverCenter, the semi-autonomous agency that manages the borough’s special improvement district.
Jim Scavone, left, with Mayor Pasquale Menna and Visitors Center director Margaret Mass at the opening of RiverCenter’s offices on Broad Street in October, 2018. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Jim Scavone, who led Red Bank RiverCenter for the past six years, is leaving the downtown promotion organization.
He won’t be going far, though: he’s taking a job at Hackensack Meridian Health at Riverview Medical Center, just on the edge of special improvement district he managed.
The tower looms over homes on Prospect Avenue. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
The Little Silver council hired an attorney Monday night to help it determine if it’s stuck with a new a cell tower that’s dialed up widespread anger in the borough.
As special counsel, Kevin Starkey is expected to start out by reviewing some two years worth of correspondence and other records for guidance on how the governing body might proceed in dealing with the tower’s sole user so far: Verizon Wireless.
Many in the overflow crowd voiced concerns about health safety and the tower’s impact on property values. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Hundreds of Little Silver residents packed a school auditorium Monday night to give elected officials an earful about their decision to allow a 95-foot-tall cell tower to be built just 500 feet away.
Few appeared placated by either an account of how the tower came to be or the assurances of a telecom engineer that it’s safe.
The short-lived home of a Subway shop at 60 Broad is slated to open as Luigi’s Ice Cream. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
[See correction below]
By JOHN T. WARD
A restaurant departs as an ice cream shop and a clothing store prepare to open in downtown Red Bank, redbankgreen‘s Retail Churn has learned.
Details below.
The organizers of last summer’s five-day Indie Street Film Festival in Red Bank, promoted above on a mural at Monmouth Street and Maple Avenue, plan to return next July, and are accepting film submissions, they announced Monday.
The trailer for “65 Percent,” a documentary by Mike and Jon Altino of Middletown, screens at the Red Bank Middle School at 1 p.m.
Saturday-morning cartoons, a locally made documentary and shorts-in-a-bunch enliven Saturday’s schedule of the Indie Street Film Festival, which got underway in Red Bank Wednesday night and continues through Sunday afternoon.
Click the “read more” for the full schedule and a sampling of delightful and outrageous movie trailers. Read More
Sand artist Joe Mangrum creating a temporary painting at the festival opening-night cocktail party on the Count Basie patio Wednesday night. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
Screenings at four Red Bank venues fill Friday’s schedule of the Indie Street Film Festival, which got underway Wednesday night and continues through Sunday afternoon.
Click the “read more” for the full schedule and a sampling of delightful and outrageous movie trailers.
A documentary about people who eat white dirt adds some grit to the first full day of the Indie Street Film Festival.
Scandalously long, beautiful legs. A guy with a compulsion for commandeering buses and trains. Geophagy, or dirt-eating.
These and other delightfully strange and wondrous topics fill the schedule of Red Bank’s Indie Street Film Festival as it enters its first full day of screenings and other events Thursday.
Click the “read more” for the full sked and a whole dirtload of delightful and outrageous movie trailers.
The festival flickers to life with “Morris from America” on the big screen at the Count Basie Theatre. Here’s the trailer.
Day One of the first-ever Indie Street Film Festival gets underway in Red Bank Wednesday, kicking off five days of heaven for movie lovers.
The opening day schedule is light, with one just one film lighting up the giant silver screen of the Count Basie Theatre and two parties. But the festival shifts into high gear Thursday with daylong screenings and other events at five venues, and keeps up the pace through Saturday before winding down Sunday.
Check in with redbankgreen throughout the week for festival coverage and next-day schedules with tons of trailers to help you decide which darkened room to bring your popcorn to. Meantime, here’s the first-day lineup:
A mural on Monmouth Street near Maple Avenue touts the five-day Indie Street Film Festival, which flickers to life Wednesday. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
For the first time since 2007, Red Bank will swarm with screening maniacs this week as independent films, filmmakers and cinephiles invade the downtown — and one or two nearby outposts.
Encompassing nearly 100 feature-length and short films, four screening venues and a handful of bars and restaurants, the five-day Indie Street Film Festival kicks off Wednesday, promising to liven up a post-Independence Day interval when the borough traditionally slips into an early doldrums.
One of the new 15-minute meters on Broad Street, near White Street. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Street meters, off-street meters, permits, kiosks, an app: now, add one more element to the Red Bank parking mix.
The borough recently installed nine white meters on downtown streets to enable shoppers to park for just 15 minutes, at 25 cents a pop.
An unusual adaptation of taquitos, above, and a glass of made-to-order sangria, below. (Photos by Susan Ericson. Click to enlarge)
By SUSAN ERICSON
Gone are the heavy velvet drapes and dark, brooding atmosphere that once decorated Red in Red Bank. Renovated and re-dubbed the Belmonte, the Broad Street restaurant and bar with the panoramic front window is now lighter, brighter and much more inviting.
A cool, marble-topped bar elicits a bit of Old World charm. Banquettes lining the walls promise comfort, while high-top tables arranged down the center aisle of the room offer a variety of seating or standing options: playing off the primarily tapas menu, it’s a mixture of this and that.
A turkey burger, with a view, at the Downtown in Red Bank. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Let’s talk turkey: when it comes to the piquant aromas of summer, ground turkey on the grill is not the first thing that comes to mind. Has a turkey burger ever kicked anyone’s salivary system into high drool as surely as an onion-studded patty of juicy, red beef?
Still, even in summer, variety and health consciousness occasionally nudge PieHole in the direction of the turkey burger when we crave a hot, meaty sandwich, even if we’re a bit dubious it can come close to a real burger on flavor.
At 18 Broad Street, now concealed by scaffolding, the Art Deco foyer seen below will be replaced by one more reminiscent of the building’s 19th-century origins, the architect said. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Accelerating downtown Red Bank’s flight from retail to food, the zoning board approved the conversion of a longtime shoe store to a restaurant Thursday night.
Dominating the two-hour hearing were two issues: whether the new owner of 18 Broad Street should be permitted to have three apartments upstairs, rather than the two allowed under the zoning ordinance, and whether the Art Deco foyer should be saved or replaced.
Barely mentioned: the impact of the 76-seat restaurant on parking.
The foyer of the former If the Shoe Fits store is the last remaining example of Art Deco design downtown, say preservationists. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
[UPDATE: The zoning board meeting on the 18 Broad Street proposal was cancelled. The application was rescheduled for June 18.]
A proposal to turn a former downtown Red Bank shoe store into a restaurant and replace its distinctive curved-glass entryway is slated for review at Thursday night’s zoning board meeting.
Preservationists have raised concerns about the plan for 18 Broad Street, which is located in the historic district, because, they say, it would eliminate the last remaining example of Art Deco design in the commercial district.
The building at 14 West Front Street, center above, has changed hands. The white one next door is the site of a proposed roof deck for the Downtown, at far right. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
This edition of redbankgreen‘s Retail Churn takes note of news at three key downtown properties.
Two are in the heart of a strip of businesses undergoing rapid change on West Front Street.
The other, on Broad Street, is marking the completion of an overhaul that’s been underway for more than three years.
The owners of the Downtown, at right above, hope to expand into the vacant retail space at left for more seating, including a rooftop dining area. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
The already head-spinning rate at which downtown Red Bank is abandoning retail in favor of restaurants may soon accelerate.
Borough officials are weighing two new change-of-use proposals for eateries in the district.
Gotham Lounge will have a dress code, a partner in the business said. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Hoping to head off misconceptions, a partner in the Gotham Lounge, a proposed Red Bank nightclub, promises an “upscale, sophisticated” speakeasy-themed place with a dress code.
Joseph Squillaro tells redbankgreen that the Broad Street club will be respectful of local sensitivities.
“I know how important it is to the town that they not have another Chubby’s there, not another Fixx” he said, referring by the former and current names of a West Front Street bar that authorities shut down for three weeks earlier this year following two street melees within a month last fall.
Funnyman Joe De Vito returns to The Downtown for a Friday night fracas, another Covert operation from the Jersey Jokers stable.
Red Bank may no longer be able to boast its own dedicated “Chuckle Hut” sort of comedy club, but it’s got something infinitely more valuable than another brick wall, low ceiling and two-drink minimum — it’s got Chris Covert, sandwich sculptor to the stars, and a man whose not-so-secret night gig (as impresario of the Jersey Jokers comedy collective) has almost single-handedly kept the laugh light burning for a new generation of standup stalwarts in and around the borough. Tonight — as he’s done every first Thursday of the month, for as long as anyone can recall — Covert plays ringmaster to an Open Mic Comedy card that commences 8 pm upside the Dublin House on Monmouth Street. Get there early for sign-up if you’d like to test your own comic kung foo at the friendliest “tough room” in the area — or just enjoy the show, and if you’d like to keep the laughter going, take it over to Front Street on Friday night, where Covert and company will be welcoming back a special guest stander-upper to the Downtown.
Gotham Lounge would feature bars on two floors. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Vacant for just a month, the former Red Bank home of Hamilton Jewelers could become a swank nightclub if approved by town planning officials.
A Shrewsbury anesthesiologist, Ted Kutzin, has proposed converting the storefront at 19 Broad Street into the Gotham Lounge, a “high-end bar/lounge with tapas food and occasional entertainment,” according to documents filed recently with the town planning office.
Gotham would become part of an rapid overhaul of upper Broad Street that includes half a dozen new restaurants, as well as two that have already failed, and another that’s about to add 200 seats to a competitive dining market. It would also join Red and the Downtown in competing for clubgoers.
Sea Bright’s business district is getting a free paint job this week, courtesy of Benjamin Moore, and the town plans to celebrate with a party this Saturday.
The free event, hosted by the paint manufacturer, is slated for 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in a parking lot near the Hurricane Sandy-destroyed former post office, and will feature food from borough restaurants, a DJ, a scavenger hunt and the creation of a mural. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
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A drop-off area outside Char Steakhouse has been eliminated under changes to the Broad Street valet parking program, officials said. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Love it or hate it, downtown Red Bank’s valet parking service about to undergo some more changes.
Red Bank RiverCenter, the special improvement district overseer, has taken over administrative control of the program, which was previously loosely run by individual stores and restaurants, said agency executive director Jim Scavone.
In addition, two zones – one for drop-off and one for pick-up – have been reduced to one since Monday night. That means this weekend will be the first test of whether the new arrangement – which is actually a reversion to the original set-up – will be adequate, said Scavone, who plans to work Thursday night to observe the activity.
