Repairs to the Allenhurst Beach Club and Mr. C’s Beach Bistro are taking longer than anticipated, and the restaurant likely won’t reopen until next year.
The club and Mr. C’s both received heavy damage in Hurricane Sandy, which hit on Oct. 29 last year.
The borough plans to demolish Mr. C’s [pictured above] today, they announced at the Feb. 12 Allenhurst borough commissioners meeting. The restaurant will not be rebuilt in time for the summer.
Repairs to the rest of the Beach Club will likely not be finished until June, Mayor David McLaughlin said at last week’s Allenhurst Commissioners’ meeting, but the club will likely open in late May as usual.
Despite the setbacks, the borough is ahead of many other beach towns dealing with damage from Hurricane Sandy, local architect and planning board chairman Joe Tomaino said.
The borough is “working an aggressive deadline,” city engineer Peter Avakian said, “even if it doesn’t seem like that.”
The town is still waiting on a report from FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] and insurance companies about reimbursement, but Mayor McLaughlin said that it’s too soon to expect a definitive answer on how Beach Club repairs will be funded.
Insurance officials visited the borough for the first time last week, and the town has received a few checks covering about 25 percent of costs, the mayor said. FEMA has visited to appraise damage and speak with city officials about four times.
“It’s a slow process,” the Mayor said.
MR. C’S
The Beach Club restaurant will not be open for the 2013 summer season, but plans to rebuild are underway, said Tomaino.
The restaurant was the most damaged part of the Beach Club after Hurricane Sandy. Rot has set in to the building’s pilings, and the electrical system needs to be redone, borough administrator Lori Osborn said.
After demolition of the original building, the next step is to get a certification of the footprint regulations for the building, to confirm that the footprint can be replaced.
Mayor David McLaughlin said that although he hated to have the building torn down, the rebuilding project is a chance to rebuild the restaurant so it’s even better than before.
Commissioner Terence Bolan agreed, and said that the original building was never meant for year-round use.
“The owners have done a great job to keep it functional, so to give them a better building, we’ll all be happier in the long run,” Bolan said.
POOL LINER
The lining to the pool was damaged by debris during Hurricane Sandy, especially in the pool’s deep end, Avakian said.
The city has accepted a proposal from the same company that installed the pool liner. They will repair the liner, as well as perform some fixes on leaks that developed pre-Sandy.
Last summer, significant amounts of water seeped behind the pool liner each day, Avakian said. Beach Club co-manager Doug Caron and his crews had to remove water each day.
CABANAS
Cabanas are now out for bid, with eight possible contractors showing interest. The bid will be awarded today, and the deadline for installation is May 17.
The new cabanas will be portable, so that in the event of another storm they can be easily removed from the beach, Tomaino said. They will be about the same size as the cabanas that were destroyed by the hurricane, but will have canvas instead of hard-topped roofing.
“I looked back at archival pictures and the cabanas just had an interior and a sitting deck covered with a canvas awning, and that’s what we’ll be doing again,” Tomaino said.
Toilets and showers are being handled in a separate bid, which is anticipated to be awarded in early March, Tomaino said.
