A look at Springsteen Archives OK’d for Monmouth University
LONG BRANCH – Monmouth University will build the Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music, but it received an earful from a couple of aggravated neighbors in the process.
The university went before the city’s Planning Board on Tuesday night seeking final site plan approval with variance relief to build the twostory museum that will pay homage to the music icon who was born in the city in 1949. The museum will include galleries and archive rooms, a 244seat auditorium and gift shop.
It will be built at the corner of Cedar and Norwood avenues, on property owned by the university, across the street from the Great Hall at Shadow Lawn and the Guggenheim Mansion, the university’s two marquee historic pieces.
The university estimates the museum will attract 40,000 to 50,000 visitors annually. The visitors are expected to be researchers, school tours and fans in general. The museum will be open five or six days a week from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. There will also be occasional night programs such as lectures or a jazz performance.
The volume of visitors is what struck a nerve with residents who live on Kirby Avenue, which backs up to the property.
“They don’t care about their neighbor; they don’t care about us. The traffic is horrendous as it is. This is nothing good for us people who live on the block,” said Jack Torkieh, who raised his voice at the board several times.
However, the board determined the project conformed to the design standards and permitted uses in the recently adopted higher education overlay zone, called the MUO District, directly east of Monmouth’s main campus in West Long Branch.
The key variance Monmouth needed, and was granted, was lot consolidation. To build the museum, Monmouth will
combine four lots into one roughly 4.72acre lot. The lots currently have the Monmouth University police station and two residences on them. All three will come down for the construction of 27,000-square foot, 36-foot high museum. The museum will have a 195space parking lot
The university’s Lauren K. Woods Theater will remain as is and the lot it sits on was not one of the lots that was consolidated.
Robert Santelli, the founding executive director of the museum, appeared before the board to tout its cultural benefits. Santelli likened the museum to the ones dedicated to folk singers Arlo Guthrie and Bob Dylan in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Santelli also helped found the Grammy Museums in Los Angeles and on the Delta in Cleveland, Mississippi.
“The archives is essentially an educational institution that seeks to preserve and celebrate not only the legacy and important papers and memoirs of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, but it has a broader purpose when incorporated with the Center for American Music.”
Santelli said when he brought this proposal to Springsteen a few years ago, he said Springsteen told him “he was but one mere chapter in the ongoing story of American music.” From that conversation, Santelli said they sought to broaden the scope to include the center with the museum.
“This will be a cultural institution that will be known not only nationally but internationally as we collected papers, oral histories, journals and music that help tell the story and the creative process of not just Bruce Springsteen but of other American music greats as well,” Santelli said.
Architecturaly the museum will be two stories and 36 feet tall, 74 feet wide and 206 feet long. It will be set back 70 feet from Cedar Avenue and 51 feet from
Norwood Avenue. It is rectangular in shape, which drew criticism from board member Adam Kanefsky, who compared its architecture to a “shipping container.”
“I would have never voted for the MOU if I knew this is what you were going to do,” Kanefsky said,
The building was designed by Robert Cook of Cookfox Architects based in
New York City. Cook designed the building with weathered steel and heavy timber to give it a Jersey Shore boardwalk look and feel, It will be surrounded by a wildflower meadow that will make to appear as if floating above the meadow. The building will have several large glass windows to let the natural light in.
Cook said he was “honored” to design the building that figures to contribute
greatly to Bruce Springsteen’s legacy.
Kanefsky was the lone dissenter. The board approved the museum by a 7 to 1 vote.