The nonprofit Mercy Center is Asbury Park is looking to sell its campus at 1104 and 1106-1108 Main St., a site that brokers say is a rare boutique multifamily development opportunity in the downtown. — Courtesy: NAI James E. Hanson
By Joshua Burd
The nonprofit Mercy Center, seeking a buyer for its main campus in Asbury Park, has enlisted the help of NAI James E. Hanson.
The real estate firm, in turn, is supporting those efforts by contributing its brokerage and advisory services on the assignment at 1104 and 1106-1108 Main St. That will help the organization sell a three-building, roughly 16,000-square-foot campus whose proceeds will provide the foundation for it to build a new home for programs and services focused on alleviating generational poverty across the area.
A sponsored ministry of the Sisters of Mercy, Mercy Center has served the Greater Asbury Park community for nearly 40 years, guided by the values of its founder, Sister Catherine McAuley, according to a news release. Its food pantry, emergency services and Family Resource Center provide vital support to thousands of children, families and individuals each month.
Local businesses, restaurants and community volunteers are central to that effort, contributing time, resources and support to keep the programs running.
“For nearly four decades, Mercy Center has worked to break the cycle of generational poverty in the Greater Asbury Park area, and we have been able to do so because of the community that surrounds us,” said Kim Guadagno, CEO and president of Mercy Center. “Bringing all of our programs together under one roof will allow us to serve our neighbors with greater dignity and reach, and partners like NAI James E. Hanson are helping make that future possible.”
The sale of the Main Street campus is central to Mercy Center’s “Under One Roof” capital campaign, an effort to bring the organization’s programs and services together in a single, larger, and more accessible facility for the first time, the news release said. Today, those programs operate across several aging, separate buildings, and the new facility is designed to expand Mercy Center’s capacity to serve a growing community.
NAI Hanson, for its part, said the assignment reflects its longstanding commitment to giving back to the communities it serves across New Jersey. Kim Kretowicz, senior vice president and health care and office specialist, and Phil Mylod, an associate, are overseeing the marketing and sale of the property at the northeast corner of Main Street and Third Avenue.
“The property represents a rare boutique multifamily redevelopment opportunity in the heart of downtown Asbury Park,” Kretowicz said. “Situated at the hard corner of Main Street and Third Avenue within the city’s Main Street Redevelopment Plan area, the site is offered as a delivered opportunity with vacant possession at closing.”
The organizations added that, through Sisters Academy of New Jersey, Mercy Center’s tuition-free independent middle school for girls in grades four through eight, the nonprofit is also helping to break the cycle of poverty through education. To date, 100 percent of the school’s graduates have gone on to graduate high school, with many continuing to college and careers they may not otherwise have reached.
