A two-story Taylor Pavilion (with a banquet hall upstairs.)
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1) Nobody can say for sure what our debt will look like next year until after all our FEMA claims have cleared. Now doesn’t seem like a good time to take on even more debt, especially for something we don’t need. Maybe after a year or so, if our books are in decent shape, we can put some public meeting facility where the 13th Ave Pavilion was. Maybe.
2) Nobody knows how much it will cost and how long it would take to pay for itself. And given this town’s track record with “change orders”, we probably won’t know for sure until after it’s built.
3) It’s just too big for its surroundings. It will tower 42 feet over the boardwalk and even higher over the sand to its east. (Has anyone calculated how much of the beach it would throw into the shade in the late afternoons?)
4) Every banquet hall I’ve ever been to had its own parking lot. Parking will be difficult and during the summer, impossible.
5) We already have a very nice banquet hall in Belmar, the Waterview Pavilion. It wouldn’t be fair for the town to build a facility to compete with them, particularly considering the substantial amount of property tax they pay. And it’s not just the Waterview. Many of our restaurants host some pretty big private parties. It would hurt their business too.
6) The deal with Chefs International for the 9th Ave Pier concession was made totally out of the view of the public, and even the Council. Is something similar in the works for the new Taylor Pavilion?
7) No matter how strong we build it, there could always be a storm large enough to knock it down.
8) It may not even be legal. The borough is the subject of a lawsuit brought to overturn the beachfront’s designation as an “area in need of redevelopment” which gives the mayor special power to dictate what goes on down there. (BTW, since this designation was really just a power grab by the mayor, I think he should pay the legal bills arising from the suit himself instead of sticking us with them.)
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