BY SUE MORGAN
Staff Writer
Middletown’s Emma Touhey, 9, makes a wish as she celebrates her birthday with friends during the last day of business at the Eatontown Roller Rink on Saturday. At left, Kazhana Davis, 11, of Asbury Park takes some final spins around the skating floor. Below, Geraldine “Jake” McCarthy of Shrewsbury captures the memories of her twin daughters, Adeline and Belle, both 3, trying out their wheels. EATONTOWN — The good times at the Eatontown Roller Rink have rolled to an end.
After thriving during the disco and new wave eras of the 1970s and early ’80s only to hit hard times as the millennium approached, the more than 32-year-old skating center closed its doors for the last time on Saturday evening after hosting a final round of children’s birthday parties.,
PHOTOS BY MIGUEL JUAREZ staff With the rink’s demise, longtime manager Richard Jones expects to post the sign he always knew he would someday place outside the Route 35 building’s bolted doors.
“No skating anymore. Rink closed. Thanks for the memories. Gone fishing.”
Taking off with a fishing pole and bait — and a “quieter life” — are what Eatontown resident Jones seeks to chase now, rather than the limited success of operating the roller rink inside a former A&P supermarket.
The popularity of in-line skating and skateboarding at outdoor skate parks, complete with ramps and other obstacles, proved to be in part the death knell for indoor, climate-controlled roller rinks, said Jones, an avid skater during his formative years.
“Roller skating isn’t what it used to be,” he said. “Attendance has dwindled over the years.”
The availability of the Internet, Sony PlayStation and Game Boy worked against roller skating as a means of leisure as well, said Jones, a fixture at the rink for the most part since 1978.
“The enjoyment of running the roller skating business is no longer there,” he said.
Indeed, the rink has been struggling financially for some years, depending largely on receipts coming from children’s birthday parties and school-based outings, Jones acknowledged.
All of those types of events that were scheduled beyond Saturday have now been canceled and the rink shuttered largely due to a dispute between landlord and tenant.
Specifically, Jones, the tenant and principal in Roller Property Management Inc., says that he and the building owner, Eatontown Roller Rink, of Ocean Township, have been unable to negotiate a lease that both he and the landlord’s representative, Morris Levy, could live with.
“Mr. Levy’s firm and I could not come to terms about the conditions of the lease,” Jones said.
Up until July 2002, Jones had an interest in the 23,000-square-foot brick building. But he sold his interest to a real estate management firm, which was subsequently taken over by Eatontown Roller Rink.
Given the present circumstances, and the seemingly uphill battle to operate in the black, Jones decided last month to call it a day.
“I sold [my interest] three years ago. It’s better to end it now,” Jones said.
As far as the future of the building and the land it sits on are concerned, Jones was uncertain about what type of business might replace it.
“Rumors abound” about how the property, located across Route 35 from the new Lowe’s Home Improvement Center, could be used, Jones said.
An application for a Wawa convenience store and gas station once went before borough officials, but did not win approval, Jones noted.
“It won’t be a Wawa with gas pumps,” he said.
Meanwhile, Levy did not elaborate on what had transpired between his firm and Jones as far as the lease was concerned. He did confirm that the rink had been operating in the building on a month-to-month lease.
“We allowed [Jones] to stay for a very long time,” Levy said.
The property owners have no immediate plans for any other use of the building or the land upon which it sits, according to Levy.
“We have no plans at this moment,” Levy said.
The land that the rink and its parking lot occupy is zoned for retail/commercial use, according to information previously provided by Peggy Ciok of Eatontown’s Planning and Zoning office.
As of last week, Ciok said she had not heard that any other business would supplant the rink.
Eatontown Borough Business Administrator Michael Trotta indicated that he was not aware of any prospective uses of the rink property either.
Any application calling for a new use of the property or that would deviate from the approved uses would have to be presented and heard by either the town’s Planning Board or Zoning Board of Adjustment.
Knowing that business was off, the borough had expected the rink might permanently close at some point, Trotta acknowledged.
“We’re sorry to see a long-standing business close,” Trotta said. “It has been a landmark in the community.”
The new owners are still responsible for contributing to the borough’s Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) fund, Trotta pointed out.
Under an ordinance passed by the Borough Council earlier this year, developers of commercial sites are required to pay 2 percent of the equalized assessed value of the property to the borough as a means of assisting the municipality to meet its state-mandated quota of COAH units.
Opened for skating in June 1973, the rink was one of at least seven rinks that operated in Monmouth County during the roller skating heyday of the early 1980s.
With its closure, there are no indoor, year-round roller rinks in the county, Jones said.
To prepare for shutdown last week, Jones sold off many of the rink’s fixtures to walk-in visitors.
Lights to illuminate the oblong-shaped hardwood skating floor and its perimeter were sold to the area’s remaining rinks in Jackson Township, Ocean County and in South Amboy, Middlesex County, he said.
Besides the children’s parties, the rink had also been open on Friday nights for roller hockey and in-line skating.