The owner of a three-story building on Main Street (1500 Main St. LLC) has plans to give the structure a facelift, including new signage, lights and facade.
The current tenants of the building at 1505-07 Main St. — a Chinese takeout eatery and a beauty supply store — are expected to remain. The top two floors of the building, located at the end of East Cherry Street, currently contain vacant office space but will become two-bedroom, loft-style apartments, one on each floor with rent ranging from $1,400 to $1,600, according to Cynthia Solomon, director of community development.
Plans were presented to the Redevelopment Agency at its meeting April 9 and are expected to come before the Planning Board in the next few months.
The building is next to the former offices of Dornoch — builders of The Savoy and The Westbury — which renovated that space last year before moving. Prior to Dornoch, that property was home to Reggie’s Roast, a coffee shop and distributor, until about 2005.
While the Irving-Fulton realignment continues, plans also are in the works for assorted traffic changes around downtown, including: * Signalization of the five corners intersection near the Union County Arts Center; * Two-way traffic on Main and Irving streets; and, * Reversing some one-way streets in the other direction, including West Cherry and Coach streets. The Fulton-Irving realignment project is expected to last through April, completed around the same time the hotel is planned to be ready. The City Council earlier this month approved a $114,000 contract for city engineers to develop modifications and signalization for the intersection where Irving, Main and Hamilton streets meet Central Avenue. The project will commence once traffic is converted to two-way on Main and Irving streets, and includes widening Irving Street opposite the arts center, modifying the Civil War monument island at West Main and Central, and constructing a triangular island at Hamilton and Central. City Administrator and Redevelopment Director Peter Pelissier said the projects should be completed by July.
Readers of this blog prefer two-way traffic downtown by a margin of 2-to-1, according to a poll that concluded Friday. Responses to a poll asking “Would you prefer two-way traffic downtown” came in 10 for and five against, making for a two-thirds majority, 66 percent. Keep in mind, this is not a scientific poll, and one that can be easily manipulated by someone who has nothing better to do. Still, the results are similar to a survey of merchants the city conducted a couple of months ago, which had 24 of 39 (61.5 percent) in favor of two-way traffic. The City Council eventually will be responsible for approving any plan to designate new traffic patterns. Any suggestions on a new poll question?
An upscale, sit-down Chinese restaurant is being eyed for Main Street. The Planning Board last month approved a zoning overlay that would allow the Sound-A-Rama building (1483 Main St.) to subdivide. Sound-A-Rama would use half the space and Main Street Barber Shop (1495 Main St.) would move into the other half while the Chinese restaurant would slide into the barber shop’s current location. “It’s not a done deal,” Director of Building, Engineering, Planning and Economic Development Lenore Slothower told the Planning Board, but it prompted the zoning move as the building owner is looking at possibly bringing in the Chinese restaurant. Also approved for a zoning overlay last month was a tattoo shop at 209 W. Main St., among the storefronts as it approaches Irving Street. Nearby will be a Portuguese barbeque takeout joint (10 seats) at 205 W. Main St. that the Planning Board gave minor site plan approval to in September. The zoning overlays eventually will require final approval from City Council. I was out of town for the holiday last week, but the Zoning Board of Adjustment was expected to take up a few applications at its meeting, including possibly one for the burned out former beauty supply store on East Cherry Street and site plan approval for 1500 Main St. (the corner of East Cherry), among others.
I heard this report on NPR the other day detailing how the police department in Naperville, Ill., a suburb about 30 minutes west of Chicago, loans out a radar gun to citizens in one neighborhood, allowing them to track the speed of cars on their streets. They don’t necessarily issue tickets but they do collect information that cops then compile and even send out warnings. Naperville is substantially bigger than Rahway (Pop. 130,000 v. 27,000), but speeding seems to be an issue in neigborhoods everywhere, particularly in downtowns that aim to attract shoppers/pedestrians. The NPR report reminded me of Rahway’s downtown; Arts District Park would be a perfect spot to set up shop with a radar gun. Making Irving and Main streets two-way likely would slow down traffic some. I remember being at a presentation by Project for Public Spaces several years ago. A fascinating group, they said there are little (read: cheap) things that can be done to slow down traffic, such as making the street appear more narrow to the driver (i.e., painting a shoulder on a wide street). But please, none of those awful “bump-outs,” all they do is eat up parking spaces. Pedestrian-friendly streets are like parking when it comes to downtowns. Some (Summit, Hoboken) constantly grapple with providing adequate parking because there’s so much traffic. Others that are still rebuilding wish they had that problem, as they try to draw more people and traffic downtown.
Eighty Eights, the live jazz restaurant at Main and Lewis streets, is on the way out, and apparently a Cuban-type restaurant is on the way in. A liquor license transfer was approved last week, from Eighty Eights to Cubanu. Typically, a liquor license transfer is completed as part of a sale of the entire business.
Luciano’s, which from the outside has looked like it was ready for business quite some time ago, is expected to officially open in January.
The 250-seat Italian restaurant at the corner of Main and Monroe streets will host some parties during the remainder of this year.
The owner of a three-story building on Main Street (1500 Main St. LLC) has plans to give the structure a facelift, including new signage, lights and facade.
