Second offer coming from major homebuilding company
OCEAN CITY – Eustace Mita confirmed Friday afternoon that the Norcross family has put in a $25 million offer to buy the Wonderland Pier amusement park site and that he is expecting another offer from a national home-building company.
Mita purchased the site for $14 million in early 2021 to keep it from going into foreclosure and had planned to build an eight-story luxury hotel and retail complex. Those plans were dashed last month when Ocean City Council declined to forward the property to the Planning Board for review as a site “in need of rehabilitation.” That Planning Board review was an early step on the path for Mita to be able to put the hotel at the site, which is only zoned for amusements.
That 6-1 council decision Aug. 21 came after nearly two hours of public comment, largely split on the project but tilting against the proposal, and nearly a year of groups opposing the hotel.
Right after the August council meeting, Mita said his long effort to replace the amusement park with a hotel was over and that he was immediately putting the parcel at Sixth and Boardwalk up for sale for $25 million.
On Friday afternoon, Mita said the Norcross family has put in a bid and that he was expecting a second bid from NVR, a national firm that owns Ryan Homes, and would wait to see that offer before deciding on the sale.
“We have an offer for $25 million from the Norcross family, I think you know who they are, Phil and George Norcross, but we have another offer coming our way from another public builder,” Mita said, “so we’re going to wait for that and then we’ll make a decision on which way to go.”
Mita, who owns Icona Resorts and Achristavest Fine Home Builders, had touted the site as an incomparable bargain. He said Achristavest had just sold a beachfront property, 60’ by 110’ feet, for $16 million and a bayfront property, 50’ by 100’ feet, for $9.2 million “and that just happened in the last 30 days.
“So there’s $25 million for two little houses on two little lots … so to say a piece 10 times the size, the biggest piece on boardwalk and beach, not only in Ocean City but in Cape May County, it’s a bargain,” Mita said. That is why he expected the offer from Ryan Homes to be even higher than the offer from the Norcross family, a political powerhouse in southern New Jersey.
Mita said “everyone knows who” Ryan Homes is as one of the top five home-builders in the country and now is doing work over at Greate Bay Country Club. “They’re a very big company. I’ve dealt with them before so I have confidence in their abilities.”
Wonderland Pier was operated by the Gillian family for just shy of 60 years before Jay Gillian decided in August 2024 he would close it permanently in October 2024, saying it was no longer financially viable and that Ocean City could not sustain two amusement parks. Playland’s Castaway Cove is a few blocks south on the boardwalk.
After selling the property to Mita in 2021, Gillian leased it back from him, continuing to operate the amusement park for four more years, before deciding to close.
Building a legacy
Mita said it is a shame that there was opposition to his hotel, which he considered a legacy project for himself and for Ocean City.
“I always said it wouldn’t make money for 10 years, but I’m not looking at this with developer eyes or I wouldn’t have done it. I looked at it from my love of Ocean City, from hometown boy eyes,” Mita said.
“Our company is big enough to sustain a loss. Icona and Achristavest are only two of them. And I was willing to have the other companies take that loss for 10 years.
“It was a legacy of love. That’s all. My love for in city and the future, because 100 years from now, the hotel itself would have been its own tourist site,” he added.
He said his hotel plans included an infinity edge pool on the second floor, a huge spa with seven aromatherapy steam rooms and “everything else that goes along with a spa and that would have been perfect in Ocean City.” Mita added there would have been gazebos and fire pits for the public and “incredible retail.”
He said it would have been a cross between Disney World’s Grand Floridian resort and the legendary San Diego beach resort Hotel del Coronado.
“There’s never been an opportunity like this before and there’s never going to be another one ever again,” Mita said.
“It’s so sad, that’s all I can say. I hold no animosity toward anybody.”
“You know, I have a family. I have to move on in my life, but I’m very sad for Ocean City,” Mita said. “It’s like our Lord said on his way to the cross, ‘Don’t cry for me, cry for Jerusalem.’
“I’m sad for Ocean City.”
Critics of the hotel
As soon as Gillian announced the planned closure of the amusement park, grass-roots groups began forming. There had been concerns about a potential hotel at the site since it was purchased by Mita, whose Icona Resorts operates upscale hotels in Cape May County, including Cape May, Diamond Beach, Avalon and Stone Harbor.
The groups that formed, including Friends of OCNJ History & Culture, Save Wonderland, and Ocean City 2050, joined neighbors in criticizing the hotel, which would have had 252 rooms, about a dozen storefronts and 375 parking spaces.
Neighbors of the hotel were particularly concerned about such a large building casting a shadow over their neighborhood and with the traffic it would bring on Sixth Street, a narrow street that runs by Ocean City High School.
Mita made several public presentations of his project and invited the community to the Ocean City Free Public Library and the Ocean City Tabernacle.
Neighbors and representatives of the groups appeared at City Council meetings over the months and packed the public hearing Aug. 21, but there was also a substantial number of people who spoke up in favor of the hotel.
Business groups supported the hotel with the hope it would help the northern end of the business section of the boardwalk. They noted that since Wonderland closed, businesses in that area began to suffer without the pedestrian traffic the amusement used to generate.
One group put forward its own proposal for the site called Wonderland Commons, that called for a smaller amusement park geared for families with young children that would have had other entertainment, rotating food trucks and a housing component.
City Council’s decision
What was up for a vote Aug. 21 was a procedural resolution to refer the property to the Planning Board so it could decide if it is “an area in need of rehabilitation.”
The resolution would not have been a decision on the hotel or any other project proposed for the Wonderland site – that would have come much farther down the line – but critics feared it would get the ball rolling for Mita.
Council voted 6-1 against the referral with most members saying the city should revise its Master Plan for the entire boardwalk and for the city as a whole rather than making a decision on a single property.
Zoning does not allow for a new high-rise hotel on the boardwalk and that property has been zoned exclusively for amusements.
– By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
