Responding to concerns from the public and two of its own members, City Council held off on hiring a professional planning expert to help evaluate development options for the former Wonderland Pier amusement park on the Boardwalk.
Voting 6-1, the governing body tabled a resolution Thursday night that would have awarded a no-bid, professional services contract to Polistina & Associates LLC, a planning and engineering firm headed by state Sen. Vincent Polistina, an Atlantic County Republican.
Polistina’s primary planner, Jennifer Heller, would be given the role of assisting Council in evaluating development proposals for the Wonderland property at a rate of $175 per hour, according to the resolution.
The proposed hiring of Polistina’s firm is expected to come up for further discussion at Council’s March 12 meeting. Councilmen Dave Winslow and Sean Barnes asked for the resolution to be tabled to give the governing body more time to find out exactly what duties Heller would have as Ocean City’s planning consultant.
“What are we hiring this person to do?” Winslow said.
Winslow also wanted to know exactly how the city selected Polistina’s firm for the proposed contract.
“How did we come up with Mr. Polistina and did we consider other firms?” Winslow asked.
Barnes said he believed that by tabling the resolution for more discussion, it would boost public confidence and transparency in Council’s hiring of a planning consultant – as well as its deliberations for the future of the Wonderland parcel.
“I think we need to step back a little bit,” Barnes said of Council taking its time with the planning contract.
Wonderland Pier's iconic 140-foot-tall Ferris wheel sits idle now that the amusement park is closed.Before the resolution was tabled, all of the other Council members spoke in favor of the planning contract. They indicated that a professional planner would be of immense help in guiding Council through the planning and zoning complexities of Wonderland’s redevelopment.
Council President Terry Crowley Jr. said he believes that a planning expert would assist the governing body to objectively consider all of its options for Wonderland.
“Let’s take the emotions out of it,” Crowley said.
However, Crowley and all of the other Council members, except for Vice President Pete Madden, agreed to table the resolution at Winslow and Barnes’ urging. Madden was the only one to cast a dissenting vote.
Crowley said in an interview after the Council meeting that he saw no harm in Council taking a few more weeks to hash out the details of the planning contract.
“There are seven of us up here. I want to work as a team,” he said.
The hiring of Heller in Polistina’s firm was recommended by land-use attorney John A. Ridgway, who is serving as “special legal counsel” to Council during what is expected to be a painstaking and complicated process in Wonderland’s redevelopment.
Ridgway, who was hired by Council in January at a rate of $200 per hour, will guide the governing body through the legal nuances of approving a redevelopment plan for the Wonderland property.
An architectural rendering depicts the proposed resort hotel on the Ocean City Boardwalk.Developer Eustace Mita, who owns the Wonderland site, has proposed building a $150 million luxury resort hotel in place of the defunct amusement park at Sixth Street and the Boardwalk.
At some point in the future, Council is expected to decide whether to declare the Wonderland property as an area “in need of rehabilitation” to help speed up its redevelopment – as a hotel or possibly some other type of project.
During a Jan. 7 meeting, Ocean City’s planning board was deadlocked 4-4 in a vote on the rehabilitation designation sought by Mita for his hotel project. The tie vote effectively killed a planning board resolution to approve the rehabilitation status.
In December, Council voted 4-3 to ask the planning board to consider recommending the rehabilitation designation. The planning board vote was considered a critical preliminary step in Mita’s redevelopment plans for the Wonderland property.
Now that the planning board has rejected it, the issue is expected to come back to Council for its own vote on the rehabilitation issue. However, it is not clear when that would happen.
The rehabilitation designation would trigger a process that could possibly lead to a zoning change to permit Mita’s hotel at the Wonderland property. Currently, the city’s zoning laws do not allow hotel construction in that section of the Boardwalk.
There is no guarantee that a hotel will be built or even given final approval, but the rehabilitation process does create a legal pathway for the project.
The sprawling Wonderland Pier facade overlooks the Boardwalk at Sixth Street.Crowley has formed a nine-member Boardwalk subcommittee, headed by Winslow, to analyze the zoning and development options for the commercial sections of the Boardwalk from Sixth to 14th streets, including the Wonderland site. The subcommittee is expected to make its recommendations this spring.
Opponents believe Mita’s proposed 252-room hotel would overwhelm the surrounding neighborhoods and would not blend in with Ocean City’s family-friendly image. Hotel supporters say the project would be a catalyst for more tourism and business in town.
Council had originally planned to approve the Polistina resolution without discussion as part of its consent agenda involving relatively routine matters. However, a few members of the public – including some of the hotel’s most outspoken opponents – urged Council to remove it from the consent agenda for further discussion and then table it.
Matthew Wieliczko, an attorney representing the Plaza Place neighborhood homeowners next to the Wonderland property, questioned whether Council’s proposed hiring of a professional planning consultant followed the legal requirements.
“I think you’re running afoul of the process,” Wieliczko told the Council members while reiterating the opposition of Plaza Place homeowners to Mita’s proposed hotel.
Matthew Wieliczko, an attorney representing homeowners in the Plaza Place neighborhood next to the Wonderland property, voices his opposition to the proposed planning contract during the Council meeting.Jim Kelly, president of the community group Ocean City 2050, another hotel opposition group, argued that Council was considering the Polistina contract without properly discussing it in an open public forum.
Kelly also said that Council should continue to follow the path set by the Boardwalk subcommittee. He is a member of the subcommittee.
“The process is the right one. A fact-driven, holistic approach addressing the entire Boardwalk is exactly what we should do. It plays no favorites, it takes its time and it delivers a result for the city, not an individual,” Kelly said of the subcommittee process.
Without naming them publicly, he accused some Council members of not fully supporting the subcommittee. He said they have been “openly hostile to the idea at the start and remain so, going to the extent of ridiculing the process in public.”
Kelly continued his remarks in opposition to hiring Polistina’s firm by questioning whether there would be any conflicts between Polistina’s role as a Republican state senator and what he claimed is Mita’s well-known financial support of the Republican Party.
“Mr. Mita is a major contributor to the New Jersey Republican establishment and that establishment works to support politicians like Senator Polistina,” Kelly said.
Husband and wife Dave and Marie Hayes, Ocean City residents who often speak out against the hotel project, also urged Council to table the Polistina resolution.
Marie Hayes maintained that the planning contract needs to be fully vetted for the sake of public transparency.
Dave Hayes contended that Council appears to be looking to create a “shadow planning board” to give Mita the city approvals he would need to build the hotel.
