Bittersweet memories gave way to modern demands last week in Budd Lake as the quaint, long-shuttered Blue Bird Inn tavern on Route 46 met its long-overdue fate.
The deteriorating, 80-year-old, two-story building, closed since at least the early 1990s, was demolished Wednesday, torn to the ground by an excavator while Mount Olive Mayor Robert Greenbaum observed.
"It's always been closed since I've been here," said Greenbaum, who moved to the township in 1997.
Like the Gold Mine Hotel, another faded Route 46 landmark that was razed in July, Greenbaum hopes the removal of these relics will make room for modern development along the highway.
"We need to clean up the Route 46 corridor," he said. "Mount Olive has changed significantly from a lake community to a vibrant, multicultural, mutli-socioeconomic community. The Route 46 corridor obviously developed at a time before I lived in town, but there are a lot of properties that need some attention."
The property, with the tavern built into the downhill ridge along the highway frontage, is 1.14 acres, township administrator Andrew Tatarenko said.
"It's got real limitations, between wetlands and the limited [400 feet] road frontage," Greenbaum said.
Taxes on the property for 2019 were $5,682.
"There were a number of changes in ownership over the years," Greenbaum said. "The current ownership group, I believe, obtained the property through a tax foreclosure or some other distressed method of obtaining real estate."
The current owners also own a separate vacant lot next door taxed at $535 in 2019, Tatarenko said.
Meeting last year with the owners and planning experts, Greenbaum said the best proposal he saw for the property might be "a mixed-use, small-flex offices, maybe several units with a garage behind it for landscaping companies. I think you can put up about 10,000 square feet of development on that property."
But anything would be better than the status quo, Greenbaum said.
"The Blue Bird was kind-of was the flagship for the effort to clean up the Route 46 corridor," he said. "It hadn't been in use for a long time. It was very visible from the road. You could tell it was just vacant forever and there was no potential for the business to come back."
Still, as he posted photos on social media of the demolition, residents shared their fond memories of the Blue Bird, which opened in 1940.
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"End of an era," posted Ruthann Walsh Fulton.
"I grew up going to the Blue Bird several times a week for dinner and drinks (we lived walking distance across the highway)," posted Paul Jasper. "The owner Bob Meissner and his family were amazingly nice. Nothing but good memories for me. The music, the people, the arcade game (my favorite that I remember was Time Pilot!!), pool, Bob's cooking."
"Sad to see it go," wrote Betty Jennings. "That’s where I met my husband. Wish I could have seen if the one game machine was still inside."
"They allowed me and a few friends play pool there after school," Jim Nylander posted. "They let us buy soda that we mixed with rum we brought in. Bad boys."
"Had my first drink there once I turned of age," wrote Walt Lata. "Had our gun club meetings there."
Valerie Scorza Lindabury summed up the sentiment of those who feel the Blue Bird era had come and gone.
"It's about time," she wrote.
"Thrilled to see the eyesore removed," Steve N Aaron posted.
William Westhoven is a local reporter for DailyRecord.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
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