Gianna Maita-Edwards writes a comment on a display at the session. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)

By JOHN T. WARD

About two dozen Red Bank residents grabbed Sharpies to weigh in on the borough’s Master Plan Thursday night.

They gathered at the Red Bank Middle School despite heavy rain to share their thoughts on the first wholesale rewriting of the vision plan in almost three decades.

About two dozen residents attended the event. Below, Susan Favate of BFJ Planning addressing the audience. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)

The occasion was the latest in a series of outreaches to community by New York City-based BFJ Planning, which is leading the update effort under a $150,000 contract.

Attendees were encouraged to comment on, and express their approval or disapproval, with concept plans distilled over the past nine months and displayed on boards set up on easels in the school cafeteria.

Among the topics: the future of three discrete sections of town, to be addressed in “small area plans” within the finished document.

The areas center on Riverview Medical Center, on East Front Street; around the northern “gateway” into town at the Route 35 Cooper’s Bridge; and the former landfill and incinerator alongside the Swimming River at the westerly end of Sunset Avenue, where a 10-acre park has long been contemplated.

The suggestions for the gateway area, for example, include conceptual plans for improving left turns for vehicles exiting Bodman Place, at Riverside Avenue, which is part of state highway 35.

“One of the things we wanted to set you all up with is an argument to go to the New Jersey [Department of Transportation, who actually owns the roadway, so that you all are not reliant on DOT engineers to make decisions about what is included,” said Adam Tecza, of FHI Studio, which is working with BFJ on the project.

Among the residents taking advantage of the Sharpies was Gianna Maita-Edwards.

“I think it’s really well done,” she said of the event, told redbankgreen.”I really like how interactive this space is, and I love it when these kinds of events are really digestible.”

Among her foremost concerns about the town’s future, she said, are affordable housing and “non-motorized transit.” As a new resident of the West Side, she also wants to learn more about plans for Sunset Park, she said.

Dave Johnson, an Elm Place resident, came to the event with concerns about traffic, he said. He recognizes, however, that improvements to some of the town’s worst bottlenecks, including the intersection of Broad and Front streets, require action by Monmouth County or New Jersey state agencies, and can’t be made unilaterally by the borough, he said.

“There’s certain decisions we can’t make,” said Johnson, a member of the environmental commission. “When Broadwalk is open, they can’t change that traffic light on Front Street, because Front Street is a county road. So sometimes, congestion is in the politics of what’s a state road and what’s a county road.”

In terms of the Master Plan, “those are going to be hard,” he said. “Somebody will have to be talking to the state level and the county level.”

BFJ expects to have a working draft of the plan for the planning board in December or January, firm principal Susan Favate told the gathering. The document would then have to be approved by the board and, ultimately, the borough council.

For those who missed it the session, or want to experience it again, the session will be repeated Tuesday, October 24, at Pilgrim Baptist Church, NUMBER Shrewsbury Avenue, at 6:30 p.m.

A public hearing would also be held in advance of the board’s vote to adopt or reject the plan, she said.

Here’s the interim report prepared by BFJ in September. Additional resources can be found on the planning and zoning page of the borough website.

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