ICONA’s Mahalo Seeks To Remove View Corridors

ICONA’s Mahalo Seeks To Remove View Corridors

It’s been quite some time since the Ocean Holiday’s name has been in the news.

It was back in July 2019 when the Wildwood Video Archive broke the news that the Ocean Holiday had sold for $4.55 million.

Located at 6501 Ocean Avenue in Wildwood Crest, this motel was sold to ICONA resorts which was expanding its footprint in Cape May county.

Over the past five years, ICONA resorts have grown with the opening of Mahalo Diamond Beach, the purchase of Avalon’s Windrift, the purchase of the Old Beach Theater in Cape May, and major investments in Ocean City.

ICONA’s had the idea of building a hospitality brand called Mahalo, which CEO of ICONA Resorts, Eustace Mita, said would be more along the lines of, say, a Marriott Courtyard.” ICONA was planning on building many of these in South Jersey including one in Cape May.

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The Ocean Holiday would become to Mahalo Wildwood Crest.

The Mahalo Wildwood was the first major move they had but things had quickly stalled. For the past three years, the Ocean Holiday has been sitting mostly demolished as crews waited for the project to be given a great light but there was much pushback from local business owners.

In the heart of said battle are the view corridors.

When the motels of Wildwood Crest were built in the 1950s and 1960s, motel owners came to an understanding that all motels rooms shall provide an open view corridor perpendicular to the water’s edge.

This gave all guests staying at a motel a view of the beach. For decades many owners have preserved the view corridor along the avenues but during the pandemic, ICONA’s plans to block these corridors were passed.

Many other business owners spoke out about these plans which caused the project to come to a complete halt.

Since it’s been over two years since ICONA’s Mahalo plans were passed, they needed to get approved again.

A hearing was originally conducted before the Planning Board of Wildwood Crest at the Municipal on April 5th, 2023, at 5:00 p.m. 

The application goes on to say, “It is the intent of the applicant to reconstruct the existing first-floor lobby of the premises, to renovate the existing five-story motel, reconstruct the second-floor pool/patio area, and add an additional five-story motel building. The renovated motel will contain 55 units and the new motel building will contain 11 units, for a total of 66 units.”

At that meeting, ICONA presented its latest plans for the motel.

This project was a bit scaled down from the original one presented back in 2019 which would have had the addition of a 6th floor.

The five-story motel building is the building in question that would block said view corridor.

Local motel owners including those on the Wildwood Motel Association were at the meeting, which ran several hours. Due to so many people wanting to talk about their displeasure in ICONA’s plans, the meeting was stopped and the application was set to be brought up again on June 7th. 

Any interested party may appear at said hearing and participate. The Wildwood Crest Municipal is located at 6101 Pacific Avenue.

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