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Asbury Park developer Patrick Fasano got the final thumbs up from the City Council Tuesday on an application to extend the liquor license from Bond Street Bar to an adjacent building that once housed several retail stores on Cookman Avenue.

Liquor licenses can be extended to contiguous properties that a license holder owns or leases. The approval gives him the ability to broaden the use of the license of the Bond Street building into a nearby building retail stores Allan and Suzi, HoldFast Records and Russo Music [shown at top] once occupied.

In them, Fasano [at right] will build several new restaurants that will offer different menu options but operate on the same low price point business model Bond Street is known for. The restaurants will all join together through a series of hallways patrons can pass through. Restaurant-goers will be encouraged to meander from space to space with their food and drinks in hand.

Ultimately, when Taka Restaurant moves from Mattison Avenue to Cookman Avenue, Fasano will again seek to expand the license to the Taka space and connect it to Bond Street.

“Without going outside, you can walk into five different places,” Fasano said.

The store fronts that once housed the Allan and Suzi clothing store and Hold Fast records will be transformed into an Italian themed restaurant. What once was Russo Music, before they moved to a location in the Lake House building, will become an underground game room complete with pool tables, ping pong tables and its own bar area that will offer a large selection of microbrews on tap. The theme of the restaurant that will be located on the second floor of Bond Street Bar has yet to be decided. If all goes as planned, the Taka space will become an authentic Mexican theme restaurant. La Tapatia owner German Garcia will join him in that endeavor. Bond Street Bar will stay the same.

All of the spaces will operate on the same point of sale system so food from any of the restaurants can be purchased and brought anywhere in any of the five businesses.

“It’s all going to be under the Bond Street umbrella, he said. “The ideas and beliefs that make Bond Street successful will carry through.”

This means the same low price points of Bond Street’s business model will me maintained, he said. Items on the Bond Street menu are all priced under $6. Drink options start at $3.

“People want to go out, people want to socialize,” he said, “but many restaurants are so price prohibitive they can only do it once a month.”

Fasano wants each place to have its own personality. He hasn’t chosen names for any of the restaurants but plans to keep the size of each one within the same scale as Bond Street.

“Each one has to be unique in its own way,” he said.

He will begin his focus on the Italian themed restaurant, which he hopes to open by the summer. The menu will largely consist of various types of meatballs, pastas and gravies along with macaroni and cheese offered at a $5 to $6 price point. Gluten free and vegetarian options of each will also be available.

When Fasano purchased the Cookman building back around 2000, the layout consisted of one large department store with offices on the second floor. Fasano got approvals to partition the department store space into multiple smaller businesses since, at the time, there was no demand for it, he said. Loft style apartments were built in the offices above.

Throughout the years, he’s seen several retail tenants come and go.

“Retail stores aren’t creating jobs, restaurants are,” he said. “We’re reinventing ourselves [Asbury Park] as a restaurant district. It’s a destination for people. We used to just have Jimmy’s [Italian restaurant] down Asbury Avenue and now we have 55 restaurants throughout the city. Asbury Park is going to rebuild on tourism — make no doubt about it.”

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