A two-story West Grand Avenue building is looking better after a facelift and ready to welcome its first retail tenant, a deli.
Tag Archives: commercial
Dessert cafe coming to corner space
Kim’s In The Mix, a dessert cafe, soon will occupy the corner of West Main and Irving streets.
Rafael Ortiz, who owns the property at 209-219 W. Main St. along with several other downtown sites, said some interior work still remains to be done. He estimated the shop could be in operation within a month.
The cafe signed a two-year lease with an option for three years on the 1,200-square-foot space at $1,500 a month, according to Ortiz. It will replace a camera and phone store that left in December.
Park Square begins taking applications
Landmark Companies has started accepting applications for Park Square, with a move-in date of June.
What to replace Drug Fair?
Drug Fair filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and 31 of its stores were bought up by Walgreens, with plans to close 11. With a Walgreens just blocks away, it wasn’t much of a surprise that Rahway’s Drug Fair on St. Georges Avenue was among the 11 to close.
Elizabeth Avenue supermarket changes hands
News has been a little slow of late so I’ve been perusing property transactions in Rahway and came across this one.
Universal Meat Supermarket on Elizabeth Avenue sold for $3.195 million in January, according to PropertyShark.com. V&D Properties, which lists the supermarket as its address, 2325 Elizabeth Ave. (Block 273/Lot 2), bought the 2.155-acre property from a Linden-based entity called Mia Tierra Linda, Inc., which acquired the site in October 2002 for $2.128 million. (That’s $1.067 million more, or 50 percent, in about 6 years and 3 months, for those of you scoring at home.)
The 32,000-square-foot building was built in 1963, according to land records, and is assessed at about $1.45 million, for property taxes of almost $69,000.
Summer opening pegged for Kataluma Chai Co.
One year we’re bemoaning the lack of coffeehouse/cafe options downtown, now we’ve got at least two coming our way soon; well, one coffee shop and one chai cafe if you want to be technical about it.
Kataluma Chai Company expects to open this summer, by June or July depending on how long the city’s permit process takes, according to Aisha Thomas Petit, a co-owner along with Danielle Etienne.
Kataluma will take up about 650 square feet at 1470 Main St., leasing out part of the property from the adjacent Nieces Pieces, a home decor shop that had occupied the entire site to the corner of Lewis Street.
No word on how long a lease has been signed but Petit said that in addition to their signature chai tea lattes, the cafe will serve ice cream, gourmet sweets and coffee, as well as offering “Wi-FI, live entertainment and special events.”
Mr. G’s Coffee ‘coming soon’
It looks safe to say that Cuppy’s Coffee is D.O.A. in Rahway.
Park Square signs first commercial lease
The first commercial space at Park Square is spoken for. Eyes on You, an optometrist, has signed a five-year lease and will occupy about 1,800 square feet along Irving Street near Elizabeth Avenue.
The buildout is under way and occupancy could come by May, according to Matt Dobrolowski, the listing agent for Park Square.
As for the remaining 4,000-plus square feet for the ground floor at Park Square, Dobrolowski said there have been “on-again, off-again” discussions with a “small, franchise cafe” that could still happen.
For some perspective on progress at the site, at left is a photo taken late last March. The inspiration for that photo (and a continuing series of the same) came from Harvey Keitel’s character in the movie “Smoke,” who snaps a photo from the same spot outside his Brooklyn smoke shop every month for many years. Not quite the same, I’ll admit, but taking a photo every few weeks from the same corner does offer some perspective.
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