Mita said he’ll have decision in five days after conferring with his attorney, but won’t if he’s forced to wait months, he’ll sell property
OCEAN CITY – In a marathon meeting Wednesday evening, the Ocean City Planning Board failed to advance the Wonderland Pier property as “an area in need of rehabilitation.”
There was nearly an hour of testimony from Eustace Mita’s attorney, Keith Davis, and four witnesses he called to assert the 600 Boardwalk property met two criteria for the designation – a step Mita wanted to advance his plan for a 252-room hotel on the site. That was followed by an hour and 45 minutes of public comment, before planners spent another half hour explaining their votes, which split 4-4, meaning the vote failed.
Chairman John Loeper, City Council liaison Sean Barnes, Shannon Halliday and Matthew Vanderschuere voted against the designation. Mayor’s designee Michael Allegretto, municipal liaison Vince Bekier, Dean Adams and John Birch voted in favor. Vice Chairman Gary Jessel was absent.
The move left Mita “shocked,” but up in the air about what will happen next.
Davis said this vote didn’t killed Mita’s hotel plans because the planners’ decision goes back to City Council, where its fate would be uncertain.
Mita said he would make a decision on his plans within five days, depending on what he heard from his attorney, but he was not content to wait months for council to act. He said if council was going to delay action until spring, he would go back to his plan to sell the former amusement park property.
The nearly four-hour meeting came at the behest of City Council, which voted in early December – during an even longer meeting with hours of public comment – to seek the Planning Board’s recommendation on whether the site qualified as an area in need of rehabilitation.
The 4-3 council vote in December reversed a 6-1 decision back in August against the referral. At both of those council meetings, there was extensive public comment in favor and against the referral, much of that seen as a proxy for support or opposition to Mita’s hotel plan.
The Planning Board was not considering anything about a hotel, only being asked to determine if the property met the rehabilitation criteria under state law 40A:12A-14.a. There are six criteria for that, but only one has to be met to get the designation.
City Planner Randall Scheule told the planners in a report and then again at the meeting that he believed the property met two of the criteria. One is that a significant portion of the property was in deteriorated or substandard condition and the other is that there was a pattern of vacancy, abandonment or underutilization of the site
It was on those two issues that the eight members of the board who were present split.
Allegretto, Bekier, Adams and Birch agreed with Scheule’s assessment – and that of the witnesses Davis brought to testify, including Will Morey, an owner of Morey’s Piers amusement park in Wildwood.
Loeper, Barnes, Halliday and Vanderscheuere did not agree, believing the testimony on the deteriorated conditions and vacancy didn’t rise to the level required for their support.
The essential no-contest vote by the Planning Board is the latest dip in the rollercoaster ride for Mita’s proposal to build a $170 million, eight-story hotel and 10-12 storefronts at the site where the Wonderland Pier amusement park operated for nearly 60 years.
The park, which was owned by Mayor Jay Gillian and before that his father, got into financial trouble and banks called in some $8 million in loans in late 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Mita stepped in at the beginning of 2021, paying what he said was $14 million for the property. He leased it back to Gillian, who continued to operate the park for four more seasons before announcing in August 2024 it was not longer financially viable. He closed the park permanently in mid-October 2024.
The rides went quiet after that and many have been dismantled and moved in the 14 months since. Mita spent what he said was $500,000 to reopen the main building on the property fronting the boardwalk, operating a pizza shop and arcade and leasing space to a bake shop and a bike and Surrey rental shop. At Wednesday’s meeting, Mita said he lost an additional half million dollars doing that, but spent the money because the city asked him to keep an attraction there to help that northern end of the business section of the boardwalk to continue to draw visitors.
Mita shocked
Interviewed after the meeting, Mita was “very, very disappointed” and said not getting the rehabilitation designation was an “incredibly serious” setback.
“I thought this was a poster child for rehabilitation, so I am shocked. I’m shocked,” he said.
Mita added he would have to find out what the decision means because it would then go back to council, which asked for the “recommendation” from the Planning Board.
“If we don’t get the rehabilitation designation, then we can’t move forward,” he said.
“We’ll see what happens. I’ll have a decision within the next five days,” Mita said, “but if rehabilitation is out, then I’m out.”
He said he was looking “to do the right thing for Ocean City and they did the wrong thing for Ocean City. Period. End of story.”
Mita said the property has been deteriorating for decades, long before he bought it. His experts asserted the deterioration was serious.
When City Council initially turned down the referral in August, Mita said he was out then and immediately put the property up for sale for $25 million. He said he received two offers over that amount, one from Ryan Homes, a national home-building company, and from South Jersey’s politically connected Norcross family, also with home building plans. However, he put those bids on hold waiting to see what council would do in December.
In the fall, City Council appointed a subcommittee to study zoning on the boardwalk overall, including the Wonderland site, and that subcommittee is expected to make its recommendations to council in the spring.
That, however, may be too slow for Mita.
“That’s too long for me,” he said. “I just can’t hold on.”
He added he also wouldn’t wait until after the May mayoral and council election. “I’ve been down that road before. We’re not going to wait until after any election. Period.”
Mita is frustrated overall by the government in Ocean City.
“I do get calls from mayors everywhere else saying bring (the hotel) here, bring it here. There’s a saying, ‘a prophet is never accepted in his own home town,’” Mita said.
“I think they keep forgetting this property is not owned by the city. So when they talk about their ideas and what should be done and everything else, well, then the city should buy it,” he said. “Maybe that’s what should happen. Yeah, I think the city should buy it.”
He added the city paid some $20 million “for a parking lot,” referring to the former Chevrolet dealership site adjacent to the north side of the Ocean City Community Center.
“This is a much more valuable piece,” Mita said.
Mita owns Icona Resorts, which has high-end hotels in multiple Cape May County communities, including Cape May, Diamond Beach, Avalon and Stone Harbor. He also owns Achristavest Fine Home Builders.
– STORY and PHOTOS by DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff