Crowley, Winslow say they will wait for boardwalk report in late April, May
OCEAN CITY — Eustace Mita, still smarting from the Planning Board’s split vote over Wonderland Pier, hopes the issue will be back before council within 30 days, but it may not end up there until late spring.
Talking to the Sentinel on Tuesday morning, Mita, who wants to build a 252-room, eight-story hotel at the site of the former amusement park on the boardwalk, said he’s “wounded, but not slain.”
“We got a deadlock, which really means we have nothing. We don’t have a denial, we don’t have an approval, so now it’s got to go back to City Council,” Mita said.
He was referring to the Planning Board’s 4-4 vote Wednesday evening, Jan. 7, on whether to recommend the property as “an area in need of rehabilitation.” Council voted in December to ask the planners for their recommendation, but the tie vote failed to advance one. (See related stories, page A1.)
Mita believes the property meets two criteria for the rehab designation, that it is in substandard condition and is deteriorating and that it is largely vacant or abandoned.
“You can see that with your eyes if you’ve been in Ocean City,” he said, adding he was surprised that assessment wasn’t unanimous at the Planning Board.
Mita said he expects the issue will go back before City Council and thought council’s Boardwalk Subcommittee would be issuing its report this week.
“I think in 30 days we’ll know if we have the designation or not,” he said.
Talking about the back-and-forth nature of his proposed $170 million project, he said, “I feel like a ping-pong ball. We keep kicking the can down the road, but this is the end of the road.”
Mita said he can’t move forward with the project without the rehab designation.
“It goes back to City Council and we’ll have a ruling one way or another. That’s for sure,” he said. “Then hopefully we can put it to bed. I believe that’s what’s going to happen.”
That timeline may not happen.
City Council President Terry Crowley Jr. and Fourth Ward Councilman Dave Winslow, who is heading up the Boardwalk Subcommittee, both said Tuesday morning they would not want to vote on the rehab designation until the subcommittee finishes its work. That isn’t likely until April or May.
It would require three council members to get the item on the agenda. The next council meeting is Jan. 22 and there are meetings scheduled for Feb. 5 and 19.
Winslow, repeating what he told the public at the Jan. 8 City Council meeting, said the subcommittee will be having a public meeting at 10 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 7, in the Chris Maloney Lecture Hall at the Ocean City Free Public Library.
That meeting is intended only to update the public on data the subcommittee has collected thus far. There will be no recommendations at that meeting.
Winslow said the subcommittee has been meeting every two weeks and will show the public what it has gleaned so far.
“We’ve gotten a lot of work done, but this is very complex because we’re looking at the whole boardwalk, not just 600 Boardwalk,” he said, referring to the Wonderland site. “This is way more complex than I thought.”
Winslow said he didn’t expect recommendations to be presented to the public until late April or May, but that they’d like to wrap up what they’re doing before Memorial Day.
“Everybody on the committee has urgency to get recommendations out there and then get them to City Council for action,” he said.
Winslow added he would not want to vote on the rehab designation until after the subcommittee finishes its work.
“I don’t want to do anything until we have our subcommittee report,” he said.
Crowley, asked if there were any plans to get the rehab vote back before City Council within the next 30 days, said, “Not by me.”
Crowley added, “At this point we will go by what the Planning Board said and eventually when the subcommittee reports back, then we would consider our next steps.”
He added he wasn’t sure whether it would even come back for a vote or from where Mita was getting his time frame.
Right after the Jan. 7 Planning Board vote, Mita said he would not and could not wait months for an answer on the designation. He said he would sell the site, which was home to the Wonderland Pier amusement park for nearly 60 years before closing in October 2024 because owner Jay Gillian said it was no longer financially viable.
After City Council initially voted 6-1 against referring the property to the Planning Board in August (a decision it reversed 4-3 in December), Mita put the property up for sale for $25 million. He said he has received two offers over that amount.
– By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
