It will make recommendations to be sent on to the Planning Board
OCEAN CITY — Ocean City Council President Terry Crowley Jr. announced the formation of an autonomous subcommittee to make recommendations on the future of the boardwalk — including the former Wonderland Pier site — and provide a report that would inevitably go to the Planning Board.
He made the announcement before nearly two hours of public comment about the Wonderland property Thursday during a council meeting, which took place in the lecture hall at the Ocean City Free Public Library. That is where Crowley, anticipating a large crowd, moved the meeting from Council Chambers in City Hall.
Crowley said there is specific concern about the future of the boardwalk from Fifth to 14th streets, encompassing the business section. In the existing Master Plan are recommendations on possible uses on the boardwalk, so he decided it made sense to put a group together to look at them.
Obviously, he said, it would include 600 Boardwalk.
The group will be charged with the future of the boardwalk and its potential, but Crowley said he didn’t want to provide a ton of directions.
He said he wanted the group to come up with its own mission statement and business plan, gather information with the main priority to report back to City Council, which would then forward it to the Planning Board. That way, when the planners undertake the process of the next Master Plan, some of the areas of concern in the city will be fast-tracked.
Crowley emphasized it will be an autonomous subcommittee without any control from City Council or the Planning Board, but he did name three council members to the board.
“They’re going to do their own thing,” he said.
The members are Councilmen Sean Barnes, Dave Winslow and Jody Levchuk, Aide to the Mayor Michael Allegretto, builder Dean Adams, Boardwalk Merchants Association President Wes Kazmarck and Jim Kelly, a founding member of Ocean City 2050, an advocacy group focused on the future of the resort.
“I expect that they’ll report back to us in a timely manner,” he said, noting that some people had turned him down because the issue of the boardwalk’s future has been so contentious.
He said he believes he pulled “some of the best people together, people from different sides of the aisle with different viewpoints.”
Crowley said that’s how the city will move forward — by embracing different views.
Why the meeting moved
At the Aug. 21 meeting, the crowd overwhelmed council chambers because council was voting on whether to refer the 600 Boardwalk property to the Planning Board for its recommendation on it being an area in need of rehabilitation.
At that meeting, after dozens of comments over nearly two hours, council voted 6-1 against referring the property, a move the owner, hotelier Eustace Mita, needed as a first step toward building an eight-story, 252-room hotel in place of the former amusement park.
At council’s Sept. 25 meeting, council Vice President Pete Madden asked his colleagues to reconsider their vote, prompting surprise among a few council members and furious reactions from a few audience members for a measure that wasn’t on the agenda. Council tabled the reconsideration.
That is why there was a large crowd Oct. 9, anticipating the measure would arise again. Although there was another nearly two hours of public comment about the Wonderland Pier property, the hotel project and the future of the site, council took no action.
– By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff