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Home - Up to Date News News articles are from the Press of Atlantic City, Star Ledger
Plan for downtown fee alarms O.C. merchants
Published: Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Updated: Wednesday, July 19, 2006
OCEAN CITY — The mayor's proposal to improve the downtown through zoning changes is stirring controversy among some merchants. In a 20-page ordinance, Mayor Sal Perillo proposed ways to protect downtown shops from the tremendous pressure of rental condo construction the island is seeing. “The downtown is out of balance,” Perillo said. “The existing zoning in my judgment promotes residential development at the expense of commercial development.” More than two dozen business owners attended a public meeting Tuesday to make their own recommendations. Perhaps the biggest change is a parking requirement, the first in the city's Central Business Zone since 1996. Developers would have to provide two parking spaces per new residential unit. But only one parking space per unit would be permitted on site. The others would be provided through a city fee of $25,000 per space. Ultimately, this money would pay for a new public parking lot or garage downtown. Business owners balked at the steep figure. Councilman Keith Hartzell owns three mixed-use buildings on Asbury Avenue, including the one in which he lives. Hartzell said the parking fee seemed exorbitant to him. “It will benefit everyone, but the burden is on us,” he said. “I think $3,000 to $5,000 is more reasonable,” said Paul Schaeffer, owner of Denovum. “Merchants already pay a Special Improvement District fee. That money is going into a fund, and not one dime of parking revenue has come downtown. All of the (public) lots are on the Boardwalk.” Schaeffer is one of several Asbury Avenue property owners who plan to rebuild soon. He hired a Washington, D.C., architect to replace his familiar purple store with a three-story steel, glass and copper building. This would include two retail stores on the ground floor and eight condos on the second and third stories. Schaeffer said both he and his parents eventually plan to live in his new building. Under the ordinance, he would have to pay $200,000 in parking fees alone. Schaeffer also questioned whether some of the design rules imposed by the ordinance were too restrictive. Much of the ordinance addresses display windows, store signs and canopies geared to making Asbury Avenue a welcoming place for pedestrians, said planner Michelle M. Taylor of the Taylor Design Group. The ordinance also would outlaw the use of vinyl siding on building facades in the Central Business District. “As you walk, there's a feeling of continuity, like on the Boardwalk,” she said. Former Councilman Ron Denney and Donald Johnson of Johnson's Electric also plan to build on Asbury Avenue. Their applications before the Planning Board are on hold until the mayor's proposed zoning changes are approved by City Council. “I like the fact that the mayor is thinking about the future of our downtown. He wants to make it attractive and improve it,” said Cheryl Huber, who leases space to Hoy's Five and Dime on Asbury Avenue. Huber said she has no immediate plans to rebuild. But the parking fee is a concern, she said. Tuesday was the first public meeting on the proposal. Perillo is hosting six such meetings to solicit comments from the public, City Council and professionals such as architects and planners. To e-mail Michael Miller at The Press:MMiller@pressofac.com New O.C. mayor offers truce to opponents at inauguration
Published: Sunday, July 2, 2006
Updated: Sunday, July 2, 2006
OCEAN CITY — Sal Perillo was sworn into office Saturday to become the first new mayor in this resort in 14 years. Superior Court Judge Kyran Connor administered the oath of office to Perillo in front of Perillo's wife, Mary Ellen, and a nearly packed house at the Music Pier. Perillo easily won election in May over three competitors. In doing so, he spent a city-record $120,301, much of which went to defending political attacks and engaging in a few of his own. Perillo offered an olive branch of sorts to his opponents' supporters. “To those of you who did not know me well enough to vote for me, I promise to work diligently to earn your respect and confidence,” he said. He said he would put the campaign behind him with City Council, including the three at-large councilmen sworn in Saturday: Keith Hartzell, Scott Ping and Michael Allegretto. “They recognize, as do I, the deep desire to bring the divisiveness and contentiousness to an end,” he said. Perillo, who has a private law practice, said the death of his father, Gennaro, last November made him take stock of his own life. “I decided to devote some balance of the rest of my life to public service,” Perillo said. As mayor, he said he will make better use of the city's Web site and public-access television channel. He said he will create a task force composed of local residents to improve city operations. And he vowed to support development “compatible with the city's residential neighborhoods.” The reorganization was a nonpartisan civic celebration unlike anything else in Ocean City. Family and friends of competing candidates attended along with local lawmakers and former mayors Roy Gillian and Bud Knight, who has been a former mayor for just a day. Many City Hall regulars also attended, including a group of residents whom the city is suing. They have a court date next week over the group's efforts to tie city spending to the federal cost-of-living adjustment. But on Saturday, the group applauded the plaintiffs. To e-mail Michael Miller at The Press:MMiller@pressofac.com Alan J Heavens
Jun. 26--Without a doubt, the Jersey Shore
real estate market has had a fantastic run for the last eight years. Up and
down the coastline, from the top of Ocean County to the tip
of Cape May, construction boomed, sales exploded and prices skyrocketed.
Stories abound of overnight fortunes made by investors, like the one who flipped an Ocean City property in one day last year and made a $540,000 profit on a $4.1 million house. An Inquirer analysis of 27,709 home sales last year in Atlantic, Cape May and Ocean Counties showed that about 1,000 houses sold for $1 million or more. And five towns -- Stone Harbor and Avalon in Cape May County and Bay Head, Harvey Cedars and Mantoloking in Ocean County -- had median home prices of $1 million or more, the analysis showed. (The median is the middle value; half the houses sold for more, half sold for less. In any town, a drop in median price does not mean prices fell for all houses there.) But this picture of sunny times is turning partly cloudy, observers of the Shore market say, as higher interest rates are beginning to dampen sales, and condo construction, mostly involving investors, adds to a growing surplus of properties. "Whenever interest rates rise, the second-home market is the first one to take the hit," said Fred Glick, president of US Loans Mortgage L.L.C. in Philadelphia. Long-term rates climbed to 6.71 percent Thursday, Freddie Mac reported, the highest since May 31, 2002. Adjustable-rate mortgages are at 6.4 percent. "It's the condo and lower end of the Shore market that's taking a hit," said Paul Leiser, a broker at Avalon Real Estate. "These are the buyers who depend on lower interest rates to balance two mortgages, and with rising interest rates, they can't do it. "We've sold fewer units, but our dollar volume in the first quarter was higher than it was in the first quarter of 2005, which was a record year," Leiser said. "It's the million-dollar-house purchases that push up the medians, and those are usually cash. And when you are talking about million-dollar houses, consider that an older rancher three blocks from the beach in Stone Harbor is $1.4 million." The Inquirer's analysis showed the median price of homes in the three counties grew at a slower pace in 2005, to $274,000, a 16 percent increase over 2004 compared to a 21 percent jump the year before. Only Atlantic County was able to maintain the same rate of growth from 2004 to 2005; its median home price rose 24 percent, to $223,357. In Cape May County, the year-over-year median gain was less than half the increase experienced a year earlier. The median was up 11 percent in 2005, to $391,000, compared to a 26 percent gain in 2004. Ocean County's median grew 15 percent in 2005 compared to 20 percent in 2004. Fewer than 200 more houses were sold in 2005 than in 2004, an indication of declining demand. Another sign: Thirty-one municipalities had median increases of more than 20 percent in 2005, compared with 44 in 2004. Although sales comparisons for the first quarters of 2006 and 2005 from the New Jersey Division of Taxation were incomplete, indications are that the market appears to be slowing further this year. Sales in Cape May and Ocean Counties in the first quarter of 2006 were lower by a couple hundred sales each than in the first quarter of 2005. Atlantic County sales were a bit higher. Market observers said Atlantic County, which for the last several years has been evolving into a bedroom community for Atlantic City, also is fast becoming a suburb of Philadelphia. Major developers such as D.R. Horton, K. Hovnanian, and Ryan Homes have been building single-family developments and active-adult communities -- not necessarily with ocean views. "We call them 'off-shore vs. on-shore,' " said Jerome DiPentino, broker at Premier Properties Real Estate in Longport. "More and more people are choosing to live here year-round, and that is stabilizing the market, although high-end sales in Margate and Longport also have been skewing the median upward." Things don't seem as rosy in Ocean City, the scene of numerous teardowns and massive development since the mid-1990s. As of mid-June, there were more than 1,700 listings on the Ocean City Multiple Listing Service (MLS). "They're saying that Ocean City is overbuilt by two years," DiPentino said. "That may be conservative." Jay Lamont, the host of "All About Real Estate" on WPEN-AM (950), who has studied and owned real estate in Ocean City for about 40 years, said, "I have never seen anything even close to this debacle. Many legitimate and qualified buyers are waiting for fall, for the lender REO [real-estate-owned] listings and foreclosure sales on failed developer loans." Weekly sales reported to the Ocean City MLS are 80 percent to 90 percent lower than they were in spring 2005, with seven or eight sales a week, he said. What's going on? "The short-term investors at the Shore were in the condo market primarily, and they're the ones pulling out," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com in West Chester. "They don't buy multimillion-dollar homes." (In Ocean City, condos made up a little more than half the 1,314 sales in 2005, The Inquirer analysis showed. The median condo price: $529,950, up 14 percent from 2004.) Oversupply also seems to be a problem elsewhere in Cape May County. Paul Schlimme, vice president of MLS Realty in Cherry Hill, said that between Jan. 1 and May 31 there were 189 listings on the Avalon MLS, with about nine houses selling per month. "That means there is a 21-month supply in Avalon, and it is getting worse," Schlimme said. By mid-June, 29 new single-family houses were listed, and just 13 sold, "which means there are 16 more properties competing..." Over the course of the 1998-2005 Shore boom, Wildwood, West Wildwood, and North Wildwood registered a more than 250 percent increase in median prices, The Inquirer analysis showed. (So did Stone Harbor, Longport, Avalon and Harvey Cedars.) The Wildwoods, too, were a draw for investors, who razed motels and filled empty tracts with condos. But with for-sale signs sprouting and interest apparently tailing off, that boom could be over, local market experts say. With summer here, the Shore market could get even slower. In Ocean City, Lamont said, "open houses are held each weekend, sometimes as many as eight per block on Asbury Avenue, with almost no legitimate buyer traffic showing up even to use the bathrooms." How This Analysis Was Conducted The Inquirer's home-price analysis was based on nearly 250,000 residential sales in 2004 and 2005. Home-sale information was obtained from the five Pennsylvania counties and the New Jersey Division of Taxation. Only sales at fair-market prices of $10,000 or greater were included in the analysis of single-family homes, condominiums, townhouses, and twins, or duplexes. The median home price is the amount at which half the sale prices are more and half are less. The percentage change reflects the difference in the median price from 2004 to 2005. A town with fewer than 10 sales is marked "N.C." because the median and percentage change were not calculated. Towns with no sales are marked "N.S." All numbers are rounded to the closest whole number. Contact real estate writer Alan J. Heavens at 215-854-2472 or aheavens@phillynews.com. ----- Copyright (c) 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer O.C. lifeguards to extend hours on three beaches
Published: Saturday, June 24, 2006
Updated: Saturday, June 24, 2006
OCEAN CITY — Lifeguards on three downtown beaches will be on duty later in the day starting this weekend. The Beach Patrol will guard beaches at Eighth, Ninth and 12th streets until 7 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays this summer. The extended-hours program usually begins over the busy July 4 holiday weekend. But the city decided to launch its after-hours lifeguard program a week early this year because of unusually strong rip currents, Business Administrator Richard Deaney said. A 7-year-old boy from Philadelphia drowned Sunday while swimming on an unguarded Seventh Street beach about an hour after lifeguards left for the day. Police said the child and his younger brother were caught in a rip current. The younger boy was pulled to safety. On Tuesday, police and firefighters rescued a swimmer in distress on an unguarded 10th Street beach after lifeguards left for the day. “The ocean has been rough this week. We decided to start them a week early,” Deaney said. Beach Patrol Lt. John McShane said the department always planned to extend beach hours this weekend. He said the after-hours rescues this week had nothing to do with the extended hours. “We always wanted to do the weekend before the Fourth of July as a dry run to make sure our procedures and policies are in place,” he said. Meanwhile, police on all-terrain vehicles will patrol downtown beaches in the evenings this summer, in part to watch for swimmers in distress. “We'll notify the police if there has been a troublesome area during the day so they can keep their eye on it,” McShane said. Deaney stressed that the police officers are not lifeguards. The Beach Patrol warned that swimmers should swim only off guarded beaches. Lifeguards are counting visitors several times a day this year to monitor beach activity. The city is trying to see if beachgoers are staying later in the day as some people suspect. The city plans to use this information to modify lifeguard hours next year. The city has options, Deaney said. It could guard a few downtown beaches later in the evening or have lifeguards start and finish an hour later to cover all beaches into the late afternoon. The city's after-hours program on Fridays and Saturdays and post Labor Day will cost between $15,000 and $20,000 this year, he said. McShane said the extended hours will give late-arriving visitors a chance to enjoy the ocean safely on their first day of vacation. “The check-in time is 4 p.m. They can run down and get wet before nightfall,” he said. To e-mail Michael Miller at The Press:MMiller@pressofac.com OCEAN CITY CAMPAIGNS Beach access in N.J. is
extensive, but obstacles remain With another summer upon us, residents across the Garden State
are preparing for the annual pilgrimage to the Jersey Shore. But before you
settle into that beach chair, you ought to reflect on how lucky you are to
access the beach. Beach property owners should
pay a bigger share for insurance N.J. shore a scary place,
preparedness official warns
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