Preserving the Past to Help Drive the Future
Ocean City calls itself America’s Greatest Family Resort ... and for good reason. For so many, it has been a wonderful and unique place to grow up. For others, it has been a wonderful and charming place to spend the summer. And for even more people, it has been a wonderful and affordable place to visit for a weekend, week, or a few weeks. But that is changing.
Ocean City is becoming financially out of reach to many families, and indistinguishable from other shore destinations. Established in the 1800’s, Ocean City -- with its roots as a Methodist Retreat Community -- had hundreds of wonderful historic homes that were built between the 1880s and mid 1900s. These homes were a coveted part of the Jersey Shore landscape, providing a touchstone to the past, a stock of affordable places to stay, and ensuring diversity and interest in the City’s appearance. They made the town unique.
Unfortunately, developer investment interest in the city has put its historic home inventory at risk – a resource that for years attracted tourists and long-term residents and provided affordable housing for a local work force. Over the last 20 years, thousands of its historic homes have been demolished, and the pace of destruction is quickening, and tragic.
Adding to the loss is the fact that much more expensive, and more densely occupied buildings are rising in their place, placing greater stress on parking, flood water absorption and the local environment. Indeed, new home construction has a far greater carbon footprint than restoring older homes, which should be of particular concern to the inhabitants of a barrier island. Moreover, with rising home prices, Ocean City has seen among the greatest decline in the State of New Jersey in its year-round population. The reduction in full time residents, combined with housing challenges for business workers, have also put a strain on local businesses, as it has become more difficult to sustain a downtown business year-round.
This has to stop, or the Ocean City we have all come to know and love will be gone forever. To help address this adverse impact, we, the undersigned, urge Ocean City to invest in its historic homes, given the critically significant role they can play. Here are two actions for the city, through its city council or Historic Preservation Committee, to evaluate. To the extent that City Council does not engage on these proposals in a positive manner in the near term, the undersigned support submitting resolutions to the general electorate for inclusion on the next appropriate ballot.
First, the city should establish meaningful and impactful incentives for all historic homes in Ocean City to encourage their preservation and continued use.
Second, the City should establish a public notice process for the sale of any historic home in Ocean City to allow all interested bidders to participate.
Supporting Information
Incentives
The proposal is not to expand the current development restrictions of the Ocean City Historic District beyond its current boundaries. Instead, this proposal seeks to create financial incentives for historic houses in Ocean City (both inside and outside the Historic District) to make it more cost effective to maintain those homes, efficiently expand them, and ensure that families can grow within them. Examples of financial incentives that would be meaningful and impactful are as follows:
(1) A real estate tax credit equal to a percentage of the costs related to the exterior maintenance and repair. The exteriors of these homes are beautiful; however, the natural materials used, and labor necessary to maintain them, can be expensive. One approach would be to allow owners of such homes to deduct from their real estate taxes a certain percentage of such costs, subject to appropriate caps and other qualifications. Alternatively, the city could assist in securing grants for such work.
(2) Changes to its zoning and building laws to incentivize the preservation of historic homes. The rigidness of the zoning and permit process can add significant cost to preserving an historic home, leading to their demise. To address this, the city may want to permit -- without the need for an expensive and time-consuming variance process -- minor setback intrusions for older homes undergoing renovation and expansion but where the older home maintains a significant portion of its original character and does not greatly expand the footprint of the home. The city may also want to relax the rules for house lifting to the extent that an existing older home is in a less flood prone region of the city and is already elevated to a reasonable extent. The city could also look to swifter and lower cost permitting processes for historic homes to further incentivize their restoration and continued use. These changes could help the existing owners of historic homes expand the homes for their needs. The changes may also give developers an economic incentive to preserve the homes versus tearing them down. The city could also consider providing such incentives to new construction that replaces non-contributing older homes and where the new home is largely built on the same footprint as the original home and involves an architectural style that contributes to the neighborhood and city.
(3) Support for historic homeowners voluntarily placing deed restrictions on their homes to prevent demolition. This support could include providing a one-time real estate tax reduction for deed restricting a home and also creating an independent entity that can enforce deed restrictions.
(4) Consider designating all historic homes as Historically Designated Homes. This designation would be posted on all MLS listings, indicating that this is a home that the city values, and for which the city has created special incentives. The purpose of the designation, however, is not to subject the property to historic preservation restrictions but only to highlight that certain incentives are available
(5) Encourage the appropriate entities to partner with the owners of Ocean City old homes in marketing the homes' existence to visitors. An inventory of the homes can be created along with the history of each such structure. The Ocean City Historical Museum could provide a means for the information to be made viewable by visitors. There can be organized tours of Ocean City’s old homes, highlighting the years they were built and the stories of their owners.
(6) Provide incentives to any homes and buildings that can provide affordable summer housing for workers. Here too, the city could consider reducing annual real estate taxes in exchange for providing housing for business employees. There is opportunity for a public-private partnership entity between area businesses and area lodges to develop this solution together.
Public sale
Often, developers privately approach the owners of older homes, with the result being that the sale takes place without any opportunity for those interested in preserving the building to participate. This proposal would simply require public notice so that all willing buyers could participate. One example would be a regulation that (i) ensures such properties are publicly listed for sale, (ii) requires any bidder to state in the real estate purchase agreement whether their intention is to demolish or preserve the home, and (iii) to the extent a buyer intends to demolish the home, provides other interested bidders with notice thereof, and the opportunity to provide an alternate bid that would include preserving the home.
