RED BANK – A proposal for a 45-unit apartment building along Pearl Street between Oakland Street and Monmouth Street will be continued into April after concerns were raised at a zoning board meeting Thursday night about parking, affordable housing and communication with neighbors.
The proposed building, which was first introduced in February 2020, would be neighbors with the Red Bank Charter School. The developer wants to raze two houses, an office building and the now-vacant gym Ultimate Physique for a four-story apartment building.
The top three floors would contain 32 two-bedroom apartments, seven one-bedroom apartments and six studios, according to Michael Simpson, architect for the developer. The ground floor will contain a parking lot, an office and a retail space.
A total of 70 parking spaces are proposed for the project.
The developer is 121 Monmouth St. LLC, which is owned by Michael Saleno.
Simpson said the office is intended to house Saleno’s real estate business while the retail space will be “incubator retail spaces.”
He described them as, “small spaces not unlike what you have at the Victorian courtyard right now over by the Dublin House. The idea is to provide spaces for a number of mixes of various different retail uses, none of which have been defined at this point.”
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The plan will keep the thrift store Pearl St. Consignment and Custom Clothes intact.
Ed McKenna, lawyer for the developer and former Red Bank mayor, said Saleno has tried to buy the thrift store building for years, but the property has “been in (the owner’s) family, in a trust, for I think three generation and he has a sister who lives on the premises and he’s not desirous of selling that building.”
Parking lot worries
McKenna said Saleno had also tried buying the house that would sit between the proposed development and the Charter School, but the owner had declined to sell it. He said the house was a two-family rental.
The two houses that are proposed to be razed currently sit as neighbors to the house that will be left standing.
“I’m not seeing it. I’m not seeing it,” board member Sean Murphy said. “You’re going to knock down a house. … We’re going to surround the house next to it (with) parking lots. We’re going into, we’re pushing into a residential area.”
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McKenna said the original plans had more housing units, where the new plan has a parking lot. He said this new plan decreased the number of apartment units from the first plan and decreased the height of the property.
However, Murphy said, “I got to be honest with you. I’m having a hard time with the parking lot there. Buffer, no buffer, once we deal with it, it’s there for good.”
Affordable housing
Board member Raymond Mass asked about affordable housing.
McKenna said seven units will be affordable, but he said Saleno was willing to deed restrict a couple of the houses he owns on Mechanic Street to fulfill the affordable housing requirements.
“Would it not be better for giving a single parent or a family with a child or two an opportunity to have a home with a lawn, living next to a park, as opposed to living in an apartment next to the train station?” McKenna said.
Mass said he was willing to listen to a presentation of what the options could be for affordable housing with this development.
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Communication with neighbors
Two members from the Charter School Board of Trustees asked during public comments if the developer would commit to enclosing its parking lot to prevent balls from the Charter School playground from flying into it, to prevent the side of the school that connects to the vacant gym from becoming weather damaged and to ensure no cross-access between the proposed building and the school.
The developer had met with Charter School officials two years prior to discuss the proposed plan.
Simpson said he remembered the meeting and the conditions that officials from the school had proposed. He said the developer was willing to address all those issues.
Murphy said, “It sounds like there hasn’t been enough conversation with the neighbors.”
He suggested that the meeting be carried to another date for the developer to “talk to all your neighbors, get them all on the same page on what’s going on because I don’t think you’re there yet.”
The meeting was carried to 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 21.
Olivia Liu is a reporter covering transportation, Red Bank and western Monmouth County. She can be reached at oliu@gannett.com.
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