After a bizarre couple of weeks, our latest poll (“What’s your favorite restaurant in Rahway”) is complete.
Tag Archives: St. Georges Avenue
St. Georges Avenue apartments update
The snowy winter and wet spring slowed the apartment complex project going up on St. Georges Avenue by at least three months, according to Jim Sisto, president of Westfield-based Sisto Realty, along with some changes with contractors.
Sisto said the 50-unit project should be 80 percent completed by mid-October and “ready to go” by the new year. The 37 two-bedroom units will be about 1,100 square feet a
nd the other 13 one-bedroom units about 800 square feet in the three-story structure.
It was last summer that dozens of trees were cleared on the St. Georges Avenue site to make way for the development. At that time, Sisto anticipated about a year for construction.
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New poll: What’s your favorite restaurant?
It’s been quite some time since our last blog poll, so here’s one that everyone should enjoy. Next time you’re looking for places to eat in Rahway, just check back here, and feel free to use the comments section below after visits to any of these places.
Beana’s nabs third place for Best Mexican
Beana’s Mexican Restaurant on St. Georges Avenue took third place in the Mexican category of Inside Jersey‘s “Best of N.J. Restaurants” feature this week.
New Jersey Monthly has its annual critics’ and readers’ restaurant poll but no word on how the top three were selected by Inside Jersey.
Settlement agreement may be near
A resolution to finalize a settlement agreement with Carriage City Properties was pulled at last week’s Redevelopment Agency meeting.
Effort to revive chamber of commerce
Nearly a decade after it dissolved, the Rahway Chamber of Commerce is making a comeback. The Chamber will host its first meeting, open to the public and non-members, Thursday at 8:30 a.m. at the Masonic Temple on Irving Street.
Board rejects splitting St. Georges Ave. store
The Planning Board Tuesday night unanimously rejected an application to divide a St. Georges Avenue furniture store into three parcels. The application, which originally proposed to split the property into four commercial spaces, was continued from the June meeting when board members had too many questions to vote.
The revised application, though, still had too many questions for Planning Board members, and too many concerns about the impact on parking and traffic in the neighborhood. The rear lot, off Union Street, has about 15 parking spaces, which rarely have more than a handful of cars parked, according to the applicant. The application needs a parking variance since zoning regulations normally would require 32, though it is a pre-existing issue.
The improvements proposed in large part are required anyway, said Planning Board member and City Code Official Richard Watkins, and zoning enforcement could rectify issues with buffers, lighting and signage.
Resident Stefan Williams testified that the application would further aggravate parking problems along the 700 block of Union Street. Parking at the site could increase with additional tenants, but also once business improves, creating more competition for parking along Union Street, he said, which already deals with alternative side parking and a dearth of on-street residential parking.
Williams said there already is an unreasonable amount of traffic on Union Street and the applicant failed to show an exceptional or undue hardship. Board members seemed to agree that a weak economy didn’t justify the relief sought by a variance. Williams testified that the property currently is a viable commercial space and would be better than two vacant spaces, since the property owner testified that he hasn’t yet recruited potential tenants.
“The place is a mess,” said board member William Hering. “I don’t know that this’ll help the site. At the last meeting we said it’s too much on too little, and it still is.”
Trees make way for 50 units at St. Georges site
If you’re wondering why all those trees were cleared this summer along St. Georges Avenue, across from Stone Street, you’re not alone. Site work will begin next week for a 50-unit, three-story apartment complex. Jim Sisto, president of Westfield-based Sisto Realty, expects the foundation will be poured in the next month and construction completed by the spring.
If I read the zoning maps and application correctly, the building will be located near the center of the 5.13-acre site — perpendicular to St. Georges Avenue — with parking on either side (a total 98 spaces). The project needed variances for lot coverage (9.2 percent of the lot would be covered by the building) and parking. Of the 50 apartments, 37 are two-bedroom units and 13 are one-bedroom units, according to Sisto.
The story goes back several years. The project wasn’t very popular among neighborhood residents, at least according to minutes of the March 2003 Zoning Board meeting (.pdf). At that time, the board rejected a 60-unit application by a 6-1 vote. Sisto appealed to Superior Court, which remanded it back to the Zoning Board, according to city Construction Official Richard Watkins.
The amended application was approved as a 50-unit apartment building in 2004, with extensions granted by the Zoning Board each year through September 2009 as the developer had been waiting for approvals from the state Department of Environmental Protection and state Department of Transportation.
Of the three lots (Block 168, Lots 23, 24 and 25), property data was available for only one (23.02), which indicated an assessed value of $306,100 for 3.3 acres and property taxes of approximately $15,000. The address will be 1319 St. Georges Ave.