New Town Center For Monmouth County
The booming Western Monmouth County calls for a new town center in Manalapan, New Jersey.

Just 35 miles from Manhattan, a new town center will soon begin taking shape in New Jersey’s fast-growing, highly affluent Western Monmouth County. Located at the intersection of Route 33, the main highway in Monmouth County, and Millhurst Road, the 820,000-square-foot mixed-use development, called The Village at Manalapan, will be comprised of retail and restaurant space with a multiplex theater, public and private recreational facilities, a hotel, professional offices, Main Street apartments and a spacious Town Green.

“We’re attempting to reflect that style and type of development in a way that works for New Jersey,” says Richard Brunelli, who is overseeing development and leasing for the project. “New Jersey doesn’t have anything like this currently, and since we’re only 35 miles from New York City, we expect to have a tremendous draw.”

Site plan for The Village at Manalapan.

Centrally located in the township, The Village provides a Main Street for Manalapan, which currently lacks a downtown.

“It’s one of those wealthy suburban towns that built up over the last 40 or 50 years without any particular special place where people have a sense of their own downtown,” notes Brunelli. “We’ve basically designed the Town Square around a group of trees that are hundreds of years old. So it’s going to have a unique character and lends itself to creating a very special place instead of just another strip mall.”

The Village is comprised of five to six distinctively different elements with a common “Georgetown” architectural theme. The most prominent element will be the lifestyle center portion, which is the portion closest to Route 33 and which backs up to the downtown or “Main Street” area. Plans call for a major bookstore and upscale specialty department store to anchor a mix of prominent national and regional merchants. Directly beneath the downtown multi-story buildings will be parking garages for residents to help eliminate the conflict between residential and consumer parking.

Located just behind the lifestyle center, the compact downtown area will feature a variety of restaurants, cafés, specialty shops and boutiques, served by on-street and off-street parking. Old-fashioned gas-style streetlamps, brick-paved sidewalks and crosswalks, lush landscaping and the varied architecture of the street’s two- and three-story buildings are designed to create the charm of a Norman Rockwell downtown. Second-story space will host restaurants with outside dining decks, while upper levels may include loft-style professional office space, studios and residential units. Connecting streets and landscaped, brick-paved walkways will link Main Street to the lifestyle center, facilitating cross-traffic.

The Village’s entertainment area calls for a state-of-the-art, multi-screen cinema, accompanied by a variety of sit-down, casual-dining restaurants. Plans also call for a hotel and live performing arts center, both of which will overlook a 2-acre Town Green. The “Restaurant Row” establishments will include outdoor patio areas. Elsewhere on the property, plans call for other commercial recreational attractions, such as a miniature golf and an indoor amusement center geared to children’s parties.

R.J. Brunelli & Co. is handling research and leasing for The Village and overseeing the project from a development point of view. Brunelli was involved in the conception, development and leasing of one of the country’s first lifestyle centers, The Grove at Shrewsbury, an Eastern Monmouth County property in Shrewsbury, New Jersey.

 Brunelli has high hopes for The Village at Manalapan as well. The company is currently negotiating leases with tenants such as Muvico, Elizabeth Arden and Borders Books. Plans also call for a 50,000-square-foot health club, an 84,000-square-foot indoor tennis club and a 60,000-square-foot indoor ice skating rink. Catering to the tremendous housing boom in Monmouth County, there will also be a home fashion center with a cluster of complementary home fashion retailers, including decorating stores, specialty furniture stores, lighting stores, cabinetry shops, and high-end granite and tile shops.

By the time the first store opens in The Village, four major new residential developments will surround the property, with over 2,500 new homes approved, under construction or occupied. With an average population of three people per home, these four developments will place 7,500 people within walking distance of The Village. The developers estimate that by 2005, the market will offer over 548,000 residents in approximately 190,000 households within a 20-minute drive. Within a 12-minute drive, there will be over 145,000 residents in 48,000 households. Average household income is estimated to approximate $105,000 within the 20-minute drive and $118,000 within 12 minutes of the site.

Tourists will play a large part in the success of the center as well. The Village’s location along with 27 miles of pristine beaches, golf courses, competitive racetracks and cultural amenities continues to draw many well-educated workers, their families and tourists. Inc magazine, Money magazine and the Milken Institute cite Monmouth County as one of the nation’s ideal places to conduct business, play and raise a family. And between the nearby amusement park, Great Adventure, and the New Jersey Shore in the summertime, Brunelli expects to see a number of tourists spending an entire day at The Village.

“We believe we’re building a true destination and entertainment-oriented place that will service more than just the township of Manalapan,” he says.

Brunelli hopes to get site plan approval for the project by early next summer and break ground by late summer, with a grand opening scheduled for summer 2006. The second phase of the project, which includes the tennis club, hotel, ice skating rink, home fashion center and performing arts center, is expected to be completed by 2007.

— Susan H. Fishman