Tag Archives: East Cherry Street

City Council

$165k for police assistance center

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A multipurpose bond ordinance to be considered by City Council next week includes $165,000 for equipment and improvements for a police community assistance center currently undergoing renovations on East Cherry Street. The governing body is scheduled to approve several bond ordinances at its meeting on April 11.

The $1-million bond ordinance, which includes the purchase of various equipment and improvements, calls for a down payment of $8,250 and issuing $156,750 in bonds. The city acquired the former Beverage Shop building at 52 E. Cherry St. last spring from the Rahway Center Partnership for $80,000 and plans for the police center were announced last fall.

The $165,000 is for “pretty much everything we need to open the building as a police facility,” said Police Chief John Rodger, including furniture and equipment, such as IT infrastructure, for a 30-capacity conference room. Rodger said the interior has been slightly redesigned and the Juvenile Detective Bureau will be moved into the building full time. The video system for East Cherry Street also will be moved there and cameras will be added for Lot B and the driveway accessing it from East Cherry Street.

Renovations to the center have counted on donations to this point, said Rodger, estimating that less than $15,000 has been spent so far. Pending expenses including flooring, ceiling and Sheetrock work, the chief said, adding that he’s working on getting all material donated for the electrical work as well as volunteers from an electrical union to do the work.

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This Wall Street Journal story from last week, All Not Cake on Hoboken’s Washington Street, indicates that even everyone’s favorite cool city is having some difficulty when it comes to retail tenants. About a dozen storefronts along an eight-block stretch of downtown are currently closed, though some new tenants are on the way, according to the WSJ story. Rents vary, with spaces closer to the train station more expensive, as much as $100 per square foot while uptown locations rent for as little as $2 or $3 per foot.

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City Council

E. Cherry St. eyesore may come down by summer

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The City Council Monday night awarded a contract to install a fence around Dornoch’s dormant Savoy property on Main Street and moved forward on demolishing the developer’s East Cherry Street eyesore.

First, the governing body unanimously approved a $16,820 contract to Pollock Installations, Inc. of Woodbridge to install a fence at Dornoch I, a.k.a., The Savoy, at Main and Monroe streets. The council then introduced a $200,000 bond ordinance to cover the cost of the fence installation, as well as the demolition of 65 E. Cherry St., and improvements to Parking Lot B, a.k.a., Dornoch II/The Westbury.

The council is scheduled to approve the bond ordinance at its April 11 meeting. If all goes well, bids for demolition would be awarded by June and demolition could come by summer, according to City Administrator and Redevelopment Director Peter Pelissier. The property paid about $1,040 in property taxes last year, according to PropertyShark.com.

During a meeting in December, Redevelopment Agency officials asked Glen Fishman, managing partner of Dornoch, about the possibility of at least installing a fence around The Savoy site, since it’s sitting there just waiting to be vandalized. Given Dornoch’s financial situation, his suggestion was for the city to install the fence and place a lien on the property.

The wall that collapsed at the property last month was not load bearing, according to Richard Watkins, director of the Department of Building, Planning and Economic Development. The building was declared unsafe and the owner was ordered to demolish it, however, he has refused, Watkins said. The city plans to place a lien on the property to recover the cost of demolition.

Dornoch purchased the East Cherry Street property from the Parking Authority for $65,000 (less than the likely cost of demolition) and had proposed renovations to the Planning Board in 2007.

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Uncategorized

Some more storefront shuffling

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Catching up on some more retail turnover in the past few weeks, one of the longest tenured stories on East Cherry Street closed. Big Belly Deli opened in spring 2005 but it looks like the owner has some bigger issues to worry about now.

In case you hadn’t seen this story over the weekend from The Star-Ledger/nj.com, the owner of the deli and another man were accused by police of driving around the Rutgers University campus, shooting deer without hunting permits, and bringing the carcasses back to the deli — oh, and they allegedly were intoxicated too. “Authorities have not determined if the deer meat…allegedly brought into the store was sold to customers,” according to the story.

A “Business For Sale” sign was in the window a couple of weeks ago while the deli had closed in February. I’d heard some rumblings about the reason behind the closing but hadn’t been able to confirm that to post about it.

A newcomer to East Cherry Street appears to be Pet Essentials. Stenciled signage in the window at 43 E. Cherry St. indicates a place called Pet Essentials will be taking up space there. It’s essentially been vacant since the Rahway Art Hive moved down the block to Main Street last summer. The flier in the window seems to indicate an April opening for the pet supply store.

Speaking of The Art Hive, I’ve been told Jim McKeon, the man behind the Art Hive, is on hiatus traveling for the spring and closed up the art gallery and co-op studio last month.

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A story last month in The New York Times takes a look at continued redevelopment efforts in Asbury Park (Asbury Park’s Boardwalk Revival Moves Inward).

Some key takeaways:

* “Recent development projects and a growing restaurant scene have helped potential investors see the town as one that was ‘moving forward,’ and that its creative history had attracted a passionate crew.”

* Market-rate rents for street-level retail spaces range from $12 to $15 a square foot.

* “A soft economy and a lack of parking and pedestrian traffic had kept business from truly booming.”

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Uncategorized

Retail comings and goings

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The Zoning Board of Adjustment had too few members in attendance to vote on the St. Mary’s application tonight, so let’s catch up a few comings and goings in recent weeks when it comes to retail spaces:

* Main Shoe Repair, at the corner of Main and East Cherry streets, closed today. It occupied the location for less than two years, opening in the spring of 2009 and at the time replacing a salon.

* A pet spa is expecting to fill the former Kataluma Chai at 1470 Main St., by sometime in March. Kataluma was in the space from October 2009 to September 2010. Thanks to a reader who submitted the photo at right.

* The Zen Martial Arts and Meditation Center of Rahway recently opened on Main Street, between the Rahway Art Hive and Main Street Barber Shop.

There’s been some scuttlebutt about a few others but I haven’t been able to confirm them yet.

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Patria Restaurant and Mixology Lounge opened in December, replacing the former El Bodegon restaurant on West Main Street. I haven’t had a chance to visit yet and haven’t heard much about it, but there seems to be plenty of curiosity judging by search activity on the web. Normally, there are a few keyword searches that turn up in our blog results several times a week. The most popular usually are Carriage City Plaza or Sky View, maybe a few times a day. Keyword searches for Patria or El Bodegon, however, routinely reach a dozen a day or more, far higher than anything else we’ve seen in the past.

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Uncategorized

Facade collapses at burned out E Cherry building

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The ground-floor facade of the burned out building at 65 E. Cherry St. collapsed over the weekend. It’s likely that it occurred sometime between Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon.

The Redevelopment Agency considered buying the property last summer and last spring was looking into possibly demolishing the structure. Dornoch purchased the property for $65,000 from the Parking Authority and more than three years ago had proposed renovations to the Planning Board.
The two-story building has been vacant since a fire destroyed the beauty supply shop in the summer of 2005.
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MyCentralJersey.com had this profile of Aromalicious, the new pastry shop on East Cherry Street.

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City Council, tax appeals, taxes

Tax appeals doubled in 2010

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Refunds were approved for 52 tax appeals last year, twice as many as were filed and settled at the county Board of Taxation in the 2009 tax year.

The increase was not unexpected and primarily due to economic conditions, City Administrator and Redevelopment Director Peter Pelissier said. In 2010, 20 of the 52 properties that were appealed were purchased in late 2008 or 2009, and three of them were brought by the city to correct assessments, he said.
The average tax refund among the 52 tax appeals was almost $1,900 while the average reduction on the appeal was $36,500. The largest appeals were industrial or commercial properties, such as more than $5,000 for 1072 Randolph Ave. and more than $15,000 for 670 E. Lincoln Ave., which saw its overall assessment reduced by a third. All 52 tax appeals can be found in this Google spreadsheet.
It’s much the same everywhere. This Bloomberg report from December indicated tax appeals are way up all over (“Tax appeals swamping U.S. cities, towns as property prices plunge”). Specifically, New Jersey homeowners filed 18,147 appeals in 2009, up from 10,067 the previous year — an increase of 80 percent.

Closer to home, there’s this story from MyCentralJersey.com, Piscataway budgets $500G for tax appeals, as well as this one from the Cranford Chronicle, Citing tax appeals, Cranford officials say surplus is down to $58,000 from previous estimates of $1 million.

In November, the City Council approved a multi-year tax appeal settlement for 1510 Main St./90 E. Cherry St. (Block 318, Lot 12) that had been pending in Tax Court. (It was not among the 52 appeals in 2010).

The building, acquired by Pioneer Investment Corp. in Linden for $205,000 in February 2000, houses Skaff Pharmacy on the first floor and apartments on the second and third floors. It pays about $11,000 annually in property taxes. The assessment was dropped by $37,600 — from $202,600 to $165,000 — reducing property tax by $1,909 in 2008, $1,962 in 2009 and $2,054. The total $5,924 will be applied toward 2011 taxes, as per the Tax Court.
After more than an hour in closed session tonight, the City Council approved a tax appeal settlement with Merck that will affect the 2011 budget and tax bills. The settlement was approved by a 6-0-1 vote. We’ll have details later this week.

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Commercial, Downtown, Retail

Aromalicious by Christmas

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A Portuguese bakery and cafe is coming to East Cherry Street within the next week. Aromalicious will be open by Christmas, according to the signs in the windows of 85 E. Cherry St. Renovations had been ongoing at the site since the summer.

Readers of the blog often have expressed a desire for a local bakery downtown. The results of the Rahway Survey from several years ago indicated support for a bakery, among other things, and there was quite a discussion about a bakery after Drug Fair vacated their space on St. Georges Avenue.

International Pastry, now in Clark, was located along East Cherry Street about a decade ago, and not far from this location, American Jubilee, a dessert shop/bakery operated at 88 E. Cherry (most recently an art gallery) until about five years ago.

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Kind of a scary story from The New York Times on Friday (“A ‘Shadow Inventory’ Dampens Winter Market”): A “shadow inventory” of 41 months worth of homes to sell that aren’t even on the market yet because they’re in the foreclosure process. “More northerly, urban parts of the state are in less dire straits.”

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Commercial, Downtown, Rahway

Salon, bakery sought for East Cherry Street

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Hoping to fill two vacant storefronts, a local property owner came before the Redevelopment Agency last month for assistance but it looks like the locations will remain vacant for now.

Continue reading Salon, bakery sought for East Cherry Street →