Parish Plans Social Services Center In Red Bank’s West Side

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By John Burton
RED BANK – St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church is seeing more demand for its community service programs and hopes to have a new home for those programs.
“Where we see needs in the community,” said the Rev. Alberto Tamayo, pastor of the church, 121 Bridge Ave., “we try to address them.”
And the church’s parish has been having an increasing demand for its services, such as food pantry and clothing distribution, financial assistance and help facilitating social services for primarily residents of the borough’s West Side community.
As it currently stands, the parish programs assist more than 1,000 community members monthly, according to Tamayo.
“Our vision here really is, as a church, our main role is to give worship to God,” Tamayo said. “We also see ourselves as part of the community. If the community has needs that we can help with, we have an obligation to help address those needs, whatever they may be.”
In response to those needs and growing demand for the services, church representatives will be appearing before the borough Zoning Board of Adjustment on March 3, seeking approval to construct what the representatives are planning to call St. Crispin’s Social Ministry House.

The Herbert Street building used by St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church on Red Bank’s West Side will likely be demolished for the church’s St. Crispin’s Social Ministry House.
The Herbert Street building used by St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church on Red Bank’s West Side will likely be demolished for the church’s St. Crispin’s Social Ministry House. Photo: John Burton

The project calls for demolishing an existing structure – a sort of pink, beige and brown house that had been used for religious instruction, but aging and deteriorating – and garage that sit on parish-owned property next to the church on Herbert Street. The hope is to construct a new two-story, 4,500-square-foot building, that from the exterior would resemble a home, in keeping with the residential nature of much of the neighborhood.
The upper level of the building will be used for sleeping and living quarters for visiting priests. The basement area will be dedicated for storage space. The first floor will contain office space for meeting with those seeking financial assistance for rent and utilities and other emergency needs and other social services. Along with those uses the facility will have the parish’s food, clothing/household and book distribution areas.
A large portion of the ministry’s work in recent years has been dedicated to helping mostly recently arrived immigrants make their way with immigration and other legal issues and assimilate, making them aware of their rights, according to Tamayo.
The site will also be able to accommodate community meetings. The parish has in the recent past played host to programs sponsored by such borough entities and the police and Parks and Recreation departments. These gatherings were intended as an effort in large effect to reach out to the increasingly burgeoning immigrant Hispanic community.
Contingent on zoning board approval, “We’ll always have a place for those kinds of things to help strengthen connections and information flowing to the people,” Tamayo said.
The construction would use prefabricated modular building components and “if everything goes smoothly, about a year it’ll be up,” the pastor said.
The project will cost about $750,000 and will be paid for with donations from parishioners and friends of the church, he added.
St. Anthony of Padua was built in1920, through the work of and donations of Italian immigrants, who relocated to Red Bank to find work at the textile factory on Bridge Avenue (now the site of the Galleria retail and commercial complex). The factory, which made U.S. military and Boy Scouts uniforms, was owned by Sigmund Eisner. Eisner, Tamayo pointed out, was a significant benefactor contributing to the church’s construction costs.
And because of that history as well as the parish’s current efforts, Tamayo noted, “We have a special love and devotion to immigrants.”
Besides, the work is in keeping with the Catholic Church’s teachings, he added. “It’s basically doing our best for Christ’s commands: to serve our neighbors, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and to be good neighbors.”
Tamayo’s decision to name the ministry after St. Crispin of Viterbo certainly has resonance for the parish and community it serves. St. Crispin, who was canonized in 1982 by Pope John Paul II is the patron saint of the poor and laborers. Crispin was also a member of the Franciscan order, as was St. Anthony, Tamayo explained.