Vacant more than four years, 1 Broad Street has a new owner. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
This edition of redbankgreen‘s Retail Churn has news of a jewelry shop opening and a long-vacant, high-profile store space changing hands.
Already home to a dozen or so, downtown Red Bank is about to get another jewelry store, redbankgreen‘s Retail Churn has learned.
A model lured customers to shops on White Street in 2010. Below, a view of the trolley available to participants. (Above photo by Dustin Racioppi. Click to enlarge)
Here comes the bride-to-be, and her entourage.
The annual Red Bank Wedding Walk returns Sunday, offering prospective brides-and-grooms, brides-and-brides and grooms-and-grooms an opportunity to trawl the town’s business district for all it has to offer in the way of wedding-related services.
Which is a lot.
Alex and Ani, the Red Bank jewelry store with crystals embedded in its walls for positive spiritual energy, has been feeling the spirit of the season in recent days, with so many customers that it has to limit the number who can enter at any one time, said store employee John Pal, who was manning the door Friday afternoon. Amanda Warnock, right, was there for some more bracelets. (Click to enlarge)
Goldtinker founder Joe Romanowski, left, outside his new building last week with developer Tony Busch. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Deal is done. Rumson, too.
After decades of operating jewelry stores in Deal and Rumson, Goldtinker founder Joe Romanowski is starting over in Red Bank.
He’s shutting down his shop in Deal, where he’s operated for 42 years. The town is “dead” in the off-season, he says. There’s not even a place to get a quick hamburger. His partner in the 32-year-old store on West River Road in Rumson, Penny Viau, is retiring.
Then there’s Romanowski’s Poor Cat Designs store, which he opened last year at 65 Broad Street to appeal to those with funkier tastes. It’s booming, he tells redbankgreen’s Retail Churn.
So when his friends the Winters family closed their Firehouse Specialty Shop and Jersey Shore Apparel stores at 24 Broad Street and put the building up for sale earlier this year, Romanowski bought it, paying $1.3 million.
A Sea Bright man was charged with burglary and theft of $29,000 worth of jewelry from a Tinton Falls residence, according to a police report.
Michael Carter, 22, of East New Street, was charged with climbing through the open rear window of a home on Branford Circle on May 3, according to the report, provided to the media by the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s office.
A 69-year-old Staten Island man who admitted robbing a Fair Haven antiques store at gunpoint last summer has been sentenced to 114 months in prison, federal law enforcement officials said Tuesday.
Robert Fiolka, who wore a “flesh-colored” mask and toted a gun in the June, 2012 robbery of Blue Stove Antiques on River Road, made off with $200,000 in jewelry, according to a press release from U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman.
Blue Stove Antiques was robbed at gunpoint last June 2, with some $200,000 in jewelry and other valuables taken. (Click to enlarge)
A 69-year-old man admitted robbing Blue Stove Antiques in Fair Haven at gunpoint last June, federal law enforcement officials said Wednesday.
Robert A. Fiolka, of Staten Island, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Freda L. Wolfson in Trenton to an Information charging him with Hobbs Act robbery and use of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence.
He faces up to life in prison at sentencing, scheduled for July 11.
As reported by redbankgreen, Fiolka was also linked to three other robberies dating back to 2007, according to the FBI. Those cases were not mentioned, however, in the announcement of Fiolka’s plea by U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Paul Fishman.
Nor were Fiolka’s priors, which included a 1967 armed robbery of a bank in Matawan in which a bank employee was taken hostage, redbankgreen has confirmed.
A customer checks out the merchandize at Call Me Leon’s event at the Lambs and Wolves Salon last month. Below, Lori Lane. (Photo by Rebecca Desfosse. Click to enlarge)
By REBECCA DESFOSSE
If you dont feel like braving the stores this holiday season, Lori Lane of CallMeLeon will bring the store to you.
Lanes mobile boutique offers clients an opportunity to host parties at their home or business and invite their friends over for any occasion whether its a holiday party, a girls night out, or a birthday party. She brings the merchandise to your doorstep, sets it up and cleans up afterward.
Lane also always has showroom set up at her home in Shrewsbury for those who wish to stop by and browse.
On Black Friday, Lane set up her merchandise at Glen Goldbaums Lambs and Wolves Salon on Bridge Avenue in Red Bank for an event complete with sandwiches, snacks, and bottled water for her guests. Salon manager Heather Lubischer said that when Lane contacted them to host a party for her business, she didnt hesitate to accept. Lori has been our client for years and has become like family, she said.
Some of the locally made jewelry featured at Ice. (Photos by Rebecca Desfosse. Click to enlarge)
By REBECCA DESFOSSE
Nestled in the heart of Monmouth Street in Red Bank, Ice takes costume jewelry to the next level by featuring the work of local up-and-coming artists.
Pieces of jewelry are displayed individually throughout the store in ways that allow for each piece to get its own recognition, according to store owner, Jack Hersh.
Alexis Gasiorowski, a 34-year-old attorney who lives in Red Bank and moonlights as a jewelry designer, makes her bracelets out of items such as bamboo found in Sea Bright, snake vertebrae procured humanely, she said African trade beads and lava beads, to name just a few.
Ian Yarnell, above, with the balsa wood surfboards he and his brother, Colin, sell in their tiny shop, below. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
It’s one of the more ticklish delights of downtown Red Bank: a 100-or-so-foot-long stretch of alleyway filled with shops and reminiscent of Old Europe.
Tiny, tiny shops. We’re talking 150 square feet or so, in some cases. And the looming proximity of the Dublin House Pub, with its ample courtyard out front and bustling Temple Bar out back, only adds to the fleeting sensation of being transported back in time and space.
So what an additional treat it is now to glance in the window at the former Lee Yarnell Jewelers shop rebranded as Outside Set and see it packed to the gunwales with surfboards.
Blue Stove Antiques was robbed at gunpoint in early June by a man authorities have linked to armed robberies of New Jersey jewelry stores going back half a decade. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
A 68-year-old Staten Island man accused of robbing a Fair Haven antiques store at gunpoint in June has been linked to three jewelry store robberies dating back to 2007, the FBI says.
And just days before his arrest, the suspect appeared to be casing one of those stores for a second try, the FBI suggests in a document filed in the case.
Set to open at 12 Broad Street in Red Bank Monday is Alex and Ani, the latest in a chain of jewelry stores whose products, the company says, are infused with the positive energy that ancients refer to as vital force.
So is the store itself, located between Urban Outfitters and Zebu Forno: as previously reported by redbankgreen, embedded between the wall studs during construction were individual crystals, held in place with electrical tape, above right. (Click to enlarge)
Red Bank police are investigating a smash-and-grab burglary at a Broad Street jewelry store shortly before dawn Sunday.
Captain Darren McConnell tells redbankgreen that patrols responded to a 5 a.m. alarm at A.H. Fisher Diamonds, at the corner of White Street to find the front-door glass smashed and the store strewn with glass from broken display cases. The suspects had fled, he said.
Ashley Goral will manage Ice, which plans to open soon at 12 Monmouth Street. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
A primo spot on the sunny side of Monmouth Street in Red Bank is about to get some ice.
Most recently home to Soapmarket, which vacated in January to become an online-only retailer, 12 Monmouth is being outfitted for Ice Costume Jewelry, which hopes to open in just a couple of weeks, store manager Ashely Goral tells redbankgreen‘s Retail Churn.
A gate to the Bon Jovi mansion, as seen in 2008. (Click to enlarge)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
Turns out the 21-year-old accused of burglarizing four Navesink River Road homes over the last month got into rocker Bon Jovi’s Navesink estate.
Nicholas Tracy, who also featured on redbankgreen last month when he was spotted driving around with a bust of Napoleon Bonaparte, hit the Bon Jovi 15-acre, Navesink River estate on April 3, Detective Lieutenant Steve Dollinger confirmed.
Tracy’s alleged crimes took place over a month, and included stealing jewelry and watches from four homes, Dollinger said.
An alleged 21-year-old burglar bagged more than $500,000 worth of jewelry from four homes along ritzy Navesink River Road in the last two months, Middletown police said Thursday.
Nicholas Tracy who was recently featured on redbankgreen for driving around Red Bank with a bust of Napoleon Bonaparte in the front seat of his car was caught in the act Wednesday when officers responding to a residential alarm found him hiding in third-floor bathroom, police said in a press release.
A small crowd packed into the new Red Bank home of A.H. Fisher Diamonds last Thursday night, drawn by the chance to win a $10,000 diamond bracelet.
Morris County authorities say they have arrested three men in connection with a series of attempted jewelry store scams throughout New Jersey, including one that ended as an armed robbery in Red Bank in March.
The Daily Record of Morristown reports that police in Kinnelon arrested the trio Saturday after they tried using their signature scam on a jewelry store there.