OCEAN CITY – At what looked to be a routine meeting of the City Council on Sept. 25, the issue of declaring the Sixth Street and the Boardwalk site of the now defunct Wonderland Pier as a redevelopment zone intruded once again.
Council Vice President Pete Madden pushed for a new vote on the future of the site and whether to declare it a redevelopment zone. In the end, on a 5 to 1 vote with Madden the sole dissenter, the council tabled his resolution.
“So we’re going to wait another five, 10 years until we get somebody who wants to build an amusement park, and we get a really blighted area,” said council member Dave Winslow, who despite the comment voted to table the resolution.
Community opponents of declaring the site a redevelopment zone, working under the banner Big Mistake, called the motion at the meeting a “breach of public trust” and asked for a “strong and immediate community response.”
Weeks ago the council decided against declaring the Sixth Street and Boardwalk site as an area in need of redevelopment and instead agreed, with one dissenting vote, to have the Planning Board look at the property as a component in a larger master plan update.
Eustace Mita, chief executive officer for ICONA, said at the time that he was through with his multiyear effort to gain city support for a $150 million hotel resort complex for the site.
Mita owns the land the old pier operated on, having bailed out previous owners Mayor Jay Gillian and family in 2021 just before the site went to a tax sale. Mita paid $10 million and leased the land back to Gillian so the amusement pier could continue to operate.
His proposed investment in a large resort hotel for the site required the city to agree to declare the area a redevelopment zone in order to facilitate quick waivers of zoning rules that do not allow such a complex at the site.
Disappointed that his effort to gain that designation failed at an August council meeting, Mita said he would sell the site for $25 million.
Within days he announced that he had two offers for the site, one from Phillip Norcross, CEO of the Norcross Foundation, for the full $25 million asking price, and another with an actual bid still to come from Ryan Homes, a major developer of residential housing subdivisions in Cape May County.
Then came the surprise resurrection of the idea of a redevelopment zone on Sept. 25; the issue was not on the agenda. Council member Jody Levchuk, who voted against redevelopment in August, was absent, and Madden pushed for a new vote on the issue. Mayor Jay Gillian was also absent from the meeting.
Madden argued that the offers Mita had received, including a new one from Lennar Homes, represented changed circumstances since the council voted on redevelopment in August. All of the current interest in the site has come from developers who want to use the land for a residential subdivision, a use that still would require substantial zoning relief and possibly an eventual redevelopment designation.
Madden said, “I think it makes sense to revisit that as an area in need of rehabilitation.” He made a motion to return to the August resolution that would have the Planning Board investigate the area as one in need of rehabilitation.
At the Aug. 21 council meeting, when consideration of a redevelopment zone was an issue the public knew would be discussed, a standing-room-only crowd filled the council meeting room. A month later, at the Sept. 25 meeting, some members of the public called Madden’s motion a “sneak attack.”
Bill Merritt of Big Mistake and an organizer of some of the public opposition to Mita’s plan said, “To reverse that vote tonight, you will crush any trust that was created in this council.”
City Attorney Dottie McCrosson defended Madden’s right to make his motion, adding that “his integrity should not be impugned for simply exercising his discretion as a legislator.”
Prior to the public comment period it looked as though the motion might pass. Council member Tony Polcini emphasized that all the council was considering was asking the Planning Board for its “professional opinion.” In the end it was Polcini who made the motion to table.
Members of the public who led the opposition to Mita’s proposal worry that attempts to declare the area in need of redevelopment will not end.
In a press release following the meeting, Merritt said, “It is clear that we need to bring back the public pressure and insist council stays the course on a master plan process – not cave to back-room deals.”
Contact the reporter, Vince Conti, at vconti@cmcherald.com.
