By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
For the past year, the owners of O’Donnell’s Pour House discussed some redevelopment concepts for an old house they acquired next door to the Irish-themed restaurant and pub on Landis Avenue in Sea Isle City.
One idea was to possibly transform the 120-year-old home into a restaurant, but then the coronavirus pandemic struck and suddenly everything changed, said Ralph Pasceri, who owns O’Donnell’s with his brother Pat and their business partner Michael Roberts.
The old house at the corner of 39th Street and Landis Avenue was demolished this week as the owners move forward with plans to develop the now-vacant lot into an outdoor dining area for O’Donnell’s.
As uncertainty lingers in the restaurant industry nationwide about indoor dining during the pandemic, O’Donnell’s will offer an outdoor option to comply with social distancing guidelines, Ralph Pasceri explained.
“With the social distancing we may be faced with this summer, we may have to keep people farther apart,” he said in an interview Friday.
O’Donnell’s outdoor dining area will contain more than 150 seats, but Pasceri is unsure whether all of them will be needed depending on the social distancing guidelines restaurants will have to follow once they are allowed to reopen.
Currently, restaurants in New Jersey are allowed to offer takeout orders, curbside pickup and deliveries under Gov. Phil Murphy’s shutdown orders during the pandemic. Indoor and outdoor restaurant dining are not yet allowed by the governor.
As the state’s economy begins to emerge from the shutdown restrictions, Pasceri said O’Donnell’s wants to move as quickly as possible to have the outdoor dining area ready for the summer tourism season. However, the project must first receive site plan approval by Sea Isle’s planning board at its June 8 meeting.
“We try to make the town proud of what we’re doing and we think we’re doing that with this project,” Pasceri said, expressing hope that the planning board will give its approval.
Real estate records show that Jersey Shore Properties LLC, a group that includes Ralph and Pat Pasceri and Michael Roberts, bought the old house at 3901 Landis Avenue in June 2019 for $1.3 million.
The sprawling home, built in 1900, was previously owned by the Brangenberg family for decades. The house was located in the heart of Sea Isle’s downtown business district and the Brangenberg family had proposed redeveloping the property into a mixed-use project combining commercial space with residential units on top.
Ralph Pasceri explained that he, his brother and Roberts didn’t want a mixed-use project located next door to O’Donnell’s, so they made the decision to buy the property and determine its fate.
“We acquired the property without a definitive plan,” he said.
Pasceri said they discussed the possibility of converting the house into a restaurant, but ultimately decided that a project of that size would have been too expensive and problematic.
For months, rumors swirled around Sea Isle that Ralph and Pat Pasceri and Roberts were also thinking about turning the site into a beer garden for O’Donnell’s Pour House or for their other business in town, the historic Ocean Drive tavern on Landis Avenue.
After the global coronavirus pandemic hit, they accelerated the property’s redevelopment plan by deciding to undertake “a very quick expansion” for outdoor dining at O’Donnell’s, Pasceri said.
To make room for the project, the old house was torn down this week.
