This Jersey Shore Town Bought a $2M Jewish School. Now It Wants to Sell.
06 May, 2026 - Tranzon Auction Properties
Ocean Township once had grand plans for the old school it purchased on Logan Road.
There was talk that it could become a new senior center, a pre-K school or even the township’s new municipal building.
Seven years after buying the site for $2 million — following a court battle over the town’s opposition to turning it into a Jewish yeshiva with dormitories — the Monmouth County town is looking to sell.
Ocean Township will be seeking at least $2.75 million at an auction for the Logan Road property, Mayor John Napolitani said Monday.
The auction was originally scheduled for June 9 but was postponed pending additional information from the town’s attorney and engineer, Napolitani said.
The town remains committed to proceeding with the auction, Napolitani said.
“I’m kind of hoping by the end of June we have this wrapped up,” Napolitani said.
The former school site is now being subdivided into six lots “perfectly suited for medium-density single-family residential development,” said Tranzon, the company organizing the auction.
“Located just 2 miles from the world-famous Asbury Park beach and boardwalk, this site is ideally positioned to attract buyers looking for luxury new construction near the coast,” Tranzon posted.
While building new housing was always a possibility for the site, Ocean Township initially floated other plans for the property. They included turning the former school into a senior center or leasing it to the school district for a pre-kindergarten center.
“The original idea was to take the building and repurpose it,” Napolitani said.
Napolitani said the township also considered transforming the former school into a municipal building. But town officials were deterred by the anticipated impact on the surrounding neighborhood and the likelihood of spending millions of dollars on improvements to the nearly 70-year-old building.
“That’s not an area where you want a town hall creating all sorts of traffic,” Napolitani said.
Neighborhood impact was central to the court battle that led to the town’s purchase of the site.
In 2015, Yeshiva Gedolah Na’os Yaakov, a Jewish educational institution, sought approval to turn the former Jewish school building into an academy with dormitories for 96 men between the ages of 18 and 22, the Asbury Park Press reported.
After the town rejected the proposal, the yeshiva filed a lawsuit citing protections granted by the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.
A federal court overturned the town’s rejection of the yeshiva proposal. But the yeshiva agreed to sell the site to the town in 2019 after failing to obtain a certificate of occupancy due to needed repairs in the aging building.
Napolitani responded on his Facebook page on Monday to wide-ranging questions from residents in advance of the auction.
He wrote that there is no behind-the-scenes deal for a specific buyer. He also said the cost of renovating the building would have been “astronomical” for Ocean Township.
“We are starting the bid higher than what we purchased the property so unless we get zero bids, I believe we will make money on this property,” Napolitani wrote.
Selling it is an act of “fiscal responsibility” because the future owner will be paying more than $100,000 annually in property taxes, Napolitani wrote.
Ocean Township, as the site’s owner, currently receives no taxes on the site.