North Wildwood Motel Closes

For the past few years, the Wildwoods have been going through a massive transformation. Unlike the Condo boom in 2005, Motels aren’t always being town down to make way for ugly condo buildings. Instead, they are transformed into Condotel.

Condotel is an adaptive reuse architecture style that takes an exciting motel and turns it into a condominium. Many motels in the Wildwoods have done this. A good example of this is the Cape Cod Inn Motel located at 6109 Atlantic Ave in Wildwood Crest.

For over a year they have been making this change into a Condotel but building material costs caused them to slow down.

Today we learned that another motel in North Wildwood has closed.

On a public Facebook post posted at noon, Harbor Light Family Resort gave us the bad news.

They went on to say;

“To all of our customers, we would like to inform you that after 43 years the Harbor Light Family Resort has been sold and will no longer operate as a motel.”

The Del Monte Family has been a big part of the Wildwoods for almost 50 years. Besides owning the Harbor Light Family Resort they currently own Matador Oceanfront Resort, which is currently getting new railings installed.

The family not only owned the Harbor Light, they built it.

Carl Del Monte and Rosalie DiGiuseppe both spent their summers in North Wildwood and after their marriage in 1973, they settled in Northeast Philadelphia to start a family. In 1977, Carl was held up twice at gunpoint and this led to their decision to move to the Wildwoods full-time. They initially wanted to open an ice cream business but ended up building the Harbor Light Motor Inn instead.

Despite having zero knowledge about the motel business, they took a chance and sold everything to build the motel. However, things didn’t go as smoothly as they had hoped. They were out of money by the time the motel was complete, and they had to cash in their sons’ college funds and borrow from relatives to pay for it.

Also See: Mudhen Purchases More Property

The first customer did not arrive until July of 1979 due to a gas crisis and the Del Montes had a tough time getting by. But everything turned around in 1980, and they were finally able to catch up on all their bills.

Carl and Rosalie not only achieved their dreams and goals but also helped thousands of families to make beautiful memories in their motels.

Since the Harbor Light wasn’t listed online and was a private sale, there isn’t a way at this moment to know who the new owners are or how much the motel sold for.

The post continued by saying that “It has been a pleasure to meet and serve our customers over the years. We thank you for your patronage, loyalty and especially all of the wonderful memories. The Del Monte Family will continue to operate the Matador Oceanfront Resort located at 16th and The Beach in North Wildwood.”

With the motel closing, the new owners have two options. They can tear it down and build condos on top of it or turn the building into a Condotel. By the sounds of it, it looks to be a Condotel. The WVA gave a call to the owners, Richards JB Construction LLC, who wouldn’t comment on the project at this time.

We do hope that they are able to keep the building standing.

Check out these other Wildwood videos and articles.