By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Ocean City is moving ahead with a nearly $11 million project that will include pumping stations, road reconstruction and other measures to protect the flood-prone Merion Park neighborhood from stormwater.
City Council awarded a $10.7 million construction contract Thursday to Atlantic City-based L. Feriozzi Concrete Co., the lowest bidder among four companies that sought the work. Feriozzi’s bid was well under the city’s $11.9 million pre-bid estimate for the contract.
In 2014, the city completed the first phase of a flood-mitigation project for Merion Park in the south end of town. The project included pumping stations to channel floodwater out of the neighborhood much faster than it would normally take to drain off the streets after a storm.
Now, the city is getting ready to launch the second phase of the project. Work is expected to begin in the spring and be completed before Memorial Day weekend in 2025, said Vince Bekier, director of the city’s Operations and Engineering Department.
“We would like to begin as soon as possible,” Bekier said, noting that a preconstruction meeting will be held between the city and Feriozzi to nail down the project’s timetable.
Residents of Merion Park have waited 10 years while the second part of the project was being planned, discussed and refined, including the number of pumping stations that would be built.
As it stands now, three new pumping stations are planned along the 34th Street-Roosevelt Boulevard entryway between the foot of the 34th Street Bridge and Bay Avenue.
Other measures that are planned in the second phase include new drainage pipes, road reconstruction to raise the streets, landscaped berms that would act as flood barriers and new gutters, curbs and sidewalks.
Mayor Jay Gillian stressed that major flood-mitigation projects like this one usually take quite a bit of time as they go through the planning and design stages leading up to construction.
“The message is, it does take a lot of time to get it done right. We had this done a few years ago and then we took another look at it. It’s going to get done,” Gillian said of how the project was revised.
Merion Park is the latest neighborhood to receive more stormwater protection as part of the city’s comprehensive plan to systemically reduce flooding across the island.
“It’s just our continuation of our flooding and drainage projects. It’s something that we’re going to partner with the county to do more. It’s what we’re doing from tip to tip in Ocean City. We’re just taking care of our neighbors,” Gillian said in an interview after the Council meeting.
Separate from the city’s Merion Park project, Cape May County is planning to elevate the roadway along the Roosevelt Boulevard-34th Street corridor by 18 inches to help reduce flooding on the artery linking Ocean City and Marmora.
The city and county will coordinate their projects to avoid possible conflicts.
The Roosevelt Boulevard-34th Street corridor is the second-busiest gateway into Ocean City, behind the state-owned Route 52 Causeway-Ninth Street Bridge in the center of town. On average, 20,000 vehicles each day cross the 34th Street Bridge, the most heavily traveled bridge in the county network.
According to plans, the Roosevelt Boulevard-34th Street artery will be raised along a 1.6-mile stretch from Bay Avenue in Ocean City to the Garden State Parkway entrance in Marmora.
The county will also raise the roadways in Ocean City around the Acme supermarket at 34th Street, as well as the intersections of West Avenue and 34th, 35th, 36th and 37th streets, according to a summary of the project.
In other business at Thursday’s meeting, Council approved a $128,625 contract to bring back jitney service this year in an expanded form.
Ocean City launched jitney service in the summer of 2022 in partnership with the Atlantic City Jitney Association under a pilot program to see whether shuttle service to the Boardwalk and downtown business district would be popular with residents and visitors.
The contract with the Atlantic City Jitney Association has been renewed for this year, but includes some changes. The downtown route has been removed this year due to low ridership in the past.
This year, there will be a “primary evening route” that will run from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. in a continuous loop from 55th Street to Battersea Road, including service to the Boardwalk.
New for 2024, there will also be a “senior center route” to serve Ocean City’s senior housing communities, including Wesley by the Bay, Speitel Commons, Bayview Manor, United Methodist Communities at The Shores and Pecks Beach Village.
The senior center route will run on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. year-round and will be free to members of Ocean City’s Howard S. Stainton Senior Center.
In February, the city took over the senior center, which is housed in the city’s Community Center at 1735 Simpson Ave. Prior to that, the county operated the senior center.
The jitneys have been touted by city officials as a low-cost, convenient transportation service that saves riders the trouble of finding parking during the busy summer tourism season. The one-way fare is $2.
The jitneys carried a total of 14,735 riders during the summer of 2023. It was up from 12,000 riders in the service’s pilot year in 2022, according to city officials.
In remarks at Thursday’s meeting, Councilman Jody Levchuk praised the jitney service for its convenience, but said more needs to be done to boost ridership.
“It is a little low, and there’s a lot of room for improvement with that,” he said.
Levchuk noted that he has been speaking with some of the owners of the Boardwalk and downtown shops for ideas on how to attract more riders.
“We would like to see the ridership increase,” said Levchuk, co-owner of the Jilly’s shops downtown and on the Boardwalk. “There are a lot of great ideas out there as to how to persuade people to take the jitneys as opposed to driving. It’s a great service. It helps with our parking issues around town.”
One idea that is being discussed is to have Ocean City-sponsored information kits about the jitneys included in the welcome packets that vacationers receive when they check into their rental properties for the summer, Levchuk said.
