By Sherry conohan
Staff Writer
SHERRY CONOHAN Stores in Sea Bright, like Bain’s Hardware (above), along with restaurants and food markets have suffered a severe drop-off in business since the Sea Bright-Rumson bridge, connecting the borough to Rumson, closed for repairs Feb. 1.
SEA BRIGHT — Devastating. Awful. Inconvenient.
These are some of the terms used to describe the impact on businesses here from the closing of the Sea Bright bridge, which connects the borough with Rumson, for the month of February for repairs.
One of those feeling the pinch is Frank Bain, proprietor of Bain’s Hardware on Ocean Avenue.
"It has a major, major impact on any business in Sea Bright," Bain said. "We don’t have the traffic."
CHRIS KELLY Construction equipment sits idle on the Sea Bright-Rumson bridge last week after a snowstorm.
Bain said that those who say they aren’t hurting during the closure are lying. To keep his business perking along, he’s taking phone orders and delivering to the other side of the bridge.
"I’ll be glad when it’s over," he added. "I’m thankful they chose February. I’m glad they’re doing it as fast as they can."
At V.R.I. Real Estate, just up the street on Ocean Avenue, many of the sales personnel face a personal hardship in that they have go to around through Highlands or Monmouth Beach to get to work and then have to take the same round-about routes to show houses in Rumson, Little Silver or Red Bank.
Business has been a little slower, as a result, according to Pat Ellis. But, she said, many of the real estate agency’s customers come to their office via the Garden State Parkway and get off at either Exit 117 or 105 and take Route 36 into the borough.
Cynthia Peterson, of V.R.I., observed that the downturn in business is not as dramatic as it would be if the closure of the bridge occurred in summer.
The branches of both the Fleet Bank and Shrewsbury State Bank have seen a falloff in traffic. Customers on the other side of the bridge have access to a branch of Fleet on River Road in Rumson and to a branch of Shrewsbury State Bank on Prospect Avenue in Little Silver. Angelo Catalano, who tends the deli counter at Andy K’s market on Ocean Avenue at the southern end of the business district, said business there was off by about 70 percent. Catalano said the owner had cut back on employees’ hours as a result.
"The boss doesn’t want us to lose everything," he said. "We all have to sacrifice a little bit."
"We’ve survived worse than this," he added. Things weren’t a lot better at the neighboring 7-Eleven. It, too, has seen a decline in trade. But a clerk was philosophical about the downturn, noting the nasty weather.
"No one wants to come out anyway — it’s so cold," she said before Monday’s snowstorm hit.
Jerry Kaminski, a bartender at Donovan’s Reef, said there "definitely" has been a decline in trade there since the bridge closed, although the weather also has been a contributing factor. "Everybody who lives west of here, instead of doing the loop with Highlands or Monmouth Beach, they don’t come," he said.
Jay Rock, a patron at Donovan’s, estimated that 60 percent of the regulars at the bar are local and 40 percent come from elsewhere, mostly across the bridge. While he lives locally, he said the bridge closure has affected him because he can no longer get a bus directly to Red Bank where he works on Broad Street.
"The bus [from Red Bank] stops on the other side of the bridge, and you can’t walk over the bridge," he said. Rock said he now takes a bus to Highlands, where he has to wait 20 minutes for his connection with another bus that takes him to Red Bank.
"It used to take 20 minutes to go to Red Bank," he observed. "Now it takes an hour and 10 minutes to go eight miles."
Rock, who’s a member of both the Fire Department and the First Aid Squad, said they have issues too. He said the First Aid Squad can no longer go over the bridge, the most direct route, to Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank, and the Fire Department can’t expect as prompt a response as usual from the Rumson Fire Department when calling on it for backup.
Tim McLoone, proprietor of McLoone’s Riverside Dining restaurant, formerly known as the Rum Runner, said he "absolutely" has noticed the difference in business since the bridge closed. "We notice it mostly during the day for lunch and brunch," he reported.
People no longer just pop over the bridge to eat at midday as they used to, he said.
Whereas the restaurant usually does 100 lunches a day, it’s doing 40 now, he noted.
McLoone said the dinner trade isn’t so impacted. Since Red Bank has developed into such a big restaurant town, his dinner traffic comes from north and south and down Route 18 to Exit 105 and over Route 36 to Ocean Boulevard, rather than from across the bridge, he said. That dinner trade has not been hard hit, he added, noting that business on the night of Valentine’s Day last week set a new record at the restaurant with 100 more people — one-third more — than last year.
McLoone said, however, he worries for everybody in town. He noted that Bain recently had a heart attack and quipped that the bridge closure — "a little stress" — is just what he needs for his recovery.
"I hope people remember, and do extra for them, when the bridge reopens," he said.
A rumor on the street that the bridge will be closed for longer than just the month of February was shot down by the engineer overseeing the project.
Paul Van Hagen, of HDR Engineering, which was hired by Monmouth County to shepherd it along, said last week before the snowstorm that the bridge will reopen March 1, as scheduled. He said the work was still progressing with one 12-hour shift a day, six days a week. No work takes place on Sunday.
Van Hagen said the workers on the bridge include 10 to 12 doing structural work, four to five on the mechanical side and 10 on electrical. "We have a lot of people there," he said. "We are definitely planning on reopening the bridge to traffic on March 1."