OCEAN CITY – When the unusually heavy snow of Jan. 3 dumped on Ocean City, the weight of it partially collapsed the roof on one of GG’s Diamond Cleaners’ two buildings on Asbury Avenue.
Last week, the building at 609 Asbury Ave. came down, demolished for safety reasons, taking with it almost $300,000 worth of equipment, according to owner James Hong.
Although the one-story building hadn’t collapsed, the roof dropping down forced the exterior side walls to bow out, making the building unsafe.
On Thursday, after the building was down and some of the debris was still to be picked up, Hong said construction engineers determined the adjacent two-story building – that had the other half of the cleaning business on the ground floor and apartments upstairs – was safe for his tenants to move back in.
Hong said the city required him to have the building demolished quickly. He noted that building was not insured.
Referring to the insurance company, he said, “Almost two years ago they kicked me out.” Being near the shore, he said, added to the risk for the building.
“They said they couldn’t insure me any more because my building is a little bit old and the bottom is a dry-cleaning business and there were people living (next door). That’s why they kicked me out,” Hong said.
“But,” he said, “I don’t worry about my dry cleaning business because no one was hurt. I did the demolition almost on time.”
The building was down but there was still some debris on site as of Jan. 20 that he was having removed. Hong said he was supposed to have the demolition done two days earlier but the construction engineer got COVID and was delayed.
“What can I do? They said the engineer would come in Tuesday and gave me the OK. That’s when the city put up the barricades so the demolition could begin,” Hong said.
Marmora location, interest in his site
GG’s Diamond Cleaners has been operating out of its location at 41 South Shore Road in Marmora (609-390-2611). Hong said last week that he hoped his Ocean City location would be back up and running by Tuesday of this week, but customers can go to either location.
Not surprisingly given the soaring prices of real estate in Ocean City, having an open space on Asbury Avenue has attracted a lot of interest.
Asked about his plans, he said his first priority was safety and the second, about possibly rebuilding, comes later.
“First of all, let’s knock it down so there’s no more headache,” Hong said. “A lot of builders and realtors were talking to me already. This is the best spot.”
On what had been an open lot just north of the remaining building for GG’s Diamond Cleaners is now a massive residential building still under construction.
Hong noted most of the people contacting him have been nice.
“When I had bad news, people came quickly together,” he said. “They helped me a lot. I loved that a lot of people supported my situation.”
Hong added he has had a great relationship with the city, the Greater Ocean City Chamber of Commerce and his customers.
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff