Ocean City votes to buy old lifesaving station

Ocean City officials voted, 6-1, Thursday to approve a bond to buy the old Ocean City lifesaving station, a landmark that will be turned into a maritime museum and community center.

The 1885 structure, at Fourth Street and Atlantic Avenue, was among a number of stations built on the Eastern Seaboard for the U.S. Life Saving Service, a forerunner of the Coast Guard that aided shipwreck victims.

Buying the site for $877,500 would preserve the station after more than a decade of legal wrangling. To repay the bond, the city would sell surplus property and work with a soon-to-be-formed nonprofit, U.S. Life Saving Station 30, to raise money, Councilman Roy Wagner said. The nonprofit would join the community and the soon-to-be-dissolved Save Our Station Coalition to secure grants to renovate and operate the site, members said.

Wagner said the city planned to buy the property before May 14 - the court's deadline for the coalition to find a preservation-minded buyer or to allow developers, who bought the property in the 1990s, to proceed with their plans. - Darran Simon