A Jersey Shore parking lot may be developed into Victorian-style townhomes

Jill Robinson Prakopcyk remembers vividly her teenage summers spent working for her uncle on the Seaside Heights boardwalk.

He owned several businesses. So, one day she would be making candy apples. The next she would be feeding seals and the next she would be running the mini-golf course.

“My job was whatever job my uncle needed covered that day,” she said of her summers in the early 1970s.

Her uncle, Quentin Davenport, also operated a motel at one point. When he returned home from WWII, his mother gave him back all the money he had sent to her and the Hillside native decided to invest it in Seaside Heights.

He knocked the motel down in the 1980s and then ran a paid parking lot.

Prakopcyk and her sister, Joyce DiPietro, both of Hunterdon County, have inherited the parking lot and want to build a 16-unit, coastal Victorian-style townhouse building there.

“Our thought was to bring back some history to the town and be a centerpoint of all the redevelopment that is going on,” Prakopcyk said.

Seaside Heights is undergoing a lot of redevelopment. The abandoned Karma, Bamboo and Merge nightclubs are being torn down and turned into housing and retail. And the Surfside, Glendale and Dry Dock motels are being razed to make way for a 135-room oceanfront hotel and banquet center, among other projects.

The family’s parking lot, which DiPietro’s son runs, is located on Ocean Terrace between Hamilton and Franklin avenues, diagonally across the street from Lucky Leo’s.

The application for the project was presented June 2 during a workshop meeting to the Seaside Heights Planning Board.

The three-story building would have on the first floor a small lobby, utility rooms, storage and a small retail space for a bagel or coffee-type shop.

The second and third floors would each have eight townhomes ranging in size from 2,000 to 2,300 square feet, with sunset and sunrise views since the two-story townhomes will stretch the entire length of the building, front to back.

They will all have balconies and also have private access to a rooftop terrace.

The enclosed rooftop spaces put the building height at 49 feet, which is higher than permitted by the borough. Several board members at the meeting this week suggested scrapping the rooftop enclosures so that the design conforms to zoning height rules.

“We’re going to be responsive to the comments,” Prakopcyk said. “We’re trying to work with the town and zoning to make it all work.”

The application also requires variances for front-yard setback, density and parking because it will have 29 parking spaces instead of 33.

The plan is scheduled to go before the Planning Board again on June 30, when it will have a public hearing and be voted on. Then it could be memorialized at the board’s July 7 meeting, Planning Board Secretary Sherri Sieling said.

Working with Jason Hanrahan of MODE Architects, the sisters came up with the coastal Victorian design because, Prakopcyk said, they didn’t want it to be just another rectangular building.

“Victorian architecture played a significant role in shaping the look and feel of many seaside towns, most prominently Cape May,” Hanrahan said, adding that Seaside Heights doesn’t have a distinct architecture style. “It’s nice to have something that can stand out.”

The Victorian touches are evident in the design through the steep, gabled roof, spacious front porches, detailed woodwork, decorative trim and the vibrant color, he said.

Prakopcyk said the project will pay homage to her uncle by incorporating his name into the building name and hanging old pictures of him and his businesses in the lobby.

“I always felt like he was ahead of the curve,” Prakopcyk said of her uncle, who, shortly before his death in 1993 suggested they set up an old truck in the parking lot and sell fresh fruit and bottled water.

“Those things were unheard of then,” she said.

She feels like she’s keeping with that ‘ahead of the curve’ tradition with this project.

“We’re part of the renaissance that’s happening,” Prakopcyk said. “I would like to see Seaside Heights continue to go back to being a family destination kind of place, like I enjoyed when I was growing up.”

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Allison Pries may be reached at apries@njadvancemedia.com.