WILDWOOD – A 26-block-long commercial corridor, once thriving with a wide range of family businesses and nightclubs featuring world-class entertainers, has fallen on hard times. But at the Jersey Shore, where little room is left for further development, innovators and hard-working locals are working to revitalize a corridor ripe with opportunity.
What was a major business capital in Cape May County and the Jersey Shore’s mecca for A-list performers, Pacific Avenue now feels more like an old Western ghost town than the Las Vegas Strip. Vacant storefronts and dilapidated buildings outnumber the few merchants, restaurants and bars that remain.
While different attempts have been made to revitalize Pacific Avenue, so far none have worked. But never have things been as promising as they are now.
The reasons for optimism are many: the level of experienced individuals collaborating, the financial resources backing the vision, the tax incentives offered to developers willing to stay for more than ten years, and the professional planners involved in creating a layout that significantly increases the residential footprint.
However, it isn’t just optimists who see a bright future on Pacific Avenue. There is also an increasing number of investors who are looking at the district for reasons far beyond the tax incentives available there. There is a thoughtfully-researched and area-specific plan that they’re betting will work and pay dividends, both for the city’s culture and their bottom line.
The History of Pacific Avenue
It’s Wildwood 2024, not “Miami 2017,” but longtime Wildwood resident and activist Al Brannen has seen the lights go out on his city’s Broadway. But unlike the storyteller in Billy Joel’s 1976 hit, Brannen doesn’t have an apocalyptic vision of its future. The Wildwood Historical Society emeritus board member, known for reviving the city’s history museum and moving it to the epicenter of Wildwood’s past–Pacific Avenue–is just looking for some new neighbors.
Though he may come across as a bit of a curmudgeon, his hopefulness eventually shined through as he sat with the Herald inside his crown jewel, the George F. Boyer Historical Museum.
At first, Brannen seemed critical. He took swipes at the design of some recent development projects on the downtown corridor and lacked confidence in the city’s commitment to hire the right professionals to handle the momentous challenge of reviving the district.
As he showed off some of the many artifacts at the museum, which rests in a former funeral parlor on Pacific Avenue, he came alive with excitement for the quirky history that is sewn into the city’s fabric.
Brannen showed off an overwhelming number of items from Pacific Avenue’s prime. He bellied up to a section of the bar from the former Shamrock Beef & Ale, where Budweisers were once seven for $1 and the Clydesdales used to visit, a promotion reserved only for Anheuser-Busch’s top accounts.
He rang the bell that once hung in the belfry of the Methodist Church, a building that Brannen said was sold and turned into a nightclub. The church repurchased and demolished it so its hallowed halls would be blighted no longer by the shenanigans brought by its less-than-holy successor.
Then, he knocked on the hollow tin walls that came from the inside of an old speakeasy, still punched with holes FBI agents made with a pickaxe, part of a Prohibition-era effort to empty the tanks of booze they concealed.
The museum’s relics demonstrate that Pacific Avenue, in its prime, was a colorful and happening part of town. But they also remind Brannen that more than anything, Wildwood is a town of stories and experiences that continue to inspire visitors.
In a seashore town where the beach is so big city commissioners once heard a proposal for camels to haul people and their belongings from the boardwalk to the shoreline, one thing is for sure, the tourists are not going to stop coming. So it’s not a question of can a downtown work, it’s a question of how.
Why Did Pacific Avenue Fail?
In order to ensure the success of a plan for its future, it’s important to first understand how the downtown area in one of the East Coast’s most famous shore points ended up in the sad state Pacific Avenue is in now.
Will Morey, a prominent Wildwood businessman, has built a boardwalk empire, and not the boozy type that attracted the feds. Morey has made his money in amusements, not moonshine.
But it isn’t his successful piers that made him a key player in planning the future of Pacific Avenue. Morey served as a county commissioner since 2011 and, for years, oversaw economic development and planning, engineering, and public infrastructure for Cape May County. In a controversial shakeup, he was recently stripped of that role. But by that time, he already helped establish the foundation for Pacific Avenue’s future.
In a recent interview with the Herald, Morey said many factors led to the downfall of Pacific Avenue, but he is focused on its future, about which he is bullish.
“One factor is, believe it or not, little things like the drinking age changing,” Morey said.
It’s a sentiment echoed by Brannen, who owned several parking lots near the nightclubs when it was legal in New Jersey to drink at 18, before the law changed to 21 in 1983.
“That was really a mad house because the kids were getting in with false IDs at 14 years old,” he said.
Another blow came a few years before, Brannen said, when the first casino opened in Atlantic City in 1978. The casinos there offered larger venues for performers, many of whom frequented Pacific Avenue and were catapulted to national fame from appearances on Dick Clark’s syndicated “American Bandstand,” which was broadcast from Philadelphia.
Stars took the bigger payday because they were easily able to sell out the larger Atlantic City venues, and were barred from moonlighting in Wildwood by non-compete clauses the casinos insisted they sign.
A separate segment of Pacific Avenue businesses was lost to shopping malls, big box retailers that began to appear on the mainland, and eventually the internet, said Morey.
“When that starts occurring, then you start having a level of decay, so to speak. And I think that that sort of plays on itself at that point,” Morey added.
An Eye Toward the Future
Louis Joyce, the executive director of the South Jersey Economic Development District, was actively involved in coming up with the current plan for the future of Wildwood’s downtown. He said the current downtown district needs to be consolidated.
Pacific Avenue’s core will still be full of businesses, but that consolidated seven-block commercial area will be flanked by a tremendous increase in residential zoning. 19 blocks previously targeting commercial tenants will now shift focus to residential developers, according to Joyce.
“It was primarily business in its life, and you can see that when you walk up and down there. But as things change and businesses go out and properties become available for redevelopment, the emphasis is to try to bring residential uses in there that will support new and existing businesses so that now you have a mix. Now you just don’t have commercial, but you’ve got something to support the commercial,” Joyce said in an interview with the Herald.
The residential properties will consist of apartments, townhomes, and some single-family units. Lot sizes have been decreased and there will be an effort to allow an increase in residents to catalyze growth in businesses.
“We were really focused on trying to have not only good zoning, but good design, and trying to encourage residential development in many of these areas,” Morey said. “The notion of having retail, food, and a level of entertainment downtown can work. I just think it has to be the right size. It will be supported by the enhanced residential. But, there’s no reason, desire, or chance, in my opinion, to try to bring [Pacific Avenue] back into a full thriving epicenter of commercial activity.”
There is also a specific focus on style and architecture, something Joyce said developers will need to run by committees outside the city’s Planning Board, before getting their recommendation to bring to the Planning Board which will retain final approval.
Projects built at 3600 Pacific Avenue and the townhome project at the site of the former St. Ann’s School were approved by the planning board before the current design standards were put in place, a fact Joyce, Morey and John Donio, the president of the Wildwood Business Improvement District all pointed out when asked about its design quality.
Now, as a precondition of going to the Planning Board, plans must be submitted to the Atlantic County Improvement Authority for an initial review. If the submission is determined to be consistent with the redevelopment plan, the developer will get a letter of consistency to take to the Planning Board.
“Plans are reviewed based upon compliance with zoning, with the use – residential versus commercial – and the different districts’ setbacks, density, and then the architectural considerations – fit and finish on the outside and streetscape,” Joyce explained.
An Anchor of the Business Future
One promising building block for the future of the business district is the Byrne Plaza. The Plaza features a large grassy area and stage that hosts successful events, like several summer concert series and a popular farmer’s market.
“It’s beyond my wildest dreams, what it’s done,” said Donio.
Business owners in the area are seeing an increase in foot traffic as a result of the influx of visitors to Byrne Plaza for events the Business Improvement District has booked.
Donio said that after Morey led the county effort to secure the large property, home to a dilapidated nightclub, the Byrne Fund for Wildwood was created to help it along. The charity was founded by an insurance magnate who saved GEICO from bankruptcy and made Warren Buffett, who invested in GEICO around the time Jack Byrne was hired to run it, billions. Buffett later called Byrne “the Babe Ruth of insurance.”
Patrick Rosenello, the executive director of the Wildwood Business Improvement District and the mayor of North Wildwood, said it “is almost a miracle that Byrne Plaza happened.”
Rosenello said the City of Wildwood, the county government, and the Byrne Fund all agreed, which was incredible enough. But then, when the money fell short, Crest Savings Bank and the Wildwoods Convention Center stepped in to help the Business Improvement District finish the job.
“All those entities I just mentioned had a vested interest in making it successful,” said Rosenello. “Stores on Pacific Avenue have changed their business hours because of Byrne Plaza. So yeah, Byrne Plaza has been a game changer.”
“That’s a magical combination,” said Morey. “I think the collaborative effort of making Byrne Plaza work is great.”
To the Future!
While Byrne Plaza may mark one success in the new age of Pacific Avenue, and the thoughtful planning process lays the blueprint for a successful future, only time will tell what the future holds in downtown Wildwood.
One thing, however, seems certain: the innovators in place now have the resources and experience required to organize a plan that can be implemented to ensure a successful future for Pacific Avenue.
Contact the author, Shay Roddy, by email at sroddy@cmcherald.com or by phone at 609-886-8600 ext. 142.
