Officials settle on new site for recreation center
BY PATRICIA A. MILLER
Staff Writer

BRICK TOWNSHIP — Township officials have found a site for the new recreation center. But residents will have to wait a few more weeks to find out where it is.

“The site will allow us to have all the services in one place,” said council President Stephen C. Acropolis. “We have settled on an actual site. We hope to be able to close on it. We hope to be able to come to an agreement to get it for the township.”

He declined to name the location because the township is still waiting for the appraisals to come back. More details should be available by the end of the month, Acropolis said.

The township purchased the former Foodtown site on Route 70 for $6.1 million in 2003, with the intent to build a community center there.

“We will no longer need the Foodtown site,” Acropolis said. “It will be back on the tax rolls.”

The township planner recently gave council members three recommendations for the use of the site, including a hotel or another food store, Acropolis said.

“Wegmans has been interested,” he said.

Negotiations for the facility have been ongoing between the township and the owner, Acropolis said.

“It was a joint thing,” he said. “We had approached them in the past and they did approach me through organizations that use the facility. We met with the owner a couple of times. We are moving forward.”

It would have cost roughly $33 million to transform the Foodtown site into a community center, according an estimate prepared by KBA Architecture, Milltown.

But that number is meaningless now, since the Foodtown site as been abandoned as a location for the community center, said Township Administrator Scott Pezarras.

“We would have to come up with another set of financials for the new site,” he said. “It’s a whole new ballgame if we are talking about another site.”

Acropolis said another key to the new site would be a bypass road that would connect the Foodtown site to the new facility.

“I hope with the makeup of the council, we will get it done,” he said.

The new road would be almost like a service road from the old Foodtown site to the proposed community center site, Pezarras said.

Officials talked about the Stavola asphalt plant located next to town hall as a proposed location in 2006. But they backed off after Stavola sued the Board of Adjustment for denying its application for a new asphalt plant on the site.