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Shopping Centers Today -> December 2003
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FADED GLORY
Will retail bring the glamour back to Long Branch, N.J.?
BY DEBRA HAZEL
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| A $500 million waterfront development called Pier Village is one of several new projects going up around the town. |
It was the Hamptons of the 1890s, where U.S. presidents and members of high society spent summers in Victorian mansions. But two centuries have turned, and so have the fortunes of that Long Branch, N.J., resort on the Atlantic Ocean’s Northeast seaboard.
The visitors stopped coming, the mansions fell into ruin, and Long Branch became just another dowdy beachfront town.
Today, however, things are looking up for this community of 31,340, though, thanks to a major development called Pier Village and a downtown renewal spearheaded by a local redevelopment team, all of which will cost nearly $500 million.
“This, along with Asbury Park, is one of the two holes left on the Jersey Shore” in need of redevelopment, said Gregory Russo, vice president of New Jersey developer Applied Development, which with Williams Jackson Ewing is building Pier Village, a mixed-use center, for a summer/fall 2004 opening. “The Atlantic Ocean is an amenity you just can’t get easily, and mixed-use is what we do.”
Long Branch had been one of the most glamorous resorts in the United States. President Ulysses S. Grant’s first visit in 1869, and subsequent annual treks during his presidency, made the city famous. The opening of a racetrack in 1870 — and later, casinos — made Long Branch a playground for some of the wealthiest families of the day.
In the early 1920s, however, Long Branch began a steady decline. The rise of the automobile and the development of public transportation made more-distant sites accessible to vacationers. By the 1940s the grand old hotels had deteriorated or been destroyed, and by the late 1960s, Long Branch was a shadow of its past.
Yet the citizenry never lost hope for renewal. Long Branch is about one hour from New York City, 90 minutes from Philadelphia, and nearby areas including Deal, Colts Neck and Rumson are among the most affluent in the state. According to Williams Jackson Ewing, nearly 132,000 people live within 5 miles of Pier Village; the average household income is $74,049, and average annual retail sales within the radius exceed $1.55 billion, the firm says.
Turning the town around has been a long process, replete with false starts. In 1993 a local businessman formed Long Branch Tomorrow, a community group determined to rebuild.
“We were in tough shape,” recalls Howard Woolley Jr., administrator of the city of Long Branch, then a local retailer and a member of the group. “There had been several efforts in the past to stimulate the oceanfront, but they had not worked extraordinarily well. The flaw they all had was the lack of an overall relationship to the city.”
Then Mayor Adam Schneider joined the group. He was a lawyer who had, ironically, been elected mayor three years before on an anti-development platform, joined the group.
“As we went through the plans, I had to learn a lot, particularly about how high-density housing on the oceanfront would lead to a renaissance,” said Schneider, who has been re-elected every four years since, and is next up for re-election in 2006.
Schneider worked with Long Branch Tomorrow on a master plan, and in 1995 the group retained Boston-based Thompson Design Group, which saw opportunity on both the waterfront and Broadway, the main downtown thoroughfare that leads to the ocean.
“The group had memories of Long Branch in its heyday and came to us with questions of what to do with a town with so much potential,” said Pratap Talwar, a Thompson Design principal. “When they first came to us, I think they looked for a quick solution. But after a study, we advocated a strategy for a year-round community, not the seasonal resort that had previously existed.”
In all, the master plan covers some 300 acres and includes between 1,500 and 2,000 units of new housing, as well as construction of some 500,000 square feet of nonresidential space.
But there were transportation problems to solve. Ocean Boulevard, a four-lane highway paralleling the ocean, effectively cuts the boardwalk off from the rest of town. Turn lanes will be eliminated and more lights brought in to allow pedestrians safe access to the beach. Everything had to be approved by the state of New Jersey, which has overall growth strategies for the entire state. Fortunately, Long Branch is one of the state’s redevelopment priorities.
“This is a great location for a ‘smart’ redevelopment project,” said Susan Bass Levin, commissioner of the state’s Department of Community Affairs. The overall redevelopment of the region has received $18 million in public funds, both in grants and low-interest loans. “We are looking at an area that had deteriorated over the years, but has the best location on the water.”
In mid-2000 Applied Development, which had redeveloped other New Jersey waterfront sites in its Hoboken hometown and in Jersey City, among other places, was selected to create the $92 million Pier Village, as well as oversee construction of housing and entertainment projects.
Applied Development, in turn, retained Williams Jackson Ewing in 1997 to lease and manage the retail complex, which will consist of 100,000 square feet of retail, with 400 rental apartments above, on 25 acres along the boardwalk. (Baltimore-based Williams Jackson Ewing built the retail in Union Station, Washington, D.C., and Grand Central Station, New York City.) A later phase calls for construction of townhouses on the Ocean Boulevard side of the project.
“The plan is to really have a residential, year-round community on the beach,” said Lehr Jackson, a principal at Williams Jackson Ewing. “Once you cleared out the rot, this was a great beach on a healthy coastline.”
But most important, he says, are the residential environment and giving people the ability to walk to grocery stores and to public transportation. Pier Village will be located on the boardwalk within walking distance of the Long Branch train station, and talks are under way to rebuild the pier for ferry service to Manhattan.
By December 2001 the site-approval process was complete, with PNC Bank coming on as lead lender. The developers broke ground on Pier Village in May 2003. The retail and the apartments above it will form a semicircle around a grand lawn and pavilion providing space for concerts and other events. The initial leasing focuses on eateries and local tenants.
“The nationals are the last guys in,” Russo said. “Lehr’s theory was that you have to eat three times a day, but you only have to buy shoes once every couple of months.”
Between the boardwalk and the beach, signature restaurants (including local legend McLoone’s) will keep locals and visitors in the area through the evenings.
The design features a Victorian look with awnings, inspired by the history of the city.
Pier Village is just one aspect of Long Branch’s redevelopment. Others include The Grand Resorts and Bluffs at Beachfront North, a development just north of the retail complex, consisting of nearly 300 condominiums and town houses starting at about $400,000 each.
Though the redevelopment of Broadway is actually a later phase of the plan, the street is seeing some improvements already.
“We’re not seeing the vacancies we did before,” says Nancy Kleiberg, executive director of the Long Branch Chamber of Commerce. “Our phone is ringing constantly.”
Long Branch isn’t the only Jersey Shore town to attempt a rebirth. Red Bank, nearby on the Navesink River, regenerated its downtown a decade ago. And Asbury Park is next on the state’s list for redevelopment, Levin says. Long Branch’s secret is its rare (for New Jersey) political stability, according to Woolley.
“The gift we had here was a patient local government,” said Talwar. “The community had so much support. Plus, they understood the complexity of the project and kept in touch with the state.”
No one involved in the redevelopment expects or even wants Long Branch to become the upscale resort it was in the 1880s and ’90s. Instead, proponents say, the town will become a thriving year-round community over the next 10 to 15 years, bringing glory days of another sort.
“Ironically, it will be a lot of what it was,” Woolley said. “But people will not be living in hotels, but in town homes and condos. We will have a vibrant oceanfront and a vibrant downtown.”
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