Wildwood boardwalk, Ocean City could see new luxury hotels
"The Wild Resort," is planned for the Wildwood Boardwalk, and Icona wants to turn a 1925 former bank in Ocean City into a luxury hotel.
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Two real estate deals surpassing $6 million each could lead to new luxury hotels on the Wildwood boardwalk and on Asbury Avenue in Ocean City.
The interest in hotel development follows years of Shore motels and hotels turning into owner-occupied condominiums or being sold altogether for development, noted Patrick Rosenello, the mayor of North Wildwood and executive director of the Wildwoods Boardwalk Special Improvement District.
“We’ve lost so many transient rentals over the years,” Rosenello said. “These developers are seeing an opportunity to get back in the business. People are looking for that.”
In April, the Wildwood Hospitality Group, part of the Monmouth Junction-based Innzen Hospitality group, purchased a block-long building at 3000 Boardwalk for $6.2 million, with plans to invest at least that much more in a hotel, to be known as the Wild Resort.
The building holds a pizza shop, the Bikini Heaven, and other boardwalk shops, but its top two floors are long-vacant apartments.
“It’s a long dilapidated building, in incredible disrepair for literally decades,” Rosenello said. “But the view is just amazing.”
The hotel, pictured in renderings with a rooftop pool and bar, would be the first boardwalk frontage hotel development on the boardwalk in 25 years, since Montego Bay in North Wildwood, he added.
“It brings visitors right into the heart of the boardwalk,” Rosenello said.
The project was approved by the Planning Board on Nov. 7, said lawyer Ron Gelzunas, who represents the Wildwood Hospitality Group.
Sunil Nayak, head of InnZen, which owns several other hotels, plans to add two more stories to complete a 75-room hotel by 2024.
“Wildwood has so many feathers to its cap,” Nayak told NBC10 in an interview last month. “I think the one thing that is lacking [is a] classy resort on the boardwalk.”
(Nayak did not respond to messages from the Inquirer.)
In Ocean City, meanwhile, Eustice Mita, chair and CEO of Icona Resorts, told the Press of Atlantic City that he has a deal to buy the former First National Bank of Ocean City building for $6.5 million.
The six-story concrete building at 801 Asbury Ave. dates to 1925 and was more recently the Crown Bank.
The city has also expressed interest in the property, which is on the same block as City Hall. The owner of the property is in bankruptcy and the property, including adjacent parking lots, has been listed for court-ordered sale for $7 million.
Like the Wildwood property, it boasts desirable water views from the upper floors.
The ground floors are zoned commercial, but the hotel project would require additional city use permissions. The sale would still have to be approved in bankruptcy proceedings.
Mita told the Press he would invest millions into remaking the building into a downtown hotel, with retail and a restaurant on the ground floor. He described the building as “magnificent,” and noted the city still does not allow restaurants to serve alcohol.
In 2021, Icona partnered with the Gillian family to invest in the iconic but financially troubled Wonderland Pier on the Ocean City boardwalk, leading to speculation that Mita may want to build a hotel on that property. Mita is also seeking to build a resort on the grounds of the former Beach Theatre in Cape May.