By Missy Ritti
For OCNJ Daily
City Council received an update Thursday from the nonprofit group U.S. Life Saving Station No. 30 on the status of their efforts to repay $750,000 the city has invested in the restoration of the historic building.
Chairman John Loeper told Council that, to date, the Life Saving Station has $117,000 in assets and $6,500 in income from events like the Spring Block Party and the New Jersey Lighthouse Challenge.
The Life Saving Station has also received a $145,000 grant from Hurricane Sandy, but those funds are tied to improvements of the grounds and not the structure. Because the group is still awaiting final architectural plans and the structure is not yet fully renovated, the grant money has gone unspent.
That the project is incomplete has done nothing to lessen the curiosity of passersby, however. Most of the 3,800 visitors who have toured the Life Saving Station this year contacted Loeper directly after finding his contact information posted outside.
“My name and number is right there. That’s how we got these visitors this year, and that’s how we’ve gotten a lot of our donations,” Loeper said.
U.S. Life Saving Station 30 operated in Ocean City from 1885 to 1915.
Though the station sits two long blocks and a quarter-mile from the beach at the intersection of Fourth Street and Atlantic Avenue, it has never moved. In its day, the station was on the beach. The same storms in the early 1900s that eroded 10 blocks of Longport deposited sand on the north end of Ocean City.
The city purchased the building in 2010 for about $1 million, ending a decade-long battle to save the station from demolition. Five years earlier, Ocean City voters rejected a proposed $3 million purchase of the property.
In 2011, the site received a $750,000 New Jersey Historic Trust grant. The money was part of a matching grant – the city had to come up with an equal $750,000 to help the museum replace its roof and complete work on the foundation, windows and porch of the historic building. The members of U.S. Life Saving Station 30 have promised to repay the full cost of the $750,000 the city invested in restoring the site.
When asked by Councilman Mike DeVlieger whether the group has any upcoming fundraisers planned, Loeper conceded that “it’s difficult to fundraise when you don’t have the facility to hold it in.”
Councilman Tony Wilson also pledged his support, and expressed an interest pitching in as needed.
“We would love to see this project come to completion in short order,” he said.
