Who's on the Asbury Park Boardwalk now?

Owner finally closes Howard Johnson's

Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 06/11/06

BY SHANNON MULLEN Asbury Park Staff Writer

ASBURY PARK — For the past 20 years or so, in what some might call a quixotic quest, George Panas has taken drastic measures to keep alive his once-bustling Howard Johnson's franchise on the boardwalk.

As business dried up, he stopped opening for dinner, reduced a voluminous menu to a single page, slashed his staff from a high of 80 employees to a skeleton crew of five or six and accepted items like broken wrist watches and costume jewelry from his increasingly indigent clientele, in lieu of cash.

What remained was but a ghost of the vibrant, colorful Howard Johnson's that Panas and a group of relatives opened in the Fifth Avenue Pavilion, just south of Convention Hall, back in 1962. Over time, even Howard Johnson's signature lineup of 28 rotating ice cream flavors dwindled to just two: chocolate and vanilla. Yet somehow, Panas kept his doors open.

"He had regulars who didn't have anywhere else to go, so he would show up for them, even if it was for just a couple of hours per day," said Rosemarie Berardesco, 43, of Asbury Park, who has worked as a waitress for Panas since she was 17. "How he hung in is beyond me. We thought he was crazy."

So did a lot of people. Over the years, many have come away from his bare-bones restaurant — which still has decades-old posters on the walls such as "New Peach Melba Ice Cream" and "Chef's Salad $1.95" — scratching their heads, as if they had just sat through a one-man performance of "Waiting for Godot."

Why did he stay?  Only Panas himself knows for sure, and "reticent" is too verbose a word to describe his candor in interviews. But persevere he did, relying on periodic private parties in his upstairs banquet room, the occasional Bruce Springsteen happening and a trickle of regular, cash-paying, customers to stay afloat.

"The city was very helpful to me, especially the last few years," he said, citing sharp reductions in his annual lease payments. "They tried to do the best for this building and the businesses up here. They tried to help me stay alive."

Eventually, his limited-hours luncheonette became New Jersey's sole surviving Howard Johnson's and one of only five left in the entire country — the last remnant of a once-proud chain of 1,200 restaurants.

Long-term plans, which Fishman said Asbury Partners expects to unveil within 30 days, will call for a more extensive rehabilitation of the Fifth Avenue Pavilion and ultimately, he said, a new, "first-rate" restaurant for the site.

Asbury Partners purchased all five boardwalk pavilions from the cash-strapped city several years ago and recently entered into a partnership with Madison Marquette, a Washington-based firm, to attract entertainment, dining and retail to the 260-acre oceanfront redevelopment zone, which includes the mile-long boardwalk.

Designed by Philadelphia architect John Fridy, the Fifth Avenue Pavilion was a postmodern gem when it opened in the early 1960s, featuring an eye-catching, crown-shaped roofline above the section that housed the Howard Johnson's restaurant and a swooping pedestrian ramp leading to the 1,400-seat rooftop Arthur Pryor Band Shell, a popular venue for outdoor concerts.

"I think it's one of our best buildings on the boardwalk," said Sara Anne Towery, a retired architect and a member of the city's Planning Board who is among those eager to see the now-dilapidated pavilion restored. "Just about everybody likes it, because it's so exuberant and such fun."

Panas, who emigrated to the United States from Greece in the mid-1950s with plans to become a teacher, first opened a Howard Johnson's in Sayreville with an uncle and other relatives a couple of years before they started a franchise in Asbury Park.

Situated next to Convention Hall and just a short walk from the Berkeley-Carteret Hotel, the restaurant flourished through the 1960s and '70s, Panas said.

When big conventions and concerts came to town and summertime tourists flocked to the city's famed oceanfront, patrons often had to wait in long lines to fill up on fried clams, butter-fried frankfurters, fountain sodas and ice cream sundaes, among other stick-to-your-ribs favorites.

"It was jammed," recalled John W. Luckenbill, 51, of Shrewsbury, who started playing summertime concerts on the rooftop band shell when he was a teenager and who now conducts the Asbury Park Concert Band. "It was very convenient for the concertgoers to eat dinner there and walk up the ramp to the concert."

By the 1980s, however, those lines had largely disappeared, and by the end of the decade, so had most concessions on the boardwalk, which shut down in anticipation of an ambitious oceanfront redevelopment project that never materialized.

The boardwalk's dormancy lasted throughout the 1990s, but Panas hung on.

Why did he stay? His daughter has a theory.  "I think he always felt that somehow there was hope, that there was something over the horizon," said Barbara Panas, 32, of Jersey City, who started working in the restaurant when she was 13.

If that's true, then now might seem an odd time to retire, with pricey new condominiums under construction along the oceanfront and new concessions opening up on the boardwalk. But the reality is that it could take several more years before the oceanfront becomes a vibrant place again, and Panas has had enough.

He plans to take his wife, Helen, to Greece this summer, and when he gets back, he'll enjoy watching the city's ongoing transformation.

"I think it's going to be one of the most beautiful towns around in a few years," he predicted. And perhaps someday, there will be long lines of people waiting to get into whatever restaurant eventually becomes a fixture of the Fifth Avenue Pavilion.

"They'll fix that," he said, walking through the kitchen past a puddle of rain water from a leak in the roof. "It's going to be a beautiful place."