Concrete Evidence: Avalon Ready Mix Built Our Island One Foundation at a Time
The Avalon Ready Mix fleet lined up in front of the silo at 13th Street and Ocean Drive.
Whenever you are around people who have spent a good portion of their lives on Seven Mile Beach, you almost always hear the comment, “How much this place has changed.” I’m sure there are those who have heard those comments and must think, “Really? How much has it really changed?”
Well, this story just might put it in perspective for you. This is the story about Avalon Ready Mix Concrete – a full-service concrete plant that stood at the corner of 13th Street and Ocean Drive and was probably responsible for just about every foundation poured in Avalon, Stone Harbor and Sea Isle City for more than three decades. You see trucks today coming from offshore everyday as foundations and footing are laid for new dwellings. But there was a time when those trucks and the plant making the concrete was right here on Seven Mile Beach.
The actual dates when the plant was in Avalon aren’t completely clear but 1953-79 is probably a good estimate – a period that coincides with the biggest building boom on the island. It’s hard to imagine any dwelling built during that span that did not have a foundation poured by Avalon Ready Mix.
Phil Judyski, a longtime Avalon resident and former employee and vice president of the Ready-Mix plant, explains how he got his start there.
“After college I went into the Army,” he says. “But after I was discharged, I became a salesman for my uncles Phil and Tony at the plant. I would go from site to site, estimating jobs and taking orders. And I always had an Igloo cooler in my trunk with cold sodas for the guys working the construction sites. My uncles were smart businessmen and we supplied concrete for most jobs from Stone Harbor north to Sea Isle City.”
The genesis of the plant with its silo – which looked much like the town’s water towers and was a visual landmark from land and sea for generations – had very modest beginnings. The Matalucci family visited Avalon on occasion to vacation. A family of entrepreneurs, they owned a bar and a quarry in the Philadelphia area. The family patriarch, Philippo Matalucci, especially enjoyed Avalon. He enjoyed it so much that he purchased lots on Avalon Avenue where he planned to build a home. As was the case at the time, most land in Avalon was heavily wooded, with an occasional sand dune. Before any building could commence, lots needed to be cleared and leveled.
Since Matalucci was ready to build, he approached someone in a real estate office on 21st Street who specialized in clearing lots. Matalucci walked into the office and, as a recent immigrant, explained in his broken English that he needed a lot cleared. The worker dismissed Matalucci briskly, explaining, “I don’t do no work for [derogatory term for Italians].” In hindsight, probably not the best business decision. And thankfully, Matalucci was a quiet and gentle man.
Matalucci, who was probably at least two times the size of the shortsighted worker who so easily dismissed him, decided to take pity on the one-armed merchant and simply turned and walked away. He made his way back to Philadelphia, where he picked up a small Terra Trac tractor from his quarry and trucked it back to Avalon, where he cleared his lot himself. Necessity is often the mother of invention.
After clearing the lot, he and his son Tony built his house on Avalon Avenue, a home that remains in the family to this day. The family sold both their quarry and bar and moved to Avalon. Son Tony would eventually settle in Avalon as well. Seeing a need, together the two men would begin a business of clearing lots on the island.
Their business grew and they expanded into building roads in both Avalon and Stone Harbor. First they cleared and leveled the land and then covered each new road with gravel. Matalucci’s second son, Phil (of Phil’s Rock Room and Phil’s Bongo fame), came home from his service with the U.S. Navy Seabees, where he worked on the construction of the sprawling Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines during the Korean conflict. The three Mataluccis decided they would add a concrete plant to their current operations.
Initially there was no silo at the facility, so they would buy cement by the bag from a manufacturer in the Lehigh Valley. Bags were shipped by train to Goshen in Middle Township, where they were then transferred to trucks and brought into Avalon. Each bag would have to be moved by conveyor to be mixed with the sand and stone before it was ready for delivery by truck. It was a laborious process.
It’s interesting to note that all trucks at the plant were older, single-axle vehicles. At that time the main bridges onto Seven Mile Beach were all of wood construction and could not bear the weight of the heavier trucks. So, the Avalon Ready Mix truck fleet was a bit older, and smaller, purposely.
As the business continued to grow, they added the silo, which allowed for concrete to be delivered by tanker truck and pumped into the silo for storage and easier mixing.
Although the silo at the plant provided a visual landmark for many a visitor to the Seven Mile Beach, the Avalon Ready Mix Plant had something else that made it an attraction. It was home to two horses. The first, Ginger, was a quarter horse owned by Tony Matalucci. Ginger lived in a special stall that was built on the property. Neighborhood kids would often wander down to 13th Street after quitting time at the plant to offer carrots to Ginger when she would walk up to the fence. In addition to running Ginger on the beach, Matalucci would sometimes ride her at the head of parades through town as the grand marshal. For a time, there was also a second horse, Buttonhook, a retired racehorse, owned by Phil Matalucci.
Avalon Ready Mix was called upon by all local contractors for jobs of all sizes, including the massive pour that took place on 39th Street for the Borough of Avalon’s sewage treatment plant … an amazing feat for the time, for the large amount of concrete poured in a short period of time.
The business continued to grow as the Mataluccis added a second plant down in Erma, just north of Cape May. With their businesses at the Princeton and Avalon Hotels thriving and Phil Matalucci becoming more involved in politics in Cape May County the decision was made: The road business was sold to Tozour-Kerr Builders. The concrete silo was moved to the Erma plant, expanding the size of that operation. And so ended the three-decade era of a concrete plant in Avalon.
The plant took up most of the land between Dune Drive and Ocean Drive from 13th to 14th Streets. Today, that same area where the plant was located has been replaced by 34 single homes and townhouses. Hard to imagine a concrete plant of that size, complete with delivery vehicles, in today’s Avalon. How’d you like to have that as your neighbor? So yes, Seven Mile Beach really has changed.