From Last Call to Lord’s Call at Shuttered Brownies in EHT?

Have you heard the latest about the old Brownies Lodge, the rustic log cabin in Bargaintown that was a favorite late-night spot for the party crowd?

The Press of Atlantic City is reporting that Calvary Chapel Gateway of Northfield received site plan approval at Monday's Egg Harbor Township Planning Board meeting to rehabilitate the building and use it as its new house of worship.

Will Infamous Old EHT Bar Become a Church?

From the look of the cover photo for this article, redoing the old Brownies restaurant and bar would be a major undertaking.

The Press of Atlantic City talked with Tony Montemurro, the pastor at Calvary Chapel, in the Mainland Professional Plaza on Tilton Road in Northfield, about his thinking with this idea.

Montemurro likes the old Brownies location because it's a much bigger space for his congregation, which has been holding its services in a strip mall for 14 years and is probably ready to stretch out a bit in a bigger facility.

An online real estate listing shows that the church bought the 7.5-acre site at 3551 Bargaintown Road in May for $850,000.

Cavelry Chapel Gateway still needs to get approval for parking, additional buildings on the site, and other improvements, according to the Press article.

Remembering the Days of 24-Hour Bars in Egg Harbor Township

Any talk of Brownies brings back memories of when EHT allowed its bars to remain open 24 hours a day, a policy that ended in the 1980s.

I remember this era best from hearing about Dunes 'Til Dawn on Longport Blvd. from older friends way back in the day.

The blog site, At the Point, dedicated to the history of Somers Point, talked about this era in a 2011 post and Brownies' place in that history.

Egg Harbor Township allowed those liquor licenses within their jurisdiction to remain open 24-hours a day, and some of them did, especially those near Somers Point, where the bars were forced to stop serving at 2am and close by 3am.

 

Brownies Lodge, a rustic log cabin in Bargaintown was probably the first to become popular with the post-Somers Point crowd, and many old timers recall driving out there to continue the party after Somers Point had closed.

 

A lot of bands played Brownies over the years, including Jack Zwacki, Larry Hickman and Back Roads, which included Nancy and Tom, Jack Patch and Billy Mueller.

 

Today, none of these places even exist. Brownies is still there but after Joe Hoffman died his second wife sold it to some guys who operated it as a bust out joint for a year or two and then went bankrupt, and it now sits empty.