To the Editor:
Currently, the City of Wildwood, in bids with private real-estate firms, is attempting to reclassify the ‘Commercial Entertainment District’ zoning from a large swath of its downtown section, beginning with Pacific Avenue, in order to demolish a broad range of occupied and unoccupied buildings and replace them with condominiums.
Many of these buildings are architecturally unique, historical, or occupied by active businesses or homeowners, including Randy Senna, one of the preeminent curators of historic amusements, who stands to potentially lose his entire archive and home.
This civic re-engineering is spelled out in the Redevelopment Plan, which passed legislative hurdles after a short period when the public “was invited,” via Zoom, to share thoughts and criticisms.
Nearly all announcement of these meetings seemed deliberately obfuscated through burial in small newspaper print or lost in the distracting scroll of social media feeds (social media, while an effective tool, does not trump traditional forums for public legislative debate.).
This subtle interference with the democratic process affects Wildwood citizens’ ability to voice their will and demand support for local businesses.
Needless to say, unoccupied buildings don’t serve anyone. However, a true focus on injecting funding for businesses, eateries, and entertainment venues rather than privately owned condominiums would truly be of benefit for Wildwood’s citizens.
The trend of rampant condo construction exponentially increased during the pandemic; many citizens may have observed Philly’s BG Capital voraciously flipping properties and purchasing land.
It is my personal opinion, shared by many and echoed by more informed urban scholars (or anyone with plain eyes), that essentially privatizing a town with condominium construction serves to create a different form of urban and cultural blight for local citizens than the form that it cynically purports to correct.
This trend is occurring in coastal communities throughout the U.S.; by transforming vibrant, economically diverse communities into sterile, homogenous, glorified Airbnb parking lots, developers erode communities from the outside in. This does not a thriving, dynamic economy make, even if it does drastically raise property taxes.
Wildwood is singularly rare for many reasons; no other vacation destination elicits such passion from return visitors.
The condo redevelopment of broad swaths of viable commercial districts – by large real-estate entities holding zero interest in the continued, long-term success of Wildwood citizens – serves to irreparably damage Wildwood’s middle class, economic opportunity, and cultural integrity as one of the most unique oceanside communities and family vacation destinations on the East Coast.
I know for a fact that many Wildwood citizens and business owners care about this plan, and many others never heard about it. There are many homeowners who have personally experienced the blight of this trend in recent years: Citizens who have invested in property and essentially get run out of town through pressure and harassment.
Through Mount Laurel Doctrine loopholes, potential bending of the ‘New Jersey Pay-to-Play Act,’ pointed pressure placed on individuals to sell their property (or have it seized through eminent domain), and a brazen attempt at blindfolding public stakeholders, the fine print and political spin of the redevelopment plan represents one of the largest, most damaging, and controversial scams in the state – the true mechanisms of which are currently being misrepresented to taxpayers.
The public of Wildwood and South Jersey deserves far better.
– Jesse Newman, Queens, New York City
