Mita says if referral vote not approved, hotel project is done
OCEAN CITY — Developer Eustace Mita and representatives of all of Ocean City’s business groups made a last-minute pitch to have City Council vote Thursday evening to refer the Wonderland Pier site to the Planning Board to determine whether it’s “an area in need of rehabilitation.”
During a press conference at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday at the Ocean City Music Pier, the plea to City Council was urgency.
Chuck Bangle, owner of Manco and Manco Pizza, representing the Boardwalk Merchants Association, closed the roughly 45-minute press conference by referencing the damage done to city beaches by fall storms.
“The beach erosion is being addressed ASAP. Why? To bring tourists back to the beach and to Ocean City. (Beach replenishment) is not going to planning, it’s not going to redevelopment. We need to fix it immediately,” Bangle said.
“If we continue to let the erosion of the boardwalk continue, what’s happening? People may not come to the beach because they have nothing to go to after the beach,” he said.
“We are a unified front, all the associations. All we’re simply asking is that the 600 block of the boardwalk will be considered for either redevelopment or zoning by the Planning Board and to stop the bleeding,” Bangle said. “Let’s stop the erosion.”
Bangle appeared with Wes Kazmarck of the Boardwalk Merchants Association, Janet Galante of the Ocean City Regional Chamber of Commerce, Caitlyn Quirk of the Downtown Merchants Association and Bill McGinnity of the Ocean City Restaurant Association.
City Council has a resolution on Thursday evening’s agenda to refer the former home of the Wonderland Pier amusement park to the Planning Board for it to decide if that 600 Boardwalk property can be categorized as “an area in need of rehabilitation.”
The vote is not for a specific proposal for what would go on that parcel, which is zoned strictly for amusements.
The meeting is at 6 p.m. at the Music Pier to accommodate what is expected to be a large crowd after citizens overflowed City Council Chambers Aug. 21 when voting on the same resolution.
In August, council voted 6-1 against the referral after almost two hours of intense public comment for and against the resolution and what was behind it — Mita’s plan to spend what he now says would be $170 million to build a 252-room, eight-story hotel with 375 parking spaces at the corner of Sixth Street and Boardwalk.
Minutes after that rejection in August, Mita said he was walking away and putting the parcel up for sale for $25 million to recoup the $20 million he has invested. He said he spent $14 million at the beginning of 2021 to buy the amusement park property to save it from foreclosure after banks called in $8 million in loans on owner Jay Gillian, whose family ran the business for nearly 60 years.
Mita leased the park back to Gillian, who ran it until closing it permanently in October 2024, saying it was not financially viable and that Ocean City could not support two amusement parks. (Another large, vibrant amusement park, Playland’s Castaway Cove, is a few blocks south on the boardwalk.)
Mita said he received an offer from national home-building company Ryan Homes for substantially more than $25 million and that brothers Phil and George Norcross and their family had topped that offer.
However, he said after city officials met with him and some business representatives in mid-September, urging him not to sell, Mita told them he would hold off for 60 days.
Mita said city officials (whom he wouldn’t name) told him, “‘We think we misread the intent of Ocean City. We think the populace and the business community really want this. Would you hang and see if we can get this done?’ And I said, ‘Yes,’ I mean, I’m an Ocean City boy.”
The 60 days came and went by Nov. 15, but he agreed to wait until the outcome of the council vote Dec. 4.
That vote, he said, is a seminal point.
If council votes no again, his hotel is off the table.
Mita said he could not wait until after the May 2026 election for mayor and City Council for this to potentially come up again, as several council members told him.
Mita said he went against his own business principles by not sticking to his original 60-day deadline for action, but that his emotions, a desire to build in a town he loves, made him extend that.
Council Vice President Pete Madden tried to bring the resolution back for a vote in September, but council tabled it. Councilman Jody Levchuk, who voted against the referral in August, is the force behind putting the resolution back on the agenda at the Dec. 4 meeting.
Levchuk, who was in the audience at the press conference, was called up to answer questions.
He said he was not one of the city officials at the gathering back in September nor had he spoken to Mita about putting the resolution on the agenda. (Mita agreed he had not spoken to Levchuk.)
Levchuk, who owns businesses on the boardwalk, said it may seem like a night-and-day change from his August vote, but that he had done 100 percent of his due diligence since August and that the business leaders had done a “wonderful job” illustrating the importance of moving that property forward for the health of the boardwalk and business community.
The Third Ward councilman said he knows there are people in the community who are “horribly against” the project, and while he respected their opinions, there was not going to be another amusement park taking over the site.
He said he would be voting in favor of the referral Thursday night, but that vote had nothing to do with Mita’s proposal, because whatever is going to replace the park would need different zoning.
Levchuk added he could not predict what other council members might do. Madden and Tony Polcini supported Levchuk in putting the resolution on the agenda. Madden was the only councilman to vote in favor of referral in August.
Business community argues for referral
A major part of the press conference was for the business group representatives to talk about the need for council to act this week.
Mita explained that if the referral is made to the Planning Board and the board approves the designation as an area in need of rehabilitation, and then his hotel project is approved, it would still take six months to break ground and another 18 months of construction, so at least two years before the hotel would open.
“We feel there’s an urgency for this,” Kazmarck said, “not just because the developer has an urgency. Ocean City has an urgency. There have been four stores that have closed already, so we weren’t quick enough for them. There’s a fifth and sixth that are on their way out the door.”
“If we don’t have progress about how we can handle that block, there will be more,” he said. “I think it’s really important for Ocean City, for the business community, for the residents of this town, for us to keep moving the ball forward.”
Advocates have said since Wonderland closed, there has been a dramatic falloff at the north end of the business section of the boardwalk, and some downtown, because there is no longer an attraction drawing patrons that way.
Quirk said the work of a subcommittee formed by City Council to study the boardwalk would still continue even as it is important for council to move the referral forward. She, too, cited an urgency, and noted that they would not be able to keep Mita engaged for his hotel if there isn’t progress.
Galante said the chamber voted unanimously to support council voting in favor of referral. She said the support was about the parcel itself, not about the hotel project specifically.
McGinnity said the business community originally wasn’t involved in the debate over the council referral, assuming it was a “no brainer” that it would be approved.
“We learned a hard lesson,” he said, adding they are addressing it now because they all rely on tourism. “I don’t make a dime unless there’s tourism in this town,” he said.
“We need this to move forward tomorrow night in a positive way,” McGinnity said. He pointed out the referral does not guarantee Mita will get his hotel approved. “All this says is that we want this sent to study to see if this property needs to be redeveloped.”
He added that whatever goes there is going to require redevelopment.
Later in the press conference, McGinnity said if council does not move this forward, the Wonderland property would remain undeveloped.
“Think about this. Tomorrow is a no vote and that property sits the way it is right now for the next five to 10 years,” he asserted. “What does that do for Ocean City? There’s nothing positive about that. This needs to move forward for the entire community, not just the 600 block.”
Odds and ends
— Rides: Mita said he was still committed to the idea of having some amusement park rides as part of his hotel project, which also includes 10 to 12 storefronts.
He said he would have a separate enclosure just for the Wonderland carousel, which is a century old. He said he purchased four additional kiddie rides. He noted the chamber of commerce asked him if he would donate the Big Wheel (Ferris wheel) to the city and let them put it in front of the high school.
“If that’s what they wanted to do, we would obviously comply with that,” Mita said.
— Accident: Mita said the site should qualify for redevelopment. He noted he is named in a wrongful death lawsuit, as owner of the property, because of a worker who was thrown from his lift and died while doing maintenance on a ride when a wheel from the lift broke through the surface. (The accident happened in May 2022.)
— Amusement park: Mita said more than a year ago he approached Jack and Will Morey, who own and operate Morey’s Piers amusement parks in Wildwood, and asked them about a joint venture with him on an amusement park in Ocean City. He said they turned him down.
— Rising cost: When Mita originally made a presentation to council a year ago, he estimated his hotel project would cost $135 million to $150 million. At the press conference, he said because of rising expenses, the cost would be about $170 million.
— Subcommittee: Kazmarck said he is a member of the subcommittee appointed by City Council to study the boardwalk and that members have met almost weekly since it formed in October. “I find it very difficult to do our work right now without the Planning Board’s input,” he said.
Kazmarck said there have been a lot of opinions on what could be put there; citizens groups including Save Wonderland and Friends of OCNJ History & Culture have put forward their own proposals.
That’s why he would like the experts from the Planning Board to weigh in. However, he said the board is not going to do a deep dive on 600 Boardwalk until council refers the parcel it.
— No offer from community groups: Mita said no one from a citizens group that has opposed the hotel and offered their own idea to replace Wonderland had made a written or verbal offer to buy the parcel. The only offers were from the Norcrosses and Ryan Homes, both which want to put townhomes on the site, something zoning does not currently allow.
— No other option: Mita, who has a luxury home-building business along with the hotels he owns, confirmed he was not interested in building townhomes on the site. “There is no plan B for me,” he said.
– STORY and PHOTOS by DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
