Gilpin has been big booster of Freehold business district BY DICK METZGAR Staff Writer Joe Gilpin FREEHOLD - If there was ever an example of local boy makes good, it's the story of Joe Gilpin's community involvement and business success. Although Gilpin, 58, of the borough, was born in Minnesota, his family moved to Freehold when he was a teenager. For almost 30 years he has been an important cog in the development and improvement of the community's downtown area. Gilpin, a 1966 graduate of Freehold High School, owns and operates Freehold Tire Center at the Center Street entrance to the Market Yard parking lot. He was recently selected as the 2005 recipient of the John G. McGackin Award. The award has been presented annually since 1986 in honor of the late mayor who died in office in 1985. It is presented to a person who has contributed to the renaissance of the borough. Since the early 1980s, whenever there has been a grassroots movement design to improve Freehold's downtown area and the business environment, Gilpin has been one of the first people to get on board. He was president of the Freehold Area Chamber of Commerce in 1983-84 when that organization launched a campaign to spread its wings in a big way, which led to its current status as the Western Monmouth Chamber of Commerce. Gilpin is still an active member of the organization. "At the time I became president, the chamber was still operating out of a very small office on South Street and represented only Freehold businesses," Gilpin said. "While I was president we moved our office to larger quarters in the Christopher House on East Main Street and began a big campaign to recruit members from beyond the borders of Freehold. We changed our name to the Western Monmouth Chamber of Commerce and hired a full-time executive director, Ann Marie Ruskin. We hired Joan Hepscher, who later became the executive director, as Ann Marie's assistant. The chamber has grown by leaps and bounds ever since." When local businessmen John Ballew and Jeff Jones began recruiting an elite group of downtown business people as members of a partnership designed to improve the borough's business atmosphere at its core in early 1990, Gilpin was one of the first people to come aboard, putting up $1,000 to become a charter member. That group quickly evolved into the Freehold Center Partnership, which became operational in 1992 with its own annual budget, and is responsible for activities in Freehold's Special Improvement District (SID), which encompasses the downtown business area. "I strongly believed in the concept of the partnership and the SID, and I still do," Gilpin said. Jayne Carr, who is the present executive director of the Freehold Center Partnership, said, "Joe has been actively involved in all of the downtown area. He is still on the partnership's Board of Directors and has been active with many of our projects to improve Freehold Center. He has been involved with parking issues, especially the realignment of the Market Yard. I know that he has been very active with the Chamber of Commerce for many years." Going back to the 1970s, Gilpin was also active with the Freehold Area YMCA (now the YMCA of Western Monmouth County), and the Junior Chamber of Commerce, which is no longer in existence. Freehold Tire, a full-service auto repair garage, has been owned by Gilpin since 1976 and has operated out of its present location across from the Higgins Memorial Home since 1980. "When I purchased the business in 1976 it was in part of the old American Hotel building," Gilpin said. "It had been there since 1938. The auto repair business has been my life ever since."