A public auction to sell a public asset? What are they trying to do -
get a fair price? They should do it the AP way.
Keyport will sell building
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 10/3/06
BY KEVIN PENTON
KEYPORT BUREAU
KEYPORT By 1951, Jersey Central Power & Light Co. had outgrown its
office in the center of the borough and was looking to move.
Around the same time, municipal officials were growing tired of
having to trudge up a flight of stairs at the old Hook & Ladder
building on East Front Street every time they needed to conduct
borough business.
The municipal government moved into the power company's Main Street
building the following year, remaining there until two years ago,
when officials grew tired of its leaky roof and cramped spaces and
moved into a newly built borough hall on West Front Street.
The Borough Council will seek a buyer for the former JCP&L building.
It authorized its attorneys last month to prepare the documents
needed to solicit bids during a public auction.
Borough historian Jack Jeandron acknowledged the building could use
some work, but said it should be reused, not razed.
"It would be foolish to tear it down," Jeandron said. "If you tore
it down, that space wouldn't serve a purpose for anything."
Years before it sold the building, during the art deco era of
architecture, JCP&L added a stucco facade to the red-brick building.
Workers framed the second-story windows with terra cotta, creating a
pattern of eight-point stars, triangles and other designs.
Insets on the sides feature lightning bolts, rainbows and a torch.
The stylized columns and ridges throughout the stucco exterior were
painted in shades of red, yellow and gray.
The stucco is pocked and crumbling from years of neglect, and the
paint has long lost its vibrancy.
Inside the front entrance, rusty file cabinets are lined up behind
fake wood wall panel that hardly reaches the high ceiling on the
first floor.
One of the few things to have not faded away is a sign painted on a
window at the rear of the building: "Borough Jail."
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