Maybe you’re one of the fortunate ones. Maybe, like Michael Frodella, you get to say: “It is very easy for me to wake up in the morning and go to work.”Maybe, like Frodella, you get to say of yourself and your co-workers: “We walk with smiles.”

There are two old barns, each more than one hundred years old, in Florham Park, NJ. They were once the property of the Sisters of Charity, who ran the nearby St. Elizabeth College. It came to pass that their value became nothing compared to the property they sit on. All around the barns, in fact, millions of square feet of office space were planned to be built. The barn, dilapidated, was to be razed. Until a man, David Hadley is driving by one day and he says to himself, “They can’t take those down.” He devises a plan. One steeped in good intent.

He and several CEOs in the area decide to refurbish the barns and turn them into the Park Avenue Club. This is no run-of-the-mill club. This is an oasis of fine living right smack in the middle of corporatedom. His thinking is this: Business people need a place to do business in a social setting. Why not a club, admittedly posh, that they not only frequent, but that they belong to. That they are members of. And then this: the revenue generated by the club and its members (after running the business) goes directly to charity. Several charities. Some right in the neighborhood. So, the club has two reasons to exist: to provide a place for local business people to do work while socializing and to raise money for those in need.

You have to admit, it’s a great idea. And that is exactly what the Park Avenue Club does. Last year, it gave away more than $500,000 to the 12 charities that each are represented on the board of directors of the club:

Special Olympics of New Jersey
Community Food Bank of New Jersey
Burgdorff Foundation
Jersey Battered Women’s Services
New Jersey Youth Symphony
The Morris Museum
Morris Habitat for Humanity
Patriots Path Council - Boy Scouts of America
Share Our Strength
PG Chambers School

The club says it is the only one of its kind in the world. Try and fact check that, if you want. The point is, it doesn’t matter. It fights the good fight. It does good work.

The next part of this story is all about timing. It’s something like kismet - when something is so right it must be fate. Michael Frodella is a man with a ton of experience in restaurants. He owned two in Fairfield, NJ. that people will tell you were the cream of the crop: Bruschetta and Bacchus Chophouse and Wine Bar. He was running them for about seven years, doing what most restaurant owners do – pulling in some nice coin but working 90 hours a week. What kind of toll does that take on family life? You do the math. Now, along comes a baby, Melina.

Frodella says enough.“A man walked into the restaurant one night and offered to buy both,” he says. “The truth is, I was ready to leave.” Frodella takes a few months off and this is when his wife, Sylvia Lasalandra Frodella, starts feeling the symptoms of postpartum depression. She not only battles the trauma of that, she goes on to become one of the most recognized advocates, speakers and faces in the fight against postpartum depression in the country.

She has written a book, written hundreds of articles, founded the Web-site www.adaughterstouch.com, made too many speeches to count, testified before Congress and helped get Brooke Shields to testify, too. And they were raising Melina. And while all that is going on, Frodella receives a phone call from the Park Avenue Club. Would you come on board as general manager? With everything he had gone through in his life, he admits his “Italian guilt” had kicked in. “You come to a point when you realize there are other people in the world,” he says. “And a lot of them are not as fortunate as you are. It was time to make a difference to others.”

Before you start thinking of Frodella as some kind of Superman, he is quick to point out that he is just one person in this endeavor. He says you will not find more competent people in the service industry than his co-workers at Park Avenue. “The better experience we provide means we gain membership,” he says. “The more their frequency at the club increases, the better the revenue stream to our charitable foundation.” Nor, he insists, will you find any more generous people.

Because not only do these people care so much for the experience their members pay for – this is one elegant club – and for the all-too-often anonymous people the charities assist, they are then willing to give even more. More of their own time. They have charity days, where the staff and club members take part in private charity work. Like the time 50 staff and club members piled into cars and went down to the food bank to pack bags of food. Like the time they put together a team for a Lupus walk. Like the Angel Tree of Giving held during the holiday season, which matches a gift to a specific child, provided by staff and club members. “I’ve worked at other clubs and, really, the club industry does a lot of charitable actions,” Frodella says. “You may not see it or hear about it all the time but they do. “It’s just that Park Avenue takes it to an extreme. It exudes its charitable side.” This works. For everyone. This is how to help take care of a community.

This is how people go to work with smiles on their faces. Let Frodella end it while taking it to the extreme:“I have definitely found,” he says, “my Utopia.”

Park Avenue Club, Florham Park, NJ 973-301-8233, www.parkavenueclub.com