Dunkin’ Donuts due in town

PLUMSTED — Following months of negotiations, Dunkin’ Donuts became the latest business to have been recruited to Plumsted.

According to a press release from Mayor Ron Dancer, Vernon Holdings Ltd., the owner of the business plaza at the intersection of Route 537 and Route 539, has informed the township that contracts have been signed for Dunkin’ Donuts to locate in the new Yardville National Bank building at the business plaza.

Dunkin’ Donuts will occupy the portion of the bank building that fronts Route 537.

Accordng to Dancer, the owner and founder of Dunkin’ Donuts, Bill Rosen-berg, was doing business in and visiting Plumsted during the early 1970s as a race horse owner.

The mayor’s father, the late Stanley Dancer, trained Rosenberg’s race horses at his horse farm on Archertown Road, which is now one of 30 Plumsted farms in the farmland preservation program.

Rosenberg opened his first Dunkin’ Donuts store in 1950 and by the time he was coming to New Egypt in the 1970s, Dunkin’ Donuts had more than 1,000 shops in the United States and was becoming an international company after opening its first overseas franchise in Japan in 1970.

According to Dancer, during the 1970s it was not uncommon to see Rosenberg in a New Egypt coffee shop with Stanley Dancer.

Today, Dunkin Donuts has more than 6,000 shops worldwide and is the world’s largest franchise chain of coffee, donuts and bagels, according to the press release.

Across the street from Dunkin’ Donuts, another multi-million dollar commercial business plaza features Plumsted’s fifth bank, Roma Bank, presently under construction, and an adjacent five-unit professional office building.

Dancer said the Ocean County Engineering Department has informed Plumsted officials that this county road intersection (Route 539 and Route 537) will be reconstructed as a result of the additional business development approvals.

The county is presently completing the design, permitting and any necessary acquisition of land for easements or right of ways to improve the intersection with left turn lane signals, through traffic lanes and right turn lanes. Reconstruc-tion of the intersection will take place after Jan. 1, according to the press release.