By John Burton
RED BANK – A plan to develop a Drs. James Parker Boulevard property, slated to appear at this week’s Zoning Board of Adjustment hearing, presents what may be the last best hope to save the historic T. Thomas Fortune House.
At its July 21 public hearing, board members are scheduled to hear an application seeking to construct a 32-unit apartment complex with accompanying site improvements at 94 Drs. Parker Blvd. But developer Roger Mumford has another proposal attached to his plan: Along with constructing the development, Mumford would like to renovate and restore what is commonly called the Fortune House on the property – a structure that had been listed on both the state and National Register of Historic Places decades ago as a historically significant site.
Mumford, who heads up the Roger Mumford Homes development firm, said this week he has been in discussions with both the Vaccarelli family, whose members have owned the location for roughly a century, and with representatives of the T. Thomas Fortune House Project, a group that for years now has been actively seeking ways to save and preserve the site for historical posterity and save it from the very real possibility of demolition.
The plan, Mumford said, is “to rebuild the home and make it a safer place so it can serve as a cultural center.” The idea is that the building, when renovated, will have a cultural and educational mission. That mission, proponents have long wished for, is to offer the public a site that provides insight into the life and accomplishments of Fortune – a late- 19th and early-20th century African-American journalist, publisher and intellectual who was an early civil rights activist and called Red Bank’s West Side home – and into African-American history.
The structure has been vacant for at least a decade and has deteriorated to a state that local preservation advocates have long called “demolition by neglect.”
Mumford noted the building has become overrun by raccoons, racked with mold and deteriorated to a precarious state. He plans to remove the asbestos siding and other rotten material as well as tear down a portion of the structure that was added years after Fortune had moved away and restore it to its original look.
Architectural rendering for Fortune Square, LLC., a proposed residential project to share the Red Bank property with the historic Fortune House.
Mumford also plans on building his apartment complex to be “architecturally consistent” with the design of the 19th century-style of the Fortune House.
Should the zoning board approve his plan and the overall project moves forward, Mumford’s plan is to deed the Fortune House to the T. Thomas Fortune House Project for $1. That group, a 501 (c) 3 not-for-profit, would operate and oversee the cultural center and its programs.
What Mumford is proposing “is quite sensitive on his part, from a historical perspective,” said Borough Councilman Edward Zipprich.
Zipprich, who is the council’s liaison to the borough Historic Preservation Commission, said this week he is “just delighted he (Mumford) is working and putting the effort into preserving the original structure.”
“It’s more than saving a house,” Zipprich stressed. “This is saving a national historic landmark.”
Gilda Rogers, a local activist who chairs the Fortune House project and is a member of the borough historic commission this week expressed her support for the plan.
“To have someone like Roger Mumford step up and try to come up with a solution to something that is beneficial to us in this town,” she said, “why would anyone not be for it?”
To establish a location where cultures can come together and gain an appreciation for one another, “I think it’s timely. I think it’s needed,” Rogers maintained. “I think it will be a bright spot, something substantial for the whole community.”
Mumford would subdivide the existing 0.932-acre site into two lots, with the larger section intended for the approximately 31,000-square-foot, four-story apartment complex and the 0.104-acre parcel to contain the cultural center.
The project would require the board to grant numerous variances, including for use, density, height of the apartment complex and other conditions. But Mumford said the size is needed to make it financially feasible to help underwrite the Fortune House’s restoration and the number of variances are the result of subdividing the property.
The house’s work and accompanying site infrastructure upgrades would likely cost upward of $2 million, Mumford said.
Rogers thought the zoning board “should take the pros of it into consideration and what it would mean for the community,” when considering this project.
The T. Thomas Fortune House Project for years had hoped to raise enough money to purchase and restore the site or to connect with a willing benefactor. Fundraising, however, had been insufficient.
Members of the Vaccarelli family had acquired the home and property when early family members had first immigrated from Italy in the early 20th century, establishing a home and bakery on the property.
In the last few years, preservationists expressed concern the owners would sell the property to a developer and simply raze the historic home. Family members two years ago applied for a demolition permit but took no further action at the time. The Vaccarelli family last fall had rejected an offer from the state Department of Environmental Protection, which had sought to purchase the location through the department’s Green Acres program, to preserve open space and recreational opportunities.
T. (for Timothy) Thomas Fortune (1856-1928) was born into slavery in Florida. He lived in Red Bank from 1901 to 1915, calling his home Maple Hill.
