North Wildwood Motel to go Condo?

North Wildwood Motel to go Condo?

For the past few years, we have seen a very different shift in summer accommodations in the Wildwoods.

In the early 2000s, we had the condo boom which saw many historic Doo-Wop motels demolished to make room for condominiums. That push lasted for many years and cost the island hundreds of rooms that could be rentable.

With the creation of the Doo Wop Preservation League, this had slowed down and created a new kind of rental market called condotels.

A condotel, short for “condominium hotel,” is a type of hybrid real estate property that combines features of both condominiums and hotels. In a condotel, individual units are typically sold to buyers who can then use them as a vacation home or rent them out to guests as they would with a traditional hotel room.

When it first started, these condotels were affordable slices of heaven that could easily be sold for around $80,000.

This meant that the average Joe was able to purchase on the island and it is not as expensive as owning a home, minusing out homeowner association fees

In recent years, and mostly due to inflation, the market had jumped up the prices of these units to the price of a full-sized starter home in South Jersey.

This created a new change in housing again in the Wildwoods where we saw the building or renovating of existing motels to stay hotels.

This has been seen in places like Madison Resorts, where they purchased the Oceanview and Royal Hawaiian to update them and keep them running as resorts. It is also seen in the new Vibes Hotel/Motel being built out of the Binns and Bonito Motel.

It’s this changing market that is bringing more options for visitors coming to the island by updating the inside of the motel to more modern accommodations but in a Doo-Wop Modern mid-century style.

One of the motels on the island that did that back in 2022 was the Seaport Inn. Located at 500 Ocean Avenue in North Wildwood, BG Capital had purchased the then Isle Of Capri Motel and renovated it into Seaport Inn.

It would be one of their many projects on the island such as the 39 new units called the Oasis on Magnolia Ave and Seaport Suites which took over the old 2nd Street Annies and Fairview blocks.

 

But it looks like changes could be coming to the Seaport Inn.

Also See: Cape May’s Ghost Tracks Could Partly Be Removed

In a new application submitted to the City of North Wildwood’s planning board, BG Capital is looking to convert the building.

As the application reads:

”The subject property is on the corner of Ocean and 5th Avenues and is currently operated as a twenty-one (21) unit motel…The plan, which does not exacerbate, modify or change any of the current exterior conditions of the property or the pre-existing non-conformities, reduces the density of the site down to nine (9) single-family residential units which would be organized as a standard residential multiunit condominium.”

This application does not go into detail on how the 21 units could be combined to make those 9 single-family residential units.

The Wildwood Video Archive reached out to BG Capital to comment on the project but hasn’t heard back yet at the time of publishing.

Jumping on their website visitors are unable to book any of their rooms. When clicking on “book now,” an error message shows saying, “Oops! Something went wrong. Please go back and try again.”

While this would indicate that they are not renting the motel this summer, that doesn’t mean they won’t. It could be a simple website error.

If the motel were to become units, it isn’t clear if these would be rentable spaces or private residences something which we will inform you able when the information becomes available. 

The WVA stopped by the North Wildwood beaches this past month to view the conditions of the beach. Since many asked what their beach spot looked like, we decided to send the seagull into the sky to bring you a bird’s point of view of the beach.

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