Some support hotel project, others heavily criticize it
Editor’s note: See related story on redevelopment zones.
OCEAN CITY — Some longtime residents showed support for Eustace Mita’s plans to build a 252-room hotel and retail complex at the site of the former Wonderland Pier amusement park, but the developer also took heavy criticism and traded a few barbs with others who blasted his plans.
It was standing room only Monday evening in the Chris Maloney Lecture Hall at the Ocean City Free Public Library for Councilman Jody Levchuk’s Third Ward meeting, where Mita made his presentation for the proposed Icona at Wonderland. Levchuk took up the first hour of the meeting with ward business, then handed it over to Mita after taking pains to note he wasn’t endorsing or panning the proposal, just allowing it to be heard.
Mita said his plan “is a long, long way from approval” and that was why he was getting out to show his proposal to as many people as possible. He chalked up the $135 million to $150 million hotel with 10 to 12 retail businesses to his “zeal for Ocean City.”
He started his presentation with a pitch why Ocean City needs more hotel rooms to help replace the 2,000 out of 3,000 rooms it has lost over the years as hotels closed and others were converted. He pointed to the history of the resort, including a slide show of all the hotels that have fallen by the wayside, and noted the Flanders Hotel at 11th Street and Boardwalk, which opened in 1923, was conceived as a community-wide project done precisely to lure visitors to the seaside resort.
He said hotel rooms are the best driver of commerce for restaurants and merchants, as opposed to people renting homes for longer stays, because with shorter stays visitors want to get out and take in everything — rides, foods, sights. “They go to Manco and Manco, go to Kohr’s, play mini-golf …. They have a sense of urgency and the budget to spend money with us.”
“They are the people who fuel our businesses,” he said.
Mita noted some of the businesses lost over the years from bike shops to the Hallmark store and said his hotel, with an average of four guests per room, would put 1,000 guests nightly out into the community during the summer season supporting the local businesses.
“We lose so slowly we don’t know we’re losing,” he said. “We think we’re winning.”
He noted that the Methodist founders of Ocean City put it into all the property deeds that there would be no sale or manufacture of alcohol, trying to put to rest fears a large hotel could get a liquor license despite the resort’s ordinances prohibiting it. Icona at Wonderland, he said, would operate like the Flanders, which does not sell alcohol but can provide it at events such as weddings.
Mita said his Icona Resorts hotels are No. 1 in every area they serve, which includes Cape May, Stone Harbor, Wildwood Crest and Avalon. He said that is important to know because “it shines a light on Ocean City to have the same opportunity.” He pointed out Icona has been rated in the top 50 to 75 out of more than 100,000 hotels across the country since his company’s inception.
He said he could propose a cheaper hotel, but his “Old Seashore” look would be built to last the next 75 years and always be in style in this seashore resort.
He pointed out he is proposing the most difficult type of hotel to make a profit — a full-service resort in a seasonal community.
“Others don’t want to build because it’s too risky,” he said.
Mita pitched creating a redevelopment zone for the hotel — something that would require multiple steps (see related story at ocnjsentinel.com) — because Icona at Wonderland would pay a little more than $1 million in taxes, 95 percent of which would go to Ocean City. Wonderland Pier, he said, paid just more than $100,000 a year in taxes with the majority going to the county and state.
Mita said he would have 375 parking spaces for his 252 rooms, all underneath the hotel, compared to Wonderland Pier, which had none. He acknowledged the hotel staff would find parking elsewhere.
His plan includes having Wonderland’s Ferris wheel on the north side of the property and the carousel at the south side, maintaining two of the iconic rides from Wonderland.
Mixed reaction from
the audience
Local resident Dustin Alvino listed the thousands of other rentals available throughout the resort, including homes, condos and B&Bs, and said the market had spoken because renters moved away from hotel rooms. He asked the benefit of Mita’s plans. While Mita acknowledged the fact of all the other rentals, he said the benefit to the community includes $1 million that would be paid in taxes to keep everyone’s taxes down.
Another resident said he could buy into the fact the resort needs hotel rooms, but asked if it could be written into the zoning that Icona at Wonderland would never be converted into condos. Mita replied Icona doesn’t operate condos, except a few for overflow guests at weddings.
When a resident pressed him on whether Wonderland Pier would still exist if he had been successful at his previous proposal, a similar resort on open city land between Carey Stadium and the boardwalk, Mita replied, “Absolutely not.” The developer of luxury properties — Mita also owns Achristavest Fine Home Builders — said he respects Wonderland’s former owner, Jay Gillian, but Gillian couldn’t keep the business going even after he paid off the outstanding debt in early 2021 and leased the property back to him.
Gillian closed the amusement park in October, saying it was no longer a viable business and that Ocean City could not support two amusement parks.
Earlier in his presentation, Mita said he had conferred with the Morey brothers, who own Morey’s Piers in Wildwood, to see if they were interested in partnering on an amusement park in Ocean City, but they declined.
Mita noted that his family has taken some personal attacks over his proposals, which he said was out of bounds and “if Eustace didn’t live here his entire life, I wouldn’t be doing this. It’s way too risky.”
When Eleanor Parker said she couldn’t understand how the big hotel would fit in the space that Wonderland Pier occupied, Mita said he paid a lot of money to the architect to configure the project there. Others questioned the narrow streets leading to the site, but Mita said he would need to do a traffic study to learn the impact of that.
Some of the most pointed criticisms came from residents Helen Struckmann and Bill Merritt, the latter of Friends of OCNJ History & Culture, a community group that was formed to “restore and re-envision Wonderland.”
Struckmann said Mita’s project would be “the destruction of the boardwalk. That’s what we’re fighting against. We’re concerned about the precedent it will set.” She said overdevelopment has “decimated this island” and allowing a hotel on the boardwalk would open the entire boardwalk to hotels. “That is why we need to draw a line in the sand now.”
Because Mita noted his development would help raise property values around it, Struckmann said the impact would hurt the business owners who would face higher rents. She said a hotel would be good for the city, but not in that location.
Mita replied that redevelopment zones are done on a site by site basis and that no hotels have been proposed since the Soleil project on the open lot adjacent to the Flanders, but that has been inactive for 20 years because a bank won’t finance it.
Merritt said Cape May has fought Mita’s proposed hotel project at the site of a former theater for a number of years and that he kept pushing to make that site considered blighted, a key aspect to allowing it to become a redevelopment zone. He asked if council refused to create a redevelopment zone, would Mita allow the site to become a blight because “leaving it undeveloped will leave it as a nightmare for boardwalk merchants.”
Mita responded the former Cape May administration hired consultants that deemed it a blighted site. “I didn’t tell them,” he said, and that Ocean City isn’t Cape May.
Mita said he is easy to reach and that “if we can have a discussion without grandstanding, I’d like to do it.”
Mita said a different option for the site would be building retail stores and a parking garage beneath them, “but I don’t think that’s best for Ocean City.”
Bernadette Bechta said she has seen so many changes over the years in Ocean City and thanked Mita “for being willing to invest in our city and in a level of elegance.”
“We have to learn how to embrace change,” she said, suggesting neighbors of the property should “not be selfish” and see the broad vision of what the Icona project would bring to the boardwalk.
Normalee Linforth, who said she has lived in the resort since 1946, also offered her support for Mita’s project, saying she has friends who have told her they would love to stay in a hotel like that. She added the community should be able to compromise on plans. “This is not Congress … Good luck and don’t give up.”
Another public meeting is scheduled for Dec. 4 at the Ocean City Tabernacle.
– STORY and PHOTOS by DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
