Ocean Grove fire: Playa Bowls loses ‘one of my favorite locations’

May 03-- May 3--OCEAN GROVE -- What could she do? It was busy; visitors in town that day for a cat convention were stopping in her vintage clothing store, Bettie's Bombshells, asking her where all the smoke was coming from.

"I had to keep working," Elliott said. "What is there to really talk about? I had to keep going and moving on and working."

Business owners who lost their stores in the fire at the North End Pavilion are scrambling to salvage the summer tourism season that is just a couple of weeks away.

Shore business owners know the feeling all too well. The North End Pavilion location alone weathered floods and fires for more than a century. But they say the benefits outweigh the risk

They are moving employees to other stores. They are searching for new locations. And, in the case of Elliott, they are bracing for long work days to make up for what they lost, all while riding an emotional roller coaster that swings between anger and hope.

"That was definitely one of my favorite locations," said Abby Taylor, co-founder and chief marketing officer of Playa Bowls, which operated in a food hall that featured crystal clear view of the beach and the ocean. "It helped build our brand, I think. It was such an iconic, cool spot to be a part of."

A tremendous loss

Elliott opened Bettie's Bombshells in Asbury Park in 2015 with custom-made fashion designs that are inspired by the 1950s and '60s.

She opened her second location in Ocean Grove last summer and was confident enough in its prospects that her boyfriend, Thomas Erwin, quit his job to work there.

Elliott planned to kick off the store's 2019 season on April 13 with a 35 percent-off sale, and it looked like she caught a break. The forecast was for temperatures in the upper 70s and clear skies.

But the wind was whipping. Around 11:30 a.m., the Ocean Grove sirens started blaring. The pavilion caught fire. Elliott got a call from Erwin saying it looked like it could be contained. Then she got a second call saying the building would be lost.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation, Chris Swendeman, spokesman for the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office, said Wednesday.

"I wanted to help build the area, and the customers really loved it," Elliott said. "It was very, very special.

"People always asked me in the last five years, 'Why don't you have a second location,"' she said. "I never wanted to do it because I knew it was going to be such a tremendous amount of work. But we did do it, and it was wonderful. So this is a tremendous loss for us emotionally and very seriously financially. It's a lot."

A century at the Shore comes with risk

Bettie's Bombshells joined other vendors who had turned the North End Pavilion into a gathering place tailored to a new generation. Its calling card was the Dunes Boardwalk Cafe, a food hall that attracted independent restaurants that have a loyal following from locals and tourists.

Among them: Playa Bowls, Bubbakoo's Burritos and America's Cup Coffee.

It was a departure from the building's tradition that was more in line with Ocean Grove, a Victorian town known as a Methodist retreat.

Robert Waitt, president of the Historical Society of Ocean Grove, said the pavilion dated to 1907. It eventually housed the Homestead Restaurant and was connected by a walkway to the grandiose North End Hotel.

Fires swept through the hotel in 1925, 1938, and 1950. It was razed in 1978 to make way for an assisted living center that never materialized.

The pavilion was battered, too. A hurricane damaged the building in 1944. It was hit again by Hurricane Irene in 2011. And it needed to be rebuilt after superstorm Sandy in 2012.

The building is owned by Maplewood-Ocean Grove Associates. Speaking on behalf of the company in 2014, Robert Dweck asked the Neptune Historic Preservation Commission for permission to renovate the site, according to minutes of the meeting.

Dweck's family operated Jones' Treasure Grove, which sold beach items at the pavilion. And they had operated a business there since 1932, he told the Asbury Park Press in an interview in 2006.

When the building reopened after Sandy, it included a plaque quoting Isaiah 58:12: "Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called repairer of broken walls, restorer of streets with dwellings."

Dweck didn't respond to messages left for him. A man sifting through the rubble on Wednesday said he was the owner, but he declined to speak to a reporter.

"Our town is very nostalgic," said Jessie Thompson, executive director of the Ocean Grove Area Chamber of Commerce. "There are so many memories in that building, so many memories for people of stores and food establishments."

A string of bad luck

The building's tenants are left to pick up the pieces.

Playa Bowls' Abby Taylor said she was considering having a food truck in Ocean Grove this summer and is helping the store's franchise owner, Michelle Gannon, find a new location, perhaps in Bradley Beach.

Bubbakoo's Burritos co-owner Paul Altero said he was looking at opening a franchise store in Asbury Park. That previously was off the table because it was too close to the Ocean Grove location.

And Day's Ice Cream's co-owner David Fernicola said he would try to find jobs at his main store in Ocean Grove for the eight employees who worked at the boardwalk.

Day's seems to have run into a string of bad luck. Its location on the Asbury Park boardwalk was destroyed by Sandy. It later moved to the North End Pavilion. And now Fernicola estimates that he lost $40,000 in equipment in the fire, and he isn't sure how much insurance will cover.

"Two years or five years ago, I should have upped the insurance," Fernicola said, "But who knows? It's when you have a car accident, that's when you find out what coverage you should have gotten. But I'm resilient. I just keep plugging along."

Elliott can no doubt relate. Her house in Long Branch was destroyed by Sandy. And now, her business was destroyed by fire.

She was angered to see photos on the internet of firefighters taking selfies with the burning building as a backdrop. And she was grateful for friends who stopped by that day to make sure she was safe.

But there is no time to waste. The tourism season is less than a month away, and Elliott can't afford to hire employees; she'll be working seven days a week.

"I'm just going to have to keep working until I get myself out of this situation and focus on my Asbury Park location right now and reassess at the end of the season what I can do, what I have to do," Elliott said.

Michael L. Diamond is an award-winning journalist who has been covering the New Jersey economy for 20 years. He can be reached at @mdiamondapp; 732-643-4038; and [email protected]

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