John Tredrea

By: centraljersey.com
H.I. Rib & Co., a restaurant on Route 31, is slated for demolition under an ordinance adopted by the Hopewell Township Committee Monday night.
The restaurant, just north of Route 654, is on the 25-acre Pennytown Shopping Village property the township purchased for affordable housing. The restaurant, now closed, was the only enterprise in Pennytown that remained in operation after the rest of the buildings and facilities in the Pennytown complex were demolished over a year ago.
H.I. Rib & Co. – which longtime residents remember as "The Stage Depot" restaurant – occupies a 3-acre tract of its own in Pennytown.
The ordinance amends the agreement of sale of H.I. Rib & Co. by owner Bruce Meier to the township. Under the amendment, the purchase price is increased by $49,000, to $899,500, to accommodate Mr. Meier’s costs of demolishing the building.
Township Administrator/Engineer Paul Pogorzelski said that, due to public bidding laws, it would cost the township much more than $49,000 to demolish the building.
Vanessa Sandom and other committee members have expressed regret that H.I. Rib & Co. was closing and said they hoped the business could find a new location in the Hopewell Valley area.
H.I. Rib & Co. has declined to comment.
The portion of Pennytown not occupied by H.I. Rib & Co. is about 22 acres. It was purchased by the township for $5,650,000. All that money came from affordable housing fees paid by developers over the years, township officials said.
The township bought the land for affordable housing. However, proposed at a session on Jan. 20 by the Marshall’s Corner/Pennytown Task Force (chaired by Ed Truscelli and Elizabeth Ackerman) was a preliminary mixed-use proposal for the Marshall’s Corner area. That proposal includes a community center, for teens, seniors and families, on the Pennytown portion of Marshall’s Corner.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Hopewell Township Committee introduced the bond ordinance for the purpose of acquiring the Pennytown property in October 2008. This was the beginning of a major change for the area.
What we knew as Pennytown Shopping Village began to take shape in late 1964. In September 1970, the Pennytown Merchants Association officially cut the ribbon to mark the grand opening of the Pennytown Shopping Village. The "quaint little village," the HVN reported, boasted of 12 colonial-style shops. George and Pat Briehler, owners, had great plans for the future of the village, the report said.
Hiohela, the bowling alley complex once located near the intersection of Routes 69 and Spur 518 – later to become Routes 31 and 654 – already was there when Pennytown was built.
In September 1999, the Hopewell Valley Community Bank, which was constructing its main offices at 4 Route 31 in Pennington, announced that it had received approval from the state Department of Banking and Insurance and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to maintain its Pennytown location. It had been at 145 Route 31, Suite 10, in the Pennytown Shopping Village since February 1999.
In 1987, the HVN moved from its birthplace (the former Herald Printing office) at 5 Railroad Place, Hopewell, to a second-floor office in what was known as Sir George Square in Pennytown. This section of Pennytown was located on the Route 654 side and was demolished with the rest of the complex. However, in 2000, before that demolition took place, the HVN returned to Hopewell Borough and set up shop at 52 E. Broad St., where we stayed until December 2008. It was then that we moved to 300 Witherspoon St., Princeton.