Special Report: New Jersey

Urban Redevelopment

Greetings from the New and Improved Asbury Park

by Katherine S. Robertson

Even as a Bruce Springsteen album cover famously celebrated Asbury Park three decades ago, the city was falling into a spiral of economic and physical decline, flawed plans, and false starts. But glory days for the Jersey Shore landmark may soon be back, with a major redevelopment laying the foundation.

The New Jersey municipality recently embarked on Oceanfront Asbury, an ambitious revitalization plan driven by a core public-private partnership. That massive project is ready to go into the ground on an impressive scale that includes municipal water and sewer improvements, beachfront enhancements, commercial and retail development, and more than 3,160 units of housing.

"Asbury Park was like a diamond in the rough," said Larry Fishman, CEO of Asbury Partners, the project's developer. "But you had to dig deep to find the diamond."

The current mayor, Kevin Sanders, said he and the slate of city council members that took office in 2001 have put a priority on revitalizing the waterfront district. First on the agenda was restoring once-vibrant facilities and creating market-rate housing that could attract residents, who in turn would support planned commercial and retail spaces.

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With all its bells and whistles, the 56-acre redevelopment project is essentially a giant marketing tool primed to trigger further private investment in the city, Sanders said. Dividends are already posting. In three years, 40 businesses have moved in and 10 separate developers are working on individual development components.

For a long stretch, development in Asbury Park seemed to be a classic exercise in futility. Once a prime stop along the popular coastline, the city steadily lost its tax base over the last several decades as businesses left, many burned out by 1970s-era race riots, and more exiting in the years following in the face of competition from malls, suburbs, and oceanfront casinos.

An early renewal plan, launched in the 1970s, went nowhere. Then, a waterfront redevelopment plan approved in 1986 went belly-up less than six years later, leaving a vacant steel-framed building in the middle of Ocean Ave. as a symbol of its failure. The disposition of the current redevelopment site was tied up in court, and the boardwalks, pavilions, hotels, and beachfront properties sank even deeper into disrepair.

But things changed in 2001. That August, Asbury Partners inked a formal memorandum of understanding with the city and acquired redevelopment rights for the 56-acre site that would become Oceanfront Asbury, along with real estate liens for a property that had gone bankrupt.

In the deal, the partnership anteed up $6.7 million for the tax liens and $6 million for the redevelopment rights. In return for designation as prime developer, the company agreed to tackle public infrastructure work needed to support the project, an undertaking expected to cost roughly $50 million. In addition, Asbury Partners agreed to renovate the publicly owned boardwalk and beachfront area - once the pride of the city - and to pay $7 million to the municipality in order to support affordable housing and community initiatives.

Though the city has its own representatives and consultants reviewing the project, the deal gives Asbury Partners significant control over the development, including selection of the design team. A month after signing the initial agreement, the partnership named a joint venture of Clarke Caton Hintz and Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn as chief architect and urban designer.

The seeds of Asbury Park's redevelopment had long been in place, said John Clarke, AIA, of Clarke Caton Hintz. "The skeleton was there for a beautiful thing," he said, referring to the 1856 blueprint by John Bradley for the planned community of Asbury Park. "What we had to do was rebuild it in our times with our building technologies."

For instance, today's master design restores the original grid of avenues, which widen out to 200 ft. as they approach the main boulevard running parallel to the ocean. The design also retains the character of the historic resort area by designating a retail and entertainment zone. The historic pavilions, theater and convention center complex, and Stone Pony nightclub - also made famous by Springsteen - will all come back to life under the plan.

Other improvements are already visible. The mile-long boardwalk that defined Asbury Park during its heyday is back after a major restoration. The vacant steel building on Ocean Ave. met the wrecking ball.

But the redevelopment has a ways to go. Asbury Partners has rights to develop the oceanfront area for various commercial, retail, and entertainment uses. It has selected SOSH Architects to design significant parts of the retail and entertainment portions of the development, which will have 450,000 s.f. of retail space overall. One of SOSH's signature pieces is the 3rd Avenue Pavilion.

The partnership has also selected two subdevelopers, Westminster Communities and Paramount Homes, to design and construct a portion of the housing units that the master plan envisions.

Westminster, the construction division of Kushner Companies of Florham Park, N.J., was slated to break ground this fall on the first 156 units of 800 planned market-rate condominiums, said Sam Gershwin, the division's president. The condominium complex, which also includes 5,000 sq. ft. of retail space, will consist of masonry, brick, stone, and "lots of glass for lines to the water," Gershwin added.

Paramount, based in Jackson, N.J., is on the same track, mirroring the autumn groundbreaking and kicking off construction of its 153-unit first phase of residential condominiums.

The public-private partnership is working smoothly in the eyes of Sanders, the mayor, whose family goes back six generations to Asbury Park's founding, and who was frustrated by the hemorrhaging of businesses and residents. "People are showing a lot of faith in government," he said. "There are a lot of common-sense decisions being made."

The development team agrees that the public authorities in Asbury Park have committed themselves to the big picture. "There's a definite climate to get things done," Gershwin said.

Fishman of Asbury Partners also sees the hands-on involvement of the municipal government - evidenced in having its own planners and technical review teams, an intensive public participation process, and a willingness to work creatively - as a benefit to the project that kept it from being sidetracked.

Despite steering the project, Fishman said Asbury Partners doesn't expect to see a dime's return for five years. But he added that there's a sense of accomplishment and a great amount of satisfaction in being part of something with such far-reaching social and economic potential.

"Everyone involved with the project prospers - the city, Asbury Partners, and all subsequent developers," Fishman said. "The City of Asbury Park will again reign as the 'Jewel of the Jersey Shore.'"