By Sherry conohan
Staff Writer
SEA BRIGHT — There’s a new contract for the sale of the Tradewinds property, and now $1 million and $2 million homes are planned for the site.
Richard Stone, the attorney for the current owner of the Tradewinds Beach Club and adjacent night club, Frank Mandia, said Kara Homes, of East Brunswick, has purchased the property.
Stone, who is Mandia’s law partner, said he expected the deal to close in late summer or early fall. He had no comment on what Kara Homes planned to do with the property.
Bill Buhrman, senior vice president of Kara, said the company will build the 20 single family homes that have been approved for the property by the borough’s Planning/Zoning Board.
"We are designing the homes right now," he said. "There will be a bunch of different plans and different exteriors."
Buhrman said the houses on the nine lots abutting Ocean Avenue will be selling for about $1.4 million. He said the 11 homes on the ocean side of the property will sell for $2 million and up.
"We sell and build," he said, adding that lots won’t be sold off without houses.
Kara Homes Development Corp. LLC has applied, as the contract purchaser of the Tradewinds site, to the Planning/Zoning Board for permission to put a temporary sales trailer on the Tradewinds site in anticipation of closing on a sale of the property to Kara Homes scheduled for September.
Buhrman said Kara will appear before the Planning/Zoning Board on June 10 to seek its approval for the sales trailer.
He said Kara expects to begin the sales operation in June, after it hopefully wins the board’s approval for the trailer, while the Tradewinds Beach Club holds its last season. After the beach club closes at the end of the summer, Kara will take over the property and start demolition, then start building, he said.
"We expect to have people in there next summer," he said.
A contract on the property initially was held by Jerome Morley Larson, a Red Bank architect who wanted to turn the Tradewinds into a more upscale cabana club with units sold as condominiums, but he had trouble getting his financing in place.
Larson insisted he still has a viable contract on the property and said he is negotiating with Kara Homes to move ahead on his cabana plan, but Stone said Larson is out of the picture and Buhrman said he knew nothing about Larson.
Buhrman said it was possible Larson was talking to someone else in Kara Homes, which is a large company, but the plans now call for single-family homes rather than a cabana club.
"I have a contract," Larson maintained. "They [Kara Homes] have a backup contract."
Larson said if he can’t get his financing together, Kara homes will step up to the plate.
But he also conceded that Kara Homes can move ahead without him.
Those wishing information from Kara Homes may call 1-866-KARA-123.