Avalon Mayor, Council President Weigh in on Business District, Boutique Motels

ED. NOTE: CLICK HERE TO READ VINCE CONTI’S STORY ON AVALON’S PLAN TO STUDY THE FUTURE OF ITS DOWNTOWN BUSINESS DISTRICT.
AVALON — The Herald spoke with Avalon Mayor Marty Pagliughi as well as Council President and Planning and Zoning Board Member Sam Wierman, in separate interviews, about the future of the town’s business district. Here is what they had to say about several hot topics…
On boutique hotels in the downtown…
PAGLIUGHI: “The concept sounds good. … The concept, I like…. The pros outnumber the cons, number one, in our minds. But we want to see this big picture. Let a consultant come back and tell us.”
On “if the time is now” to make a decision on rezoning to allow boutique hotels…
PAGLIUGHI: “That’s obvious.”
On if something like the Reeds is a good concept for Avalon…
PAGLIUGHI: “That’s a much bigger operation than we would visualize on Dune Drive. I could tell you that. We’re not looking for anything that scale.”
On the opposition to the boutique hotel idea…
PAGLIUGHI: “Most of it has been blown out of proportion. They think we’re going to build the hotel like Desert Sands all the way down Dune Drive. That’s not the case. So, once a plan is formulated, then we present it, I think a lot of people will realize, oh, yeah, right, this is a good thing for the town. You always have the 10 percenters that are going to be against everything.”
On the town’s evolution and criticism that the changing character is diminishing the charm of the town…
PAGLIUGHI: “They’re still lined up, buying properties at $3, $4, $5 million. $21 million down on 68th street. I don’t see how much charm got lost…If you want to live in a little fishing village, move to Chincoteague, Virginia. That’s not Avalon and it’s never going to be. Like I said, they’ve got to face reality. Things are going to change…. What do I have to do? Apologize because we made the town so successful? I’ve been elected since 1987 here.”
On if now is a “critical moment” for the future of the business district…
PAGLIUGHI: “Not really, because we started this 20 years ago, when we rezoned the business district. We had professional planners looking at what’s the best interest, because that whole business district could have been turned into residential houses. That’s when we came in and rezoned it, to make it mixed use, to give the incentive to a developer to come in and build the residential part of it, to make it pay for the retail part downstairs…. And as you can see, finally, it’s starting to take off. We just need to kick it a little bit more. Every town has to have a successful business district to succeed. And that’s what we’re trying to do. That’s what we’ve been trying to do for the last 20 years.”
On if there is concern over lack of restaurants…
PAGLIUGHI: “Supply and demand. The demand is here. The supply will show up,” Pagliughi said. “From what I understand, there’s two more in the talking stage, in the works. But one goes, another one comes in…. They’ll show up in the business district, where they’re zoned to be. People, go put your money where your mouth is and open a restaurant. If you want to complain about it, go ahead. We’re laying the foundation to allow it. Now it’s up to them.”
On concerns over restaurants not coming to the business district, because condo owners do not want to live above a restaurant…
PAGLIUGHI: “That’s a problem the borough can’t really solve. … When they build these things, they have every right in the world to change the form of ownership to a condominium form of ownership. That’s when the condominium association can put on deed restriction, and they won’t allow [downstairs restaurants]. We can’t do anything about that.”
WIERMAN: “That’s been a big conversation we’ve been having…. [Developers] know they’re going to develop it and then sell it off piece by piece and they know they can get more money for the condos up top if they deed the condo association to not allow restaurants on the first floor. That’s why a lot of the new construction that has gone in up and down Dune Drive is retail first floor, but not restaurants.”
On if there is anything the borough can do about this problem, as downtown Dune Drive continues to convert to the upstairs condo format…
WIERMAN: “We had an application recently [for redevelopment of the strip that used to include Tortilla Flats and Nemos at 26th Street and Dune Drive], where we said, we want the bylaws to not be deeded saying that restaurants are excluded. We want the building to be built with the infrastructure so that a restaurant could go in there, to have the exhaust systems built in, where if a restaurant wants to come in, they can. It’s not like they move in and there’s no exhaust system built into the building, where it precludes them from having a restaurant there… The door is at least open where a restaurant could go in there, if someone wanted to build it, as opposed to completely shutting the door and having the building be built and deeded in a way that a restaurant can never go there. We can’t say a restaurant has to be in there, but we can say the opportunity has to be there for a restaurant to possibly go in there. That’s one of the things that we asked for and the developer said, ‘okay.’”
On what the town can do to address several businesses recently closing and being turned into residential development projects…
WIERMAN: “We can’t just sit there and do nothing, because that’s not doing a service to the town. That’s doing a huge disservice to the town, to not do anything. And that would be something where, if that happened, and you look in the mirror, however many years down the line, and think, ‘God, I wish I would’ve done more. Now the damage is done, and we can’t turn it back.’”
On the overall level of concern…
WIERMAN: “Opening the door, opening the conversation to the possibility of someone coming in [to the business district] and possibly developing in a way that’s different from what it is now, could help not only preserve portions of the business district, but reinvigorate it as a whole. As you see the business district shrinking and shrinking, lot by lot, and piece of land by piece of land, it starts to get scary, because you wonder where the tipping point is.”
To reach Shay Roddy, email sroddy@cmcherald.com or call (609) 886-8600 ext. 142.