RED BANK: ANDERSON MAKEOVER LAUDED
The former Anderson Storage building in Red Bank was named one of three recipients of a 2020 Monmouth County Planning Board Merit Award Monday.
RED BANK: ANDERSON ‘EVOLUTION’ ROLLS ON
The former Anderson Storage building, above. Below, Chris Cole in the space being readied for Glen Goldbaum’s Lambs & Wolves salon.(Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
With the opening last week week of Sickles Market and Booskerdoo, Red Bank’s Anderson Storage building has all but completed a transformation in the works for almost two decades.
But for developer Chris Cole, who oversaw the project, it’s just another day at the office.
RED BANK: ANDERSON’S LONG VACANCY ENDS
After decades of disuse, a building in Red Bank’s train station district has a stunning new addition – and its first tenant.
What’s Going On Here? Read on… More →
RED BANK: UP NEXT: MUMFORD TOWNHOUSES
A rendering of builder Roger Mumford’s proposed Brownstones at Red Bank project. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank real estate developer Roger Mumford is a busy man these days: restoring the National Historic Register T. Thomas Fortune house and adding 31 apartments to the Drs. James Parker Boulevard property; completing the 12-unit affordable housing project called Oakland Square at the corner of Oakland and West streets; and simultaneously vying for the right to redevelop what’s easily the hottest patch of asphalt in town — the borough-owned White Street parking lot.
Meantime, he’s got another project in the works, one slated to go before the zoning board for review Thursday night: a plan for townhouses on the footprint of old factory buildings just a stone’s throw from his West Side office.
RED BANK: SICKLES BREWS BOOSKERDOO DEAL
The Anderson Storage building, where ‘Sickles Market Provisions’ plans to occupy the ground floor. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Sickles Market, the Little Silver grocer that traces its roots back 350 years, has partnered with the fast-growing Booskerdoo coffee-shop chain on its planned foray into Red Bank, the two companies announced Tuesday.
RED BANK: HOMEBUILDER EYES FACTORIES
A cluster of industrial buildings between Catherine Street, above, and River Street would be razed for new brownstones, according to the prospective builder. Part of the site abuts the Cedar Crossing homes, seen in the distance above. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
A block of factory buildings on Red Bank’s West Side, including some old millworks and a former guitar factory, could give way to new housing in coming months, redbankgreen has learned.
RED BANK: FORTUNE HOUSE’S GOOD FORTUNE
Developer Roger Mumford leads high school journalism students on a tour of the Fortune House. Below, Mumford with preservationist Gilda Rogers. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Less than a week after the Red Bank zoning board approved a plan to save it, the still-crumbling T. Thomas Fortune House offered a preview Wednesday of its anticipated role: as a cultural and educational center.
About a dozen high school students from around New Jersey took an exterior tour of the onetime home of pioneering civil rights journalist, who lived in it for a decade starting in 1901 and entertained the leading lights of black culture there. In the process, they also got a lesson in how the interests of preservationists and profit-minded developers might converge.
RED BANK: FORTUNE HOUSE RESCUE PLAN OK’D
Developer Roger Mumford with an architect’s rendering of the T. Thomas Fortune house as it would appear after restoration. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
A decade-long effort to save an endangered artifact of African-American history cleared a major milestone Thursday night when the Red Bank zoning board approved a developer’s plan to rebuild the T. Thomas Fortune house and create 31 apartments on its one-acre property.
Borough-based homebuilder Roger Mumford, who vowed to restore and donate the house for use as a cultural center before he would seek certificates of occupancy for the apartments, was hailed as the last-chance savior of a vital relic of the civil rights movement that its current owners want to raze. Residents told the board before its vote that Mumford deserved the tradeoff of more than a dozen variances, most of them arising from the apartment plan.
“If a development project has ever given back to the community, it’s this one,” said Kalman Pipo, a member of the borough’s Historic Preservation Commission. “If this project doesn’t go through, we are going to lose this house” to the wrecking ball, he said.
RED BANK: FORTUNE HOUSE PLAN SCHEDULED
Developer Roger Mumford‘s plan to save the dilapidated T. Thomas Fortune house on Drs. James Parker Boulevard in Red Bank faces its first test this week.
The proposal, which is backed by a volunteer group hoping to preserve the pioneering civil rights journalist’s home, calls for restoring the National Historic Register structure for use as a cultural center devoted to preserving African American history and serving as a resource for social justice initiatives. The plan, dubbed “Fortune Square,” also includes a 32-unit apartment building proposed for the rear of the property. Multiple variances are required.
The hearing is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. at borough hall, 90 Monmouth Street. Here’s the agenda: RBZB agenda 072116. (Click to enlarge)
RED BANK: BUILDER EYES FORTUNE HOUSE SITE
The home of pioneering human rights journalist T. Thomas Fortune would be restored for use as a cultural center, as shown in the architectural rendering above. Below, four views of the four-story, 32-unit apartment building proposed for the rear of the property. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
After years of efforts by volunteer historians to halt decades of decay, an historic Red Bank residence may be spared the wrecking ball.
Developer Roger Mumford has proposed restoring what he calls the “highly deteriorated” T. Thomas Fortune house on Drs. James Parker Boulevard and turning it into a cultural center.
Mumford’s plan comes with a catch: he wants the town to grant him a host of variances to construct 32 apartments on the site — more than twice the density allowed by zoning law. But he’s billing it as a win for all involved.
RED BANK: SICKLES TO OPEN WEST SIDE STORE
Sickles Market plans to lease nearly the entire first floor of the Anderson Storage building, seen here looking south on Bridge Avenue. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Sickles Market, the Little Silver farm market that traces its roots back 350 years, is planning to open a second store in Red Bank’s former Anderson storage building, redbankgreen has learned.
Store owner Bob Sickles told redbankgreen on Wednesday that his company plans to lease nearly all of the 8,000-square-foot ground floor of a building that will have three upper stories of offices.
RED BANK: ANDERSON SAILS TO APPROVAL
An architect’s rendering of the proposed Anderson Storage building, as seen from Bridge Avenue. Below, zoning board member Jesse Garrison, left, congratulates developer Chris Cole after the vote. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
The second plan to transform the Red Bank’s former Anderson storage building in a decade cruised to approval Thursday night.
The earlier approval, obtained in 2006 and never followed up on, was to convert the long-vacant, 27,000-square-foot structure into 23 condos. This one calls for a four-story addition and other changes to produce a 48,600SF office structure with a stores and a restaurant on the ground floor, a greenhouse on the roof, and a small shop made of shipping containers in the rear parking lot.
The new plan had some tailwind created by its predecessor.
RED BANK: WRAPS ARE OFF STATION PLACE
Black netting, right, that hid the Station Place apartments under construction on Monmouth Street in Red Bank for several months came down this week.
Which is not to say the 57-unit project is finished. Developer Roger Mumford tells redbankgreen that leases will be accepted beginning in late November, but the model units won’t be ready until January. The Station Place website quotes monthly rents “from the mid-$2,000s.” (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
RED BANK: PLAN ‘SPICES UP’ ANDERSON SITE
Metrovation partner Chris Cole with a rendering of the proposed project. Below, a freestanding structure in the parking lot would be be made of shipping containers. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
A plan to transform the former Anderson storage building in Red Bank into stores and offices reflects years of thinking about how to integrate it into the surrounding neighborhood, proponents told the borough zoning board Thursday night.
Testifying for developer Metrovation, architect Terry William Smith detailed a plan that he said “honors the integrity and the authenticity of the original building” via a four-story addition with a red brick exterior and lots of exposed wood and steel inside. “We’re not tampering with that,” he said.
Still, the project includes some giddy touches, including a small, freestanding structure made of shipping containers in the center of the parking lot and a century-old greenhouse on the roof.
RED BANK: ANDERSON MAKEOVER RETURNS
The former Anderson storage property on Monmouth Street abuts the North Jersey Coast Line. Below, an architect’s rendering of the remodeled building. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Two years after scuttling plans that would have transformed the long-vacant Anderson Brothers warehouse in Red Bank into luxury condos, developer Metrovation is back, minus the living units.
A plan to instead turn the three-story, red-brick structure into two floors of office space above street-level stores and a restaurant is scheduled to be heard by the borough zoning board Thursday night.
RED BANK: PARTY OUT BACK AT STATION PLACE
For weeks, it’s looked like a giant version of Thomas Edison’s ‘Black Maria,” a hulking four-story monolith of funereal blackness taking up half a block of Monmouth Street in Red Bank. But things are a lot less dour on the other side of the Station Place apartment complex under construction, as the photo at right shows. Developer Roger Mumford tells redbankgreen the project will be completed by late November, when leasing will begin. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
RED BANK: STATION PLACE POWERS AHEAD
A temporary utility pole will be erected on the north side of Monmouth Street at West Street in Red Bank to facilitate construction of the 57-unit Station Place apartment complex, under a measure approved by the borough council Wednesday night.
RED BANK: STATION PLACE WORK BEGINS
After years of zoning hearings, lawsuits and aborted plans, shovels finally went into the ground last week for what’s now dubbed Station Place, 45 luxury apartments and 12 affordable units at Monmouth, West and Oakland streets in Red Bank.
Formerly to have been called Courtyards at Monmouth, the project is being built by Roger Mumford, who has replaced substandard housing on Bridge Avenue near Drs. James Parker Boulevard with new homes. Mumford tells redbankgreen he expects tenant move-ins at Station Place to begin in July, 2014. (Photos by Dan Natale. Click to enlarge)