The Asbury Park City Council is expected to vote Wednesday on whether to refer another amendment of the city’s Central Business District redevelopment plan to the Planning Board. The change is requested by owners of the Lakehouse building, as they seek to expand into a neighboring structure.
Sound recording studios and classrooms are not permitted uses in the current Central Business District Redevelopment Plan, where both buildings are located. Lakehouse owner Jon Leidersdorff was granted an amendment for the uses in 2011, but the amendment was limited to the parameters of the current structure as amendments are given on a site-by-site basis.
The new amendment would expand the uses in the Lakehouse building to the adjacent, vacant building which sports a stark white facade [shown above.] The Lakehouse building is directly east of the new building, and the fronts of the two buildings would eventually match in design.
Since the Lakehouse building opened in March of 2013, all of the spaces have been occupied with tenants, Leidersdorff told the council Monday night.
At present, it houses Mumford’s Cafe, Russo Music, Lakehouse Music Academy, recording and practice studios, Cowerks’ shared office space, Bands on a Budget, a music entertainment attorney, music manager and videographer.
Leidersdorff owns the Music Academy. Its concept is to engage participants through individual lessons, rehearsals and group performances staged at various city venues, including The Wonderbar, Stone Pony, The Saint and Asbury Lanes.
Lakehouse instructors also teach music classes at Asbury Park’s Hope Academy Charter School, a public charter school that had no music program prior to Lakehouse Academy’s involvement. Now, every student at the school takes music, Leidersdorff said. An afterschool program the academy runs provides enrichment classes to Hope Academy students while their non-English speaking parents take English as a Second Language [ESL] classes at the location.
Mount Carmel school and Neptune schools have also contacted the academy for programming opportunities and the Asbury Park unit of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Monmouth County are currently in talks with Leidersdorff and his staff to bring a hip hop institute to the club.
Along with teaching club kids between the ages of 12-18 how to record with digital equipment, and branding classes will teach them how to build and market their own brand and start their own record labels, he said.
“The academy is very community driven, we’ve done well there and that is one of the tenets we will be expanding next door,” Leidersdorff told council members before outlining plans for the expansion, which includes an extension of Lakehouse Academy on the second floor that would connect the two buildings.
In addition to the Lakehouse on the second floor, retail and office space would occupy the first floor and the third floor would hold more office space. A prospective tenant may bring a music marketing business and college to the space, he said.
The only inquiry Mayor John Moor had about the expansion addressed streamlining the city’s process for CBD amendments, as it is costly to have the city’s and planning board attorneys continually drawing up agreements and recommendations, he said.
City Attorney Frederick Raffetto said discussions to create an application form specifically for amendments to the city’s various redevelopment plans have started.
During the public participation session, Jim Henry, a member of the city’s planning board, wondered with all of the amendments to the CBD plan that keep arising — including one for a gin and whiskey distillery downtown and a craft brewery on Main Street — whether it was time the council took a look at the plan as a whole and update to expand the permitted uses to for modern day businesses.
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