Before he became a figure on the world stage, Jared Trump was a developer who came up with an innovative plan to redo the aging Monmouth Mall in Eatontown
I took a walk around the local strip mall the other day. The only traffic was a guy in a muscle car doing burn-outs.
In the old days, the cops would have been on him in a minute. But no one was there to notice him except for me. The parking lot was empty except for a handful of cars parked by a gym and the Cash Converters, a sort of high-end pawn shop.
The supermarket had long since closed. The remaining anchor store, a Kmart, is on the verge of going down like a literal anchor, at least if the news reports are correct.
The same is happening all over the state as retail business has migrated to the internet. Someone should do something about it.
There's not a lot of life left in this strip mall; plenty of parking, though Someone is: None other than Jared Kushner.
Of late, Kushner has skyrocketed to international fame as first son-in-law to President Donald Trump.
But a couple of years ago he was just another multi-millionaire developer.
That was how Eatontown Mayor Dennis Connelly first perceived him when Kushner came to town to push his plan to remake the struggling Monmouth Mall.
"He was very pleasant, very upbeat," Connelly recalled. "We kind of knew the name. Then the borough attorney Googled him and it turned out he was married to Ivanka Trump."
Even that wasn't such a big deal at the time. But now that his father-in-law has become president, Kushner has become a figure on the world stage.
Many Beltway insiders are still wondering what to make of The Jared, but he's got a great reputation with the local people who met him, Connelly said. So does his plan for the mall.
It's an innovative, $500 million proposal to remake one of the oldest malls in the state into an upscale shopping, residential and entertainment complex.
The redone mall would have 700 apartments as well as a collection of high-end stores and restaurants.
It's an ambitious experiment, but something has to be done with the mall, the mayor said.
Connelly recalled that back when he was a borough policeman, one of the common tasks was dealing with the rowdy teenagers who would hang around the mall.
"We're not even getting them anymore," he said.
The mall's still doing okay, he said, but gradually stores are closing up and restaurants are leaving the food court.
"A pizzeria had been there for a second generation," Connelly said. "He closed up last week. It was pretty heartbreaking."
Not every mall around the state is doing poorly, said Chuck Lanyard, who is President of The Goldstein Group, a major retail real-estate firm based in Paramus. The high-end malls in his own Bergen County are doing okay, he said.
"But it's not a national pastime as much to take the family shopping in a mall like it used to be," said Lanyard. "I think there's a general perception that malls, as beautiful as they are, have to charge higher prices."
That's been tough on the big box stores and many malls are having hard times. So it will be interesting to see if Kushner's experiment will work.
The concept of the shopping mall is starting to look as old as the Stone Age. But first it has to get by the NIMBY crowd.
A lot of local residents of the "not in my back yard" persuasion have banded together to try and stop the borough from granting the approvals needed to change the zoning of the 110-acre site.
This sort of thing might make sense if this were some sort of pristine, unspoiled area that needed protection. But it's a shopping center - and has been one for half a century. Not only that, it's situated on two major roadways, state highways 35 and 36 and is just a mile from the Garden State Parkway.
Connelly said that under the new plan there will be considerably less traffic than when the mall was in its heyday. So what if some of the traffic comes from apartment residents?
"Do we want traffic just to go through our town, or do we want it to stop and create tax ratables?" he asked.
The Borough Council approved the plan by a 5-1 vote in September but four objectors filed a suit alleging technical violations in how the vote was taken.
That's life in Jersey, where nothing can change without a fight. But Connelly said he's optimistic the court will rule in the borough's favor.
Something has to be done, he said.
"What's the alternative?" he asked.
The same question is being asked in towns with dying malls all over New Jersey.
Perhaps the first son-in-law has the answer.
It can't hurt to try.