Work on restaurant may
get cooking in near future
By clare MARie celano
Staff Writer
FREEHOLD — Residents of and visitors to town are expected to soon have another restaurant in the downtown area.
The owners of Goodfellas restaurant and Pizzeria are moving forward with plans to set up their business at 31 Main St., facing the Monmouth County Hall of Records Annex parking lot.
A resolution to authorize the issuance of permits to Goodfellas was approved at a recent meeting of the Borough Council.
Plans to move ahead with the project have been in limbo since owner Eric Meyers, president of Globe Restaurant Group Inc., and his attorney for the project at that time, Robert Weins, presented an application to the Planning Board on Feb. 27. The application was approved in a 7-2 vote at the meeting but with waivers and subject to conditions.
The reason the Goodfellas project has been on hold is due to the fact that there are outstanding real estate taxes and fees owed to the borough from the current owner of the property, W.R.K.M. Aviation Inc. The owner, however, has entered into a contract of sale to sell the property to Solomon Dwek, according to the council’s resolution.
The resolution states that because W.R.K.M. Aviation is in arrears on taxes building permits could not be issued. It further states that the owners of Goodfellas have proposed to pay their proportionate share of the property taxes in order to have permits issued.
Because the owner and the prospective buyer have agreed and represented that all tax arrears will be paid at closing from the proceeds of closing, the borough is willing to issue the permits to Goodfellas, "conditioned upon payment of all taxes, fees and escrows upon closing of title of the property no later than Feb. 15, 2003," according to the resolution.
The resolution states that if all taxes, fees and escrows are not paid in full by Feb. 15, all of the permits issued to Goodfellas will be rescinded immediately.
Weins told the Planning Board the applicant requested waivers to the site plan approval because the business will be situated within an existing structure. A waiver for the on-site parking requirement was also required. Weins said there was existing parking close enough to the restaurant.
According to a parking analysis prepared by Gravatt, Geller and Associates, Freehold, there would be sufficient parking within 500 feet of the restaurant.
The restaurant will feature brick oven pizza and Italian cuisine in a casual dining atmosphere. The 90-seat capacity restaurant will have a staff of 16. Hours of operation will be 11 a.m. to midnight.
Another issue related to the application that was of concern to Planning Board members was the amount of trash that will be generated by the restaurant since the 6- by 8-foot garbage bin will be shared with the other tenants in the building.
The fact that the 10- by 16-foot area that held the garbage bin, which Meyers said he would enclose, was on county property was another issue for board members.
Meyers told members of the board that he would take responsibility for trash pick-up and assume 90 percent of the responsibility of the entire sanitation needs of the building if necessary.
In a recent conversation, Meyers said that after finalizing a few items with the landlord which he was at not at liberty to discuss, he hoped to be applying for permits to begin work on the restaurant in earnest in a few weeks.
"The county and the town have both given us preliminary approval for the business," Meyers said. "We just have one more action with the landlord that needs to be resolved."
Meyers said he is hoping to receive approval for work permits within the next few weeks and is looking forward to actually beginning work on the project. He said he is hoping Goodfellas will be open for business by late April or the beginning of May.