Ocean City Boardwalk Subcommittee's Findings To Be Revealed

OCEAN CITY, NJ — City Council's subcommittee on the Boardwalk will share an overview on the data they have collected at an upcoming meeting.

"We're not going to have recommendations at this meeting," Councilman Dave Winslow, chair of the subcommittee, said at the latest City Council meeting. "But we're going to show you what we found and some of things are going to surprise everyone."

Winslow emphasized that it was a data-driven process.

City Council did not address Wonderland Pier, though the meeting followed a Planning Board meeting where a vote to designate the property as an area in need of rehabilitation failed.

However, many meeting attendees brought it up, with both critics and supporters speaking their minds.

Susan Cracovaner from the group Ocean City 2050 presented City Council with a petition urging officials to not allow the ICONA in Wonderland luxury hotel to proceed.

"This piecemeal approach threatens the integrity of the boardwalk, the master plan and community character that has defined Ocean City for generations," Cracovaner read from a prepared statement.

Heather Neville, a local business owner, said that a hotel would be an anchor for Boardwalk businesses, like at the mall.

"Once you lose an anchor business, what happens to the mall? It falls apart. Wonderland was an anchor," Neville said. "There's nobody looking to build another amusement park, but there's someone that's giving you an anchor."

The subcommittee's findings will be presented on Feb. 7 at 10 a.m. at the library.