Redevelopment Plan Draws Four Proposals

"I think the community has four very good proposals," Robert says. "I think that's a sign that developers are taking this community seriously." Keansburg, in Monmouth County, has struggled to remake itself for a number of years.

One of the proposals was produced by the Red Bank-based Kalian Cos., which already has development interests in the community. As reported by GlobeSt.com earlier this month, the company has started site work for Harbor Lights, a 48-unit condo community on the Raritan Bay waterfront. For the redevelopment site, which lies adjacent to Harbor Lights, Kalian proposes to build a combination of 126 residential units, 24,250 sf of commercial space and 750 parking spaces, both on-street and in two multi-level structures.

The developer offering the second of the four proposals also has a connection to Kalian's Harbor Lights project. Leonard Rubinstein, who heads the Middletown-based Bellaire At Keansburg LLC, was Harbor Lights' initial developer before handing it off to Kalian. Bellaire's proposal calls for 119 residential units, 7,800 sf of commercial space, 5,400 sf of restaurants and more than 300 parking spaces.

The third proposal is from Windward Cove LLC, a partnership of Sterling Properties and Millennium Homes, both of Livingston. The Windward offering is heavier on the residential, 170 units, and lighter on the commercial, just 3,500 sf of retail. It also calls for a 5,000-sf health club and a 456-car, four-story parking deck.

The final proposal unveiled by Schoor DePalma's Roberts is the largest, and is part of a larger plan dubbed the Downtown Keansburg Waterfront Vision Plan. Offered up by Newwork Real Estate of Newark, it calls for the Point Comfort site, currently used as a surface parking lot for the adjacent Keansburg Amusement Park, to be redeveloped with 117 residential units, 45,000 sf of commercial space and 350 parking spaces. It would serve as phase one of the larger "vision plan," which Newwork Real Estate proposes to ultimately build out to a total of 1,000 residential units and 250,000 sf of commercial space.