ASBURY PARK · WATERFRONT REDEVELOPMENT AREA
What the Waterfront Redevelopment Plan Called For
I. The Plan
The Asbury Park Waterfront Redevelopment Plan was adopted on June 5, 2002\. It runs for thirty years, expiring in 2032\.
It supersedes the City’s zoning in the prime renewal and boardwalk areas. The State of New Jersey’s CAFRA Permit, issued in 2004, was negotiated to align with it. The redeveloper agreements with Asbury Partners (2002) and Madison Asbury Retail (2010) defer to it. In the City’s own description, from the Master Plan that incorporates the redevelopment plan:
“The architecture within the Redevelopment Area will be subject to strict design and bulk controls to ensure that new construction supports the character of Asbury Park.”
Section 5.2, Asbury Park Master Plan
How that promise was written, what the public asked for, what the rules require, and what the rules were protecting, is the rest of this document.
II. How the Plan Was Made
In January 2002, the City of Asbury Park began a period of open public discussion to plan the future of its waterfront. The lead planner was Andres Duany of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., the firm that designed Seaside, Florida, and helped found the Congress for the New Urbanism. The Master Plan that emerged was prepared by Clarke Caton Hintz and Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn, in collaboration with Duany Plater-Zyberk.
The plan was adopted by ordinance on June 5, 2002\. It won the New Jersey Future Smart Growth Award, the New Jersey American Planning Association’s Outstanding Redevelopment Plan award, and the Waterfront Center Honor Award.
III. What the People Asked For
The public process produced four Community Goals, in this order:
From the four goals, the plan distilled ten Waterfront Area Planning Principles:
The plan named three streets as the city’s primary points of arrival. Asbury Avenue was to be “historic, Victorian, small scale.” Cookman Avenue was to be “urban, active, slightly taller.” Sunset Avenue was to be “park-like, more open, buildings integrated with park.”
IV. The City They Were Protecting
To understand what the plan asked of new construction, it helps to know what already stood.
Asbury Park was founded in 1873 by James A. Bradley, a New York brush manufacturer who bought 500 acres of oceanfront and laid out a new town. His street grid runs east-west, perpendicular to the ocean. Each avenue flares as it approaches the water, opening from roughly 100 feet wide inland to 200 feet wide at the boardwalk. The result is a sequence of view corridors that connect the city to the sea. Three lakes (Wesley, Sunset, Deal) bound the grid. The mile-long boardwalk runs the length of the beachfront. This is what the plan refers to as the Bradley Plan, and its second planning principle is to preserve it.
Between 1925 and 1932, one architectural firm gave Asbury Park most of the buildings that still define its character. Warren and Wetmore of New York, the firm that designed Grand Central Terminal, designed the Berkeley Carteret Hotel (1925), the Convention Hall and Paramount Theatre complex (1928-1930), the Casino and Carousel House (1930-1932), and several smaller boardwalk structures. The Berkeley Carteret is a brick and stucco Mediterranean Revival hotel. Convention Hall is a masonry building of brick and cast stone with nautical motifs carved into its decoration. The Paramount Theatre opened on July 11, 1930\. The Casino sits on the boardwalk’s southern end with its own arcade running through it. Behind the boardwalk, the residential streets contain a stock of Shingle Style cottages, Victorian houses, and Arts & Crafts bungalows built between 1880 and 1940\.
These are the buildings the plan was extending. It named three architectural styles as the languages for new construction: Mediterranean Revival (the Berkeley Carteret), Arts & Crafts (the residential streets), and Moderne (the Warren and Wetmore boardwalk complex). The plan stated: “These guidelines encourage the expression of these styles in a modern and contemporary way appropriate of new oceanfront architecture.”
It also stated, just as directly, what was not welcome. “It is implicit in these guidelines that the many recent Neo-eclectic stylistic fashions defining the suburbs in recent years are not welcome, and their use is not encouraged.” And: “Disharmony arises when the range of void-to-solid variation is extreme, approaching that of the all-glass office building, or the multi-balconied condominium.”
V. The Rules
The rules followed from a single observation about the buildings already standing. The Berkeley Carteret, Convention Hall, the Paramount, the Casino: all were masonry structures with thick walls, deeply set windows, and visible weight. They appeared capable of standing against a winter storm. The plan made this its underlying principle:
“The general characteristic of the Mediterranean, Arts & Crafts, and Moderne architectural vernaculars is that of mass and weight. Thus, showing the frontage wall thickness is integral to these vernaculars.”
Section 3.7, Building Parts, Item 12
From this principle, the rules followed:
Windows were to be tall and recessed within the wall, as they are on every historic building in the city: single, double, or triple-hung units or casements, rectangular, with a height-to-width ratio between 1:1.6 and 1:3. Sliding and awning windows, common in post-war suburban construction, were not permitted. And one rule mattered above the others. Under no circumstances were windows to be installed flush with the outer surface of the facade. A wall with thickness was to show that thickness.
The first three stories of any building, what the plan called the “base,” were where new construction would meet the street. The plan ranked the kinds of ground-floor frontage from best to worst:
“Base frontages are, in descending order of their positive pedestrian contribution: (a) a gallery or arcade; (b) a shopfront with awning; (c) a residential stoop; (d) a fence and porch; (e) a landscaped front yard; (f) a blank wall; (g) an unbuffered parking structure; and (h) an open parking lot. The latter three types shall be avoided.”
Section 3.7, Building Frontages, Item 6
Galleries and arcades, as in the Casino and the Grand Arcade through Convention Hall, were ranked first. Shopfronts, as on the boardwalk pavilions, were second. Stoops, porches, and landscaped yards followed. Blank walls, parking structures, and open parking lots were ranked last and were to be avoided. Parking decks, the plan stated, were “not exempt from the provisions of these guidelines.” Where they faced a pedestrian street, they had to be masked by a habitable liner building.
Balconies were treated as exceptional. None of the historic boardwalk buildings have balconies. The plan said they “must be used sparingly,” and that multiple balconies, if required, “shall be confined to the rear and side elevations unless, at the build out of the block, they would not remain permanently visible.” A facade saturated with balconies was, in the plan’s words, “no less disruptive than an all-glass building.”
Each new building was required to relate to its neighbors: “The frontages of new buildings shall be harmonious with the block face on both sides of its street.” And to prevent any single architect from filling an entire block with one signature, the plan required at least two design architects per development block, “so as to avoid the new constructions from looking like a ’project.’”
When buildings rose above six stories, they became “high-rises” under the plan and five additional rules applied. They had to be separated from the ocean by a public road or open area at least 50 feet wide. Their longest dimension had to run perpendicular to the ocean, preserving the east-west view corridors the Bradley grid produced. They had to be sited to preserve ocean views from existing residences and public streets. They could not cast shadows on the beach between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. during the summer, or on parkland or water at any time of year. And they had to be sited far enough from the beach not to cause dune deflation.
The plan assigned design enforcement to a Technical Review Committee, responsible for maintaining approved lists of colors, materials, brick selections, stucco textures, and balcony designs, and for approving the design of every new building before construction.
VI. What the Plan Requires
The plan runs until 2032\. Through that date, every new building on the Asbury Park waterfront is required to: