Red Bank's Exxon Site Finds a Buyer, The Commodore Rises Without Its Tax Break, and Denholtz Heads Back to the Board

Monmouth County · Development Beat · August 30, 2026

A pending land sale at the northern gateway, a 212-unit building that got built after its developer said it couldn't be, and a construction-defect suit trailing the train station developer into September hearings. The August 2026 beat from Red Bank Borough.

August in Red Bank produced four separate stories that all point at the same underlying question, and it is no longer how much will get built. That question was settled over the last eighteen months, when the borough rezoned a 25-acre district around the train station and started permitting density it had spent a decade debating. The question now is what gets built, who pays for it, and what it looks like when it's finished — and August was the month Red Bank started answering it out loud.

A long-vacant gateway parcel found a buyer. A 212-unit building reached framing without the tax abatement its developer once called essential. The developer of the largest project in the borough's pipeline spent the month answering questions about water damage at two buildings it already delivered. And a six-unit application behind two Broad Street Victorians got pushed to October.

If you want the structural background on how Red Bank got here — the Regional Center petition, the S50/A4 fair-share mandate, the redevelopment ordinances — that's in our full report on the borough's rebuild. This is the month-by-month tape, picking up where the May 2026 beat left off.

A Staten Island Buyer Is Under Contract for Red Bank's Dead Exxon at Cooper's Bridge

On August 20, redbankgreen reported that the vacant former Exxon station at 199 Riverside Avenue — identified in some documents as 80 Rector Place — is under contract to New York R&P Holdings LLC, a Staten Island–based company. Monmouth County records show current owner 80 Rector Place LLC entered the contract on May 27, with no purchase price recorded.

The buyer entity was formed in Richmond County in April 2022. A 2026 filing is signed by member Philese Blackler, who was identified in a 2019 Staten Island Advance story as the owner renovating a long-abandoned theater in Tottenville. Reached by redbankgreen, Blackler declined to discuss plans for the Red Bank site until the purchase closes.

This is a pending land sale, not a development application. Nothing has closed, no consideration has been recorded, and no plan has been filed.

Why the parcel matters more than 1.2 acres should

The tract sits at the foot of Cooper's Bridge on the Navesink, at the Route 35 entrance to downtown. It has now defeated two development plans. The Planning Board approved a six-story Hampton Inn there in 2017; that collapsed in litigation. A cannabis dispensary plan from The Garden at Red Bank LLC was approved by the Planning Board in December 2023 but never received a borough retail license, and the owner cancelled that sale contract in February. In a June 26 filing, the company's principal investor stated flatly that the purchase deal was dead, and the company is now seeking to amend its ongoing suit against the borough to claim damages for the lost acquisition.

Last August, the Mayor and Council voted unanimously to declare the property an area in need of rehabilitation. That designation lets the borough set new zoning guidelines and offer a five-year tax abatement. It does not carry eminent domain powers or the longer abatements that come with an "area in need of redevelopment" tag — a distinction that matters a great deal in Chapter II.

That directional read is not a hunch. The Staten Island and Brooklyn household moving into Monmouth County is one of the most durable patterns in the region, and it is a fundamentally different buyer than the Manhattan-to-Bergen luxury mover — a distinction we broke down in our county-by-county map of NYC outmigration. When that pipeline starts showing up on the ownership side of the ledger rather than just the buying side, it's worth noticing.

Red Bank Refused the 30-Year Tax Break. Saxum Is Building The Commodore Anyway.

This is the most consequential Red Bank story of the month, and it isn't close.

In 2019 the Planning Board approved Summit-based Saxum to build 212 apartments at 176 Riverside Avenue on the former Visiting Nurse Association site, including 32 units reserved for low- and moderate-income households. In 2021 Saxum came back seeking to change the site's designation from "area in need of rehabilitation" to "area in need of redevelopment" — the classification state law requires before a 30-year PILOT can be granted.

A borough consultant told Red Bank's redevelopment agency at the time that the incentive was needed, in his words, in order to make the project economically viable. Residents packed meetings, "No PILOT" lawn signs went up across town, and the Planning Board declined to grant the redevelopment designation. The tax break never happened.

Five years later the $71 million building — branded The Commodore — is framing out its northern section closest to the river and is set to finish next summer. Monmouth County records show an April 2025 mortgage from Kennedy-Wilson Capital of Beverly Hills for $75.75 million. Borough officials, including Mayor Billy Portman and Borough Manager Jim Gant, put on hard hats for the groundbreaking the following month. Saxum did not answer redbankgreen's emailed questions about how it financed the project without the abatement it had called essential.

And now the design is on trial too

At the July 8 Planning Board meeting — reported in August — Planning Board Chairman Dan Mancuso said he regrets his vote approving the project, calling it one of his regrets of serving on the board and stating that, officially, he hates the way it looks. He made the remark while reviewing a similarly scaled building proposed at the train station, which he liked considerably less.

So The Commodore has become two precedents at once: a financial precedent, in that a developer's viability claim did not survive contact with reality, and an aesthetic precedent, in that the borough now has a full-scale physical reference for what five stories of gateway massing actually looks like from Bodman Place.

The relevance is immediate. Denholtz has stated it plans to seek a PILOT for the train station redevelopment, and the borough's own planner expects that request once the Planning Board approves the site plan. The Planning Board and Council have already adopted a redevelopment plan making the train station area eligible. But the Council still has to vote — and when it does, it will do so with a 212-unit building down the road standing as evidence that "we can't build it without the abatement" is a claim, not a fact.

Denholtz Faces a Construction-Defect Suit as Its Red Bank Train Station Application Returns in September

On August 11, redbankgreen reported that a buyer at Southbank at the Navesink, the ten-unit waterfront condominium building at 4 Boat Club Court, has sued five Denholtz-associated entities and chairman Steven Denholtz over a roughly $1.7 million residence she purchased in 2024. The complaint, filed in Monmouth County Superior Court on February 11, alleges fraud, misrepresentation and breach of contract, and claims the building was marketed as a high-end luxury property while suffering pervasive water infiltration the developer knew about.

Denholtz disputes the allegations. A company spokesperson said Denholtz takes the owner's concerns seriously, made multiple attempts before litigation to address them directly, and had hoped to avoid the process; the company's position, the statement said, is reflected in its court filings. Its attorney filed an answer on June 9 denying the claims. Denholtz moved to dismiss six counts; on May 26, Superior Court Judge Thomas Comer dismissed one and allowed the other five to proceed. None of the claims has been tested at trial.

The reason this surfaced in August is a second incident. A pipe burst at The Rail, 118 Chestnut Street, on July 29, damaging at least a dozen apartments in the 57-unit rental building beside the train station. That prompted a closer look at Southbank, where a separate pipe burst in the early morning of February 9 caused extensive water damage; borough permits, resident interviews and a reporter's visit indicate units and common areas were still under repair in August, with several residents displaced.

Southbank was completed in 2024. Monmouth County records indicate eight of its ten residences have sold for between $1.6 million and $2.7 million — which is the part of this story most relevant to anyone pricing waterfront product in the borough. The litigation has not visibly impaired the sold comps.

Why this lands on the train station project

Denholtz is NJ Transit's designated developer for the train station redevelopment, which could ultimately hold up to 351 apartments along with parking, retail and public plazas. The first phase in front of the Planning Board is a 175-unit apartment building called The Rail North. Board members sent the architects back to the drawing board in July with pointed criticism of the design, and the hearing is slated to resume in September.

Put the two threads together and the board walks into that hearing holding three things at once: a design it already rejected once, a PILOT request it expects to receive, and a month of coverage about water damage at two buildings the same developer already delivered. None of those is dispositive. All of them affect the temperature of the room.

Red Bank's Broad Street Carriage House Was Carried to October 1 — Not Approved

John Smallwood, who owns Smallwood Wealth Management, has spent more than a decade buying and restoring two century-old Victorians at 199 and 205 Broad Street — built in 1904 and 1895, purchased in 2012 and 2023, and restored well enough to earn an award from the Red Bank Historic Preservation Commission.

His application asks the Zoning Board to combine the two lots, build a second-story bridge between the houses to serve as a conference room, and construct a three-story "carriage house" behind them containing six small apartments and six garages. The architect described the bridge as a nod to the porte cochère you'd find on an older Victorian. Parking is the pressure point: the plan brings the site to 34 spaces including nine EV spaces, where borough ordinance requires 56, so a variance is needed.

The hearing that continued on August 20 ended without a vote. The application was carried to October 1, and two unrelated residential renovation projects were approved that night.

Neighbors have raised traffic, parking and trash concerns at both hearings. Asked whether he should have approached neighbors before filing, Smallwood said it was something he should have done and did not.

Six units will not move a borough median. But this is the category that actually adds walkable inventory in a built-out downtown, and it is the category most exposed to parking variances. Watch October 1.

Also in the near-station pipeline: 72 Bridge Avenue

Separately, a four-story, 20-unit condominium building at 72 Bridge Avenue — at the block bordered by Bridge Avenue and Oakland Street near the train station — was approved by the Planning Board in July 2024. Developer Warren Diamond's plan replaces two Oakland Street homes and a restaurant, includes two affordable units, a 47-car garage, a gym, a green roof and a ground-floor coffee shop, and was scaled down from a 37-unit version the Zoning Board rejected. At the board's request, a seven-space surface lot was redesigned as green space. This is ownership housing rather than rental, which makes it a different kind of addition to the borough's inventory than The Commodore or The Rail North — and worth tracking as it delivers.

"Red Bank, NJ 07701" and "Red Bank Borough" Are Not the Same Thing

This is the single most common error in Red Bank comparable-sale analysis, and it is worth more to you than any individual closing price.

A significant number of homes physically located in Middletown Township carry a Red Bank 07701 mailing address. They appear in consumer portal searches for "Red Bank sold homes." They are not in the borough, they are not on the borough's tax roll, and they should not be dropped into a Red Bank Borough CMA without a municipal check.

Two August examples make the point: 301 Buchanan Boulevard at $1.4 million and 28 Jennifer Drive at $1.25 million both appear in Middletown-area sold results despite 07701 addresses. If you are pricing a borough listing off portal data alone, you are probably importing Middletown comps without knowing it. Verify the municipality on the tax record every time.

The tape says three useful things. First, the spread within the condominium segment alone runs roughly $326,000 to $779,000 — which is why a single blended "Red Bank median" is close to useless for pricing any specific unit.

Second, the two verified sales are telling different stories, and the difference matters. 56 Hudson Avenue is new construction in Azalea Gardens, a townhouse development where several structurally identical 2,850-square-foot units carried the same $1,499,900 list price. It closed about 2% above that number. That is a builder's price sheet clearing, which is a genuine signal about appetite for new product — but it is not the same signal as a resale bidding war, and it should not be used as a comparable for a one-off house.

Third, 90 South Street closed at exactly its $1,395,000 asking price — not above it. A 1,911-square-foot Colonial built in 1928, on roughly a quarter acre, at $729 per square foot. That is the more instructive number in the table, because it is a resale of ordinary in-town housing stock, priced correctly and cleared without a premium. Not every Red Bank property produces an over-ask result; 27 Washington Street reportedly closed below its $700,000 ask in the same month.

Red Bank's 90-Day Watch List

1. The Rail North returns to the Planning Board

The continued hearing on Denholtz's 175-unit first phase is slated for September. Confirm the date and the specific applications on the posted agenda before you plan around it — meeting calendars move. The thing to watch is not whether it gets approved eventually, but whether the revised architecture satisfies a board that rejected the last submission.

2. Does 199 Riverside actually close?

Two prior plans died on this parcel. A recorded deed with consideration turns this into a real story; a filed development application turns it into a market story. Until then it is a contract.

3. The PILOT vote

If Denholtz requests a PILOT after site plan approval, the Council vote becomes the most consequential fiscal decision in the borough this cycle — and it will be argued in the shadow of The Commodore.

4. October 1 at the Zoning Board

The Broad Street carriage house returns. A parking variance granted here signals how flexible the board intends to be with small-lot infill in the historic corridor.

5. The Commodore moves from construction story to leasing story

With completion targeted for next summer, the real test arrives with unit mix, asking rents, concessions and absorption. Lease-up velocity on 212 units will tell you far more about demand depth for new multifamily in Red Bank than any amount of framing will.

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