The old public safety building once served as a school before becoming the headquarters for the Ocean City Police Department.
Ocean City is moving ever closer to the demolition of the nearly 150-year-old public safety building to make room for construction of a modern headquarters for the police department.
City Council is expected to award a demolition contract at its meeting Thursday. Seven bids have been received from demolition companies seeking the contract.
The bids generally ranged from $1.1 million to $1.9 million. TAMCO Construction Inc. of Doylestown, Pa., submitted the apparent low bid of $1.1 million.
All bids include a $500,000 contingency for the removal of contaminated soil from the site, if that is needed as part of the demolition work, city spokesman Doug Bergen said.
Once the building is torn down, the site will serve as a temporary parking lot over the summer.
A sign on the front of the now-empty building says that it dates to 1884, just five years after Ocean City was founded as a Christian seaside resort by four Methodist ministers.
The red-brick structure at 835 Central Ave. originally served as a school before it was transformed into the police headquarters decades ago.
A sign on the front of the building indicates it dates back to 1884.After years of discussion and debate, city officials have agreed to tear down the antiquated building to create space for construction of a new police headquarters and municipal court on the same spot.
Design work for the new public safety building is still in the works, Bergen said. The tentative schedule calls for going out to bid this summer for the new building. Construction would take place from October 2026 through May 2028, according to the latest plans.
In June 2024, City Council approved a bond ordinance that included $30 million for the public safety building project. The city will get an engineer’s estimate of the cost once the design is completed, Bergen noted.
The police department moved out of the old public safety building in early March. Serving as the department’s temporary headquarters at this time is a new $6.1 million police substation overlooking the Boardwalk at Eighth Street.
