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Time to Let Doo-wop Go in Wildwood?

The corner of Lincoln and Pacific avenues

By Shay Roddy

WILDWOOD – One of the most active developers in Wildwood said the city has it backwards when it comes to preserving its Doo-wop roots, and the community’s aversion to change has set progress back decades. 

“This mentality in the area of trying to hold onto the ‘Doo-wop era’ is a problem,” said Joe Byrne, president of BG Capital, a Philadelphia-based developer with several large, active Wildwood projects.  

“If someone grew up in the Doo-wop era, that means, statistically speaking, they were in their teenage years, or early 20s, in the 1950s. Well, that means they’re 80 or 90-years-old right now,” Byrne said. “From a development perspective, from an overall property perspective, that’s not a market anyone should be targeting because it makes zero sense. Ninety-year-old people don’t buy new vacation homes. Ninety-year-old people don’t take their kids to the boardwalk. They don’t come down the shore every weekend and go out to restaurants. I’m just being honest.” 

Byrne sees the problem more clearly than ever along Pacific Avenue, a corridor once known for its nightclubs, where some of the country’s top-selling recording artists performed before and after they made names for themselves on the national stage.  

A lot has changed since then. Some of those artists, like Bobby Rydell, have since passed. Others, like 80-year-old Chubby Checker, play only a handful of shows a year, with few and far between in Wildwood. The Pacific Avenue commercial district is now known for its vacant buildings, ghostly sidewalks, and struggling businesses.  

The only thing that hasn’t changed is the brick and mortar or more often stucco – containing the stages those performers once graced. 

“That whole mentality of holding onto the past has been part of the reason that Wildwood’s growth has been stagnant for the last 30 years,” Byrne said. “What has to happen is buildings that have reached their useful life expectancy and have been vacant need to start coming down and making way for new investment. Vacant buildings don’t create any jobs. They create no commerce. They’re a detriment from a public health and safety standpoint, as well as economically.  

Wildwood Mayor Peter Byron agreed in part. He said the city should not entirely abandon its Doo-wop roots, but there are other ways to showcase the history besides hanging onto dilapidated old buildings. 

“I don’t think architecturally that we need to continue down that Doo-wop road. I think more modern is probably more popular with the age demographics that are coming and buying in the town right now,” said the mayor.  

Byron, who has worked closely with Byrne, said the city needs to continue its efforts to make new development easier. 

“I don’t think our brand should be Doo-wop. Wildwood has a rich music history that goes back to the 50s,” Byron said. “We’re way beyond that… I don’t disagree that we need to be moving in a different direction, but we can’t forget the history, either.”  

Byrne believes the lingering and constrictive Doo-wop mentality is one of the reasons Wildwood has fallen behind its neighbors in new development and has led to dangerous vacant buildings. 

“The problem with that is a lot of people have used that mentality to not reinvest money into the buildings that have seen their useful life expectancy. The other thing it has done is give people an excuse to leave buildings vacant for over 10, 15, 20 years. All along the Pacific Avenue corridor, there are vacant buildings that have been vacant for decades. It kills property values, and it kills insurance ratings,” Byrne said, adding nearby vacant buildings add risk and increase insurance prices for their neighbors.  

Byron said the city has a backlog of development applications – something he called a good problem. He said the new development will create an example of the town’s potential, something others will follow. 

“I think what’s happening now is you have developers, like Joe Byrne, who’s coming in and setting the bar high. He’s the first big developer to come in and take a chance on Wildwood. I commend him for that. Once people start seeing developers like Joe Byrne come in and the type of style he’s doing… the more modern design, I think these older buildings are going to come down. I think the current owners are going to just wind up selling them,” Byron said. 

Byrne said he has felt the resistance to change, adding that ugly buildings with little architectural significance are being deemed historic simply because they’re old. Byrne hopes to find a middle ground. 

“I’m not saying don’t respect the past. I’m not saying there’s not instances where a building has true historic value,” he added.  

BG Capital’s Impact on Pacific Avenue 

BG Capital has done its part to try to revitalize Pacific Avenue. They currently own three block-long lots in one section of the commercial corridor, but Byrne said he is becoming frustrated with the bureaucracy involved in getting his projects done and the lack of progress in the surrounding neighborhood. 

The former Shamrock Café and its sister properties, in the 3700 block, are now a mostly empty lot in the developer’s control after they closed on the sale following the relocation by the former owner of the Victorian house that sat above the bar for generations.  

BG Capital also owns the lot containing the old Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and an adjacent bar, in the 3800 block, that most recently operated as The Wood, but will be rebranded Exit 4 this summer.  

The former Fairview Café, 2nd Street Annie’s and M.T. Bottles were demolished, and the space was set to become a student housing complex, which is under construction; however, Byrne said they recently changed plans there and it will now become a hotel.  

The high-rise project, in the 3600 block of Pacific Avenue, was to have 74units and was going to be marketed to foreign students in Wildwood for the summer to work on J-1 visas. However, an error by the state caused the city and the developer to believe there would not be a need for a Coastal Area Facility Review Act(CAFRA) permit, issued by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). When the state corrected the error and the developer was required to apply for CAFRA, there became a need for significant parking, which was something the plans had not accounted for.  

After a months-long review, the CAFRA permit was granted after BG Capital designated parking on a different lot, but in the 11th hour, they decided to back off the J-1 concept and go with a hotel in the same footprint. Byrne said the parking requirement led them to believe that business model made the most sense. 

Byrne said the parking lot will go on either the Shamrock lot or the Exit 4/VFW lot and that the other property will either be developed or sold as is.  

He said plans for the hotel, which will reduce the number of units to create larger hotel rooms, will be finalized in the coming weeks and shared with the Herald at that time. Byrne said although he is blocks from the beach in the Pacific Avenue location, the lack of quality in his competition is one of the reasons he is confident the hotel will succeed.  

Further north on Pacific, at the site of the old St. Ann School and Rectory, BG Capital is under construction on a new housing project with communal amenities, occupying the full square block, which Byrne said is projected to be complete in February 2023.  

To contact Shay Roddy, email sroddy@cmcherald.com. 

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