Hundreds of people pack the Music Pier auditorium for the City Council meeting.
Culminating an emotional four-hour meeting Thursday night attended by hundreds of residents and business owners, Ocean City officials took a critical first step for a proposed $150 million luxury resort hotel on the Boardwalk.
City Council voted 4-3 to approve a resolution to ask the city’s planning board to consider declaring the former Wonderland Pier amusement park site as an area “in need of rehabilitation.” The rehabilitation designation would trigger a process that could possibly lead to a zoning change to permit a hotel at the Wonderland property at Sixth Street and the Boardwalk.
By a 6-1 vote, Council rejected the same resolution on Aug. 21, but this time around went in the opposite direction. Council President Terry Crowley Jr. cast the deciding fourth vote to approve the measure.
“We’ve been elected to lead, and not moving this forward right now is not leading and it’s not taking into account the business owners and the residents,” Crowley said while capping the vote shortly after 10 p.m., four hours after the meeting began at the Ocean City Music Pier auditorium.
Among the Council members, Crowley, Pete Madden, Jody Levchuk and Tony Polcini voted for the resolution, while Dave Winslow, Sean Barnes and Keith Hartzell were opposed.
In voting no for the resolution, Winslow, Barnes and Hartzell all said they preferred to give a recently formed advisory subcommittee enough time to conduct a comprehensive study of the zoning requirements for the entire Boardwalk’s commercial areas instead of just concentrating on the former Wonderland site.
Hotel developer Eustace Mita and the city’s business community had lobbied for Council to move forward with the rehabilitation process to expedite the development of Mita’s proposed 252-room resort in place of Wonderland Pier. They argued that the subcommittee process would be too slow.
Mita did not attend the meeting Thursday, but his attorney, Stephen Nehmad, said that Council’s vote was pivotal in plans for the hotel.
“Hopefully, we can move forward with negotiating an agreement with the city,” Nehmad said in an interview afterward.
Without the rehabilitation designation, the abandoned Wonderland site would likely remain blighted – an “insidious” process that could possibly thwart any sort of redevelopment plan, Nehmad said.
“Blight begets blight,” he said in the interview.
The meeting was moved from its regular location in Council chambers at City Hall to the Music Pier’s large auditorium to accommodate what was expected to a big turnout among the hotel’s supporters and opponents. Hundreds of people sat in the audience.
More than 80 members of the public spoke for a little over three hours both in favor of and against the hotel in the buildup to the Council vote. Supporters believe the hotel would be a catalyst for economic growth, while opponents maintain it would overwhelm the surrounding neighborhoods and would not blend in with Ocean City’s family-friendly image.
The Boardwalk Merchants Association, Downtown Merchants Association and Ocean City Regional Chamber of Chamber gave their unanimous support for declaring the Wonderland site in need of rehabilitation.
The business community believes that Mita’s hotel is needed to rejuvenate the northern end of the Boardwalk, which has been suffering lately from a series of store closings blamed on Wonderland’s absence.
Wes Kazmarck, president of the Boardwalk Merchants Association, described himself as “ecstatic” following the Council vote
“This is serious hope for the Boardwalk and Ocean City. “Without it, no hope. Zero. None,” Kazmarck said in an interview.
Editor’s note: A full story on the City Council meeting will follow Friday in OCNJDaily.com.
