By Sunayana Prabhu
RED BANK – The long-vacant former Bridge Avenue gas station will soon be converted into a pizzeria under a plan approved by the planning board last week. The prominent entryway into the borough’s downtown may also get an official “Welcome to Red Bank” sign as part of the deal.
The planning board voted unanimously at its April 8 meeting to grant preliminary and final site plan approval for a pizzeria at 187 Riverside Ave., the former Bridge Avenue gas station site. The property was purchased last year by All Things Vic LLC, which is controlled by restaurateur Victor Rallo, who also owns Birravino, the restaurant next door.
“Hopefully by the end of this summer, the entrance to Red Bank will look great again,” Rallo said at the end of the meeting.
The presented site plans show the restaurant with a working title, “Rallo’s,” which may be replaced later. The eatery will share a liquor license with Birravino.
The highly visible property is located at the foot of Coopers Bridge, which connects Middletown to Red Bank. The corner intersection is often called the Gateway to Red Bank as it bends along Riverside Avenue into the historic downtown.
The property faces the future Saxum development to the north and extends along Bridge Avenue to the east. A large part of the meeting was about fortifying the curbside to limit reckless drivers, said borough engineer Jacqueline Dirmann.
A team of professionals, including a site architect, traffic engineer and planner, presented the proposal with detailed testimony on the restaurant’s design, signage, traffic impact, environmental status and curbside safety.
Reuse of
Existing Property
The project will reuse the existing one-story, roughly 1,700-square-foot service station building with no change to its footprint.
According to site architect Tyler Sandlass, the proposed features for the eatery include a main dining room with a small pizza oven kitchen, a bar with seating, a reception area, ADA-compliant restrooms, and reuse of the existing garage doors.
Exterior changes will focus on updated façade materials, including using brick and a corner accent treatment intended to visually tie into Birravino. Seventeen parking spaces are proposed.
A small walk-in cooler and fenced trash enclosure will be added at the rear of the building, but the principal structure will remain in place.
The nearly half-acre site includes three lots plus a narrow alley sandwiched between Birravino and the former gas station site. To avoid any future confusion about its ownership, the board required Rallo’s company to include the entire alley (Lot 26.02) in the revised plans and, as a condition of approval, to grant permanent access easements to the two neighboring properties that have long used the alley. Additionally, to avoid unauthorized entry into the narrow alley, large planters will be placed at the alley’s Riverside Avenue opening.
Gateway Sign,
Billboard and Lighting
A reworked freestanding sign at the corner also drew scrutiny. The plan calls for reusing the existing 20-foot-tall structure with a 54-square-foot sign area, replacing “Bridge Avenue Gas” with the new restaurant’s name, illuminated and stacked under a “Welcome to Red Bank” panel that faces the river.
Borough Green Team member Erik Wokas expressed concern about light pollution from the signage. Rallo agreed to shut off the illuminated corner signage within an hour after the restaurant closes. Building-mounted lighting will be designed to minimize upward spill, with a preference for downlighting where feasible.
Final design of the “Welcome to Red Bank” portion of the sign will be reviewed in consultation with the borough’s Visual Arts Committee.
An existing billboard on the site is leased by the billboard company Outfront Media LLC through 2041, but efforts to remove it are underway. Planning board attorney Marc Leckstein said the billboard’s removal is subject to a separate “pending potential settlement in a zoning board case that would eliminate that billboard.”
“Mr. Rallo has no control over that removal,” he said.
Site engineer Robert Freud testified that the curbed and landscaped island in the center of the parking lot, which currently supports the Outfront billboard, will be slightly narrowed and converted into a rain-garden feature but retained even if the billboard is removed, because it helps organize circulation and avoids creating more than 50 feet of uninterrupted open pavement.
Environmental Cleanup
The property has had a complicated environmental remediation process due to its previous use as a gas station but is now “essentially clean,” Rollo’s attorney Ed McKenna told the board. The site has been fully remediated except for ongoing monitoring of the groundwater wells, which are already installed. McKenna said a licensed site remediation professional had notified the applicant that once the well data is accepted by regulators, the site is expected to receive a “no further action” determination by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection.
Safety Concerns
One of the biggest safety concerns is the intersection, which is identified as one of the most dangerous in town.
Board members pressed hard on curb and barrier details along Riverside Avenue because of the planned outdoor seating just feet from traffic on Route 35. Their concern surfaced repeatedly in a running “Tiger Woods” analogy about an inattentive driver jumping the curb.
“A tall enough curb might flip Tiger’s car as he’s coming around the corner recklessly,” said chair Dan Mancuso, who pushed for a full-height curb as a condition of approval. “There should be a real curb on along Riverside fronting this property, not a depressed curb that would encourage someone to drive up it while everyone’s out there eating pizza,” he said.
Freud explained that the plan closes all 120 feet of depressed curb and open access along Riverside Avenue and removes one of two existing driveways on Bridge Avenue. Additionally, any repairs required on Bridge Avenue will be done by the developer.
Traffic engineer John McCormick said eliminating curb cuts on Riverside Avenue would bring “significant safety improvement, not only for the drivers entering, exiting the site, but also for the drivers coming into town and driving past the site.”
Additionally, Freud said about 17 bollards would be installed along the Riverside Avenue frontage in the landscaped strip between the outdoor seating area and the street to protect diners from an errant vehicle coming off Riverside Avenue.
The currently depressed curb along Riverside Avenue may be rebuilt as part of a borough streetscape grant. Shawna Ebanks, director of Community Development, Planning & Zoning, indicated that the borough recently received a Complete and Green Streets grant for improvements along Riverside Avenue, “so the hope is to rebuild the sidewalk,” she said.
McCormick also noted that the curb and sidewalk are already part of a state-backed plan to install a traffic light at Bodman Place and Riverside Avenue.
“Whether you do it or the town does it with the grant, I don’t care, but I think it should be done one way or another,” Mancuso said.
The article originally appeared in the April 16 – 22, 2026 print edition of The Two River Times.
