An architectural rendering depicts the police substation.
Despite a last-minute plea for a slight change to the location of the project, Ocean City is moving ahead with plans for a new police substation on the Boardwalk following the award of a $6.1 million construction contract Thursday.
City Council voted to award the contract to the low bidder, Weatherby Construction & Renovation Corp. of Atlantic City, after listening to a pitch by the owners of OC Waterpark to swap adjacent property for the project.
Disputing that any other site would be better, Mayor Jay Gillian assured the Council members that the police substation “fits perfect” at the city’s preferred location overlooking the Boardwalk at Eighth Street.
Gillian noted that Weatherby is prepared to hold a preconstruction meeting in the next few days to lay out the schedule for building the project. Construction is expected to begin this year and be completed in 2025.
“We’re looking forward to seeing the building take shape quickly,” Gillian said.
Before Council voted on the construction contract, OC Waterpark co-owners Pat Agnellini and Todd Chamberlain proposed a land swap that they contended would have benefited both the city and their Boardwalk business.
They wanted to swap a piece of land they own on Eighth Street for the adjacent parcel where the city will build the police substation. They said that the site they would give to the city would provide better access to the police substation and would be 20 percent larger than the city’s property.
OC Waterpark co-owner Pat Agnellini holds up a diagram to show City Council the land he would like to swap.Agnellini and Chamberlain explained that OC Waterpark had hoped to acquire the city’s land to give their business more parking for their customers. The city’s land currently is a municipal parking lot.
“We don’t want to fight with anybody. We just want somebody to look at it,” Agnellini said in an interview after the Council meeting while expressing hope that the city would reconsider its stance.
The city, though, is not interested in the land swap. City Solicitor Dorothy McCrosson told Council that the city’s property is a better location because it is closer to the Boardwalk than the OC Waterpark land.
Gillian bluntly said that the OC Waterpark property “didn’t make sense” when compared to the city-owned site where the police substation will be built.
Councilman Jody Levchuk, who joined with the rest of the governing body in approving the construction contract, questioned why Gillian’s administration didn’t discuss the proposed land swap with Council earlier.
“It seems like a really, really interesting idea,” Levchuk said.
City Councilman Jody Levchuk, right, speaks to OC Waterpark owners Todd Chamberlain and Pat Agnellini and their attorney, Jack Plackter, after the Council meeting.Levchuk maintained that at the very least, Council should have been told of the proposed land swap earlier so it would have had an opportunity to study it further.
Levchuk said he only learned of the proposal on Wednesday after discussing it with the owners of OC Waterpark. But he indicated that talks between OC Waterpark and Gillian’s administration apparently began about two years ago.
“This seems to be something that is impactful to a large neighborhood, is a large area, and it’s a lot of visitors to the town,” Levchuk said. “I just don’t understand why this wouldn’t have been a point of discussion, when this apparently started two years ago, to anybody on this board. I just don’t know what to say other then, why was it never discussed with us?”
McCrosson told Levchuk that there was a meeting more than a year ago when the “concept was pitched” for the land swap. However, it was rejected.
“This was not taken lightly. We didn’t just say, ‘The hell with it. We don’t like it.’ There were a lot of things that went into it,” Gillian said of his administration’s decision not to accept OC Waterpark’s proposal.
Levchuk questioned further whether there were “a lot of options here that we’re missing” by not having a deeper discussion of the land swap.
Ultimately, he thought it was best not to hold up the award of the construction contract so that the project could move along without any delays.
“I think we’re doing the right thing here. We’ve been on this for a long time and I certainly don’t want to hold up the project because of a last-minute plea to somebody who knew nothing about this for months,” Levchuk said.
The police substation will be built on what is now a city-owned parking lot on Eighth Street next door to the OC Waterpark on the Boardwalk.The police substation is part of the city’s broader strategy to enhance public safety throughout town and give the police department a bigger presence on the Boardwalk.
In recent years, the city has dealt with an outburst of theft, fighting, underage drinking and other rowdy behavior, primarily on the Boardwalk, caused by large groups of teenagers during the summer tourism season.
Once the police substation is finished, the police department’s patrol units will temporarily move into the facility to allow renovations to begin on Ocean City’s Public Safety Building. The public safety building on Central Avenue at Eighth Street serves as the police department’s headquarters.
The public safety building formerly served as a school and dates to the late 1800s. The city plans to modernize and expand the antiquated building at an estimated cost of $30 million.
Construction work on the public safety building is tentatively expected to begin in 2025 and may be completed by late 2026, city officials have said.
