OCEAN CITY – The new Ocean City Police Department substation adjacent to the boardwalk opened Friday, March 6, as the city gets ready to demolish the old police station.
“I’m proud to announce that a new police substation at Eighth Street and Boardwalk opened today,” Mayor Jay Gillian reported Friday. “I was joined by Police Chief William Campbell, former chiefs Jay Prettyman and Chad Callahan, current officers, and a host of police retirees for the final roll call at the old building this morning.”
“I want to thank each of these exceptional chiefs and officers for their patience and assistance in developing and executing the ideas and designs for new police buildings,” Gillian wrote. “The new substation will serve as a base for boardwalk and citywide operations and as a temporary home for police while the existing station is replaced by a modern facility.”
In February, City Council approved a $992,000 contract to William McLees Architecture to design the new Public Safety Building.
The police have moved out of the old station on Central Avenue between Eighth and Ninth streets. The outdated building that housed the police station and municipal court dates back to the latter 1800s and once served as a school.
In addition to the new substation, police and court operations have also been moved to the former Crown Bank building at the corner of Eighth Street and Asbury Avenue. The city is renting two floors in the building.
Officials have been debating for years how and where to build a new police station before finally settling on a new facility in the footprint of the old building.
In 2025 the city briefly considered purchasing the Crown Bank building and refurbishing it as the new police station, but quickly discarded the idea as not feasible.
In recent years the administration had proposed building a combined, state of the art police and fire station at the site of the current fire department headquarters at Fifth Street between West and Asbury avenues. That project met with considerable headwinds and was rejected by City Council as being too expensive and not appropriate across from Ocean City Primary School.
The city has designated about $30 million in the capital budget for the new police station, but officials expect it to come in under that amount.
– By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff