For generations of vacationers heading to Ocean Metropolis, the towering “Large Wheel” was the very first thing they noticed from miles away.
The sight of the 140-foot-tall (42-meter) journey allow them to know they had been getting near the Jersey Shore city that calls itself “America’s Best Household Resort,” with its promise of kid-friendly seashores, seagulls and sea shells, and a bustling boardwalk filled with pizza, ice cream and cotton sweet.
And within the coronary heart of it was Gillian’s Wonderland Pier, an amusement park that was the most recent in almost a century-long line of family-friendly amusement points of interest operated by the household of Ocean Metropolis’s mayor.
However the rides had been to fall silent and nonetheless Sunday night time, because the park run by Ocean Metropolis’s mayor and nurtured by generations of his ancestors, closed down, the sufferer of economic woes made worse by the lingering aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic and Superstorm Sandy.
Gillian and his household have operated amusement rides and points of interest on the Ocean Metropolis Boardwalk for 94 years. The most recent iteration of the park, Wonderland, opened in 1965.
“I attempted my finest to maintain Wonderland for so long as potential, via more and more troublesome challenges annually,” Mayor Jay Gillian wrote in August when he introduced the park would shut. “It’s been my life, my legacy and my household. But it surely’s not a viable enterprise.”
Gillian didn’t reply to quite a few requests for remark over the previous week.
Sheryl Gross was on the park for its last day along with her two youngsters and 5 grandchildren, having fun with it one final time.
“I’ve been coming right here perpetually,” she mentioned. “My daughter is 43 and I’ve been coming right here since she was 2 years previous in a stroller. Now I’m right here with my grandchildren.”
She remembers many years of bringing her household from Gloucester Township within the southern New Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia to create pleased household reminiscences at Wonderland.
“Simply the thrill on their faces once they get on the rides,” she mentioned. “It actually made it really feel family-friendly. Numerous that’s going to be misplaced now.”
There have been lengthy traces Sunday for the Large Wheel, the log flume and different standard rides as folks used the final of journey tickets many had purchased earlier within the 12 months, pondering Wonderland would go on perpetually.
An area non-profit group, Associates of OCNJ Historical past and Tradition, is elevating cash to attempt to save the amusement park, presumably below a brand new proprietor who may be extra amenable to purchasing it with some monetary help. Invoice Merritt, one of many non-profit’s leaders, mentioned the group has raised over $1 million to assist meet what could possibly be a $20-million price ticket for the property.
“Ocean Metropolis will probably be essentially completely different with out this attraction,” he mentioned. “This city depends on being family-friendly. The park has rides focused at children; it’s referred to as ‘Wonderland’ for a purpose.”
The property’s present proprietor, Icona Resorts, beforehand proposed a $150-million, 325-room luxurious lodge elsewhere on Ocean Metropolis’s boardwalk, however the metropolis rejected these plans.
The corporate’s CEO, Eustace Mita, mentioned earlier this 12 months he would take not less than till the top of the 12 months to suggest a use for the amusement park property.
He purchased it in 2021 after Gillian’s household was in peril of defaulting on financial institution loans for the property.
At a neighborhood assembly final month, Gillian mentioned Wonderland couldn’t bounce again from Superstorm Sandy in 2012, the pandemic in 2020 and a rise in New Jersey’s minimal wage that doubled his payroll prices, leaving him $4 million in debt.
Mita put up funds to stave off a sheriff’s sale of the property, and gave the mayor three years to show the enterprise round. That deadline expired this 12 months.
Mita didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Merritt mentioned he and others can’t think about Ocean Metropolis with out Wonderland.
“You take a look at it along with your coronary heart, and also you say ‘You’re dropping all of the cherished reminiscences and all of the historical past; how are you going to let that go?’” he mentioned. “And then you definately take a look at it along with your head and also you say, ‘They’re the rationale this city is worthwhile; how are you going to let that go?’”
