Former Rodeway Inn Could See Revival As Affordable Housing

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The Rodeway Inn along the Black Horse Pike in Egg Harbor Township could be revived as garden apartments and townhouses, according to a developer’s plan that will go before EHT’s planning board on Monday. Eastern Pacific Development is seeking preliminary site plan approval for an affordable housing project that would turn the existing 77-unit motel into one-and two-bedroom garden apartments. Nine additional townhouses with two- and three- bedroom units would also be built, according to the planning board agenda. The developer is also proposing to demolish an existing office building on the site and add a children’s play area and a community area. “There’s a significant need for affordable housing right now,” said Hans Alpert, chief executive of Eastern Pacific Development.

More about: Business, The Pine Barrens, affordable housing, black horse pike, egg harbor township, motel, redevelopment

Atlantic City Awards Bike Loop Construction Contract

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Atlantic City’s purchasing department on Wednesday awarded Egg Harbor City’s Command Company a contract to build out the chunk of a planned bike loop that will connect the beach to Gardner’s Basin via specially-adapted city streets in the inlet.

More about: Atlantic City, Exploring South Jersey, Government, absecon island, Atlantic City, Bike Loop, Bike route, bikeway grant

Atlantic City Seeking Sculpture for Brown Memorial Park

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Atlantic City has published a request-for-proposals for a sculpture to go in the renovated Harold R. Brown Memorial Park along Dr Martin Luther King Blvd. The city is requesting proposals to design, supply and install a sculpture, according to the bid notice. Sealed proposals should be submitted before the purchasing division’s meeting on Tuesday May 9 at 11 am. Artists interested in submitting a proposal should contact the purchasing department for bid specifications. Brown’s park has been transformed this year, since Councilman Kaleem Shabazz and others launched a campaign to try and find funds to clean it up:

Help Needed To Rebuild Atlantic City Memorial Park

Atlantic City Development Corp, the developer behind the Stockton University campus on Absecon Island, came forward to help out after the county said it couldn’t provide the funds.

More about: Atlantic City, Government

South Jersey Wunderkinder Plan Pop-Up Dining Experience For New AC Charity

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A group of young talents from the Atlantic City area has come together to form an ambitious new charity that they will kick off with AC’s first ever pop-up restaurant – outdoors, under the stars, and for 200 to 300 people. The nonprofit is called For Atlantic City By Atlantic City and it is the brainchild of Michael Brennan, the award-winning chef of Ventnor’s Cardinal Bistro, and friends including Carl Fleck and Lenny Schafer of the Iron Room in Atlantic City. For the first pop-up extravaganza, Brennan will be the kitchen mastermind, while Fleck and Schafer will craft cocktails for the guests. There is a kickstarter to fund the project and Brennan said he hopes to send $30,000 of the fundraising proceeds to the Atlantic City Boys and Girls Club. “Basically, having grown up in this area and watching the steady decline of not only our economy but the environment around us, I wanted to be able to help,” Brennan said via Facebook.

More about: Atlantic City

Meet the ARTeriors Artists

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Heather Deegan Hires stands under some industrial lighting and looks from her phone to the wall in front of her and back to the phone again. She’s trying to show me her vision for transforming the sterile space with graying baby-blue walls and institutional floor tiles into a topsy-turvy wonderland. She first saw the room a couple of weeks ago and, at this point, she has just over a week before it will become one of the installations at Atlantic City’s third ARTeriors project.  

“The whole theme of our room is an upside down, sort of Alice in Wonderland, but a dark version of it,” said Deegan Hires (@bodypaintingbyheather). “So we still – we have a lot of work to do.”

More about: Atlantic City, Voices

Atlantic City Mayor Optimistic Skate Park Can Be Rebuilt, Soon

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Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian is optimistic the city’s skate park, mysteriously demolished on Wednesday, can be rebuilt for the summer. Mayor Guardian met earlier on Thursday with Jason Klotz, one of the original architects of the informal park known as Back Sov, to talk about how the project can be rebuilt to code. The park, which had been used by skaters from in and around the city, was assembled over the course of a few years on an old street hockey rink on Sovereign Avenue, overlooking the bay. Klotz and his colleagues will attend the city’s planning board meeting next week to present their plans for the new park, Mayor Guardian said. The Mayor was impressed that Klotz already had funding and volunteers organized to do the work.

More about: Atlantic City

Even More People Are Leaving Atlantic County

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Does it sometimes feel like a lot of people around you are packing up and leaving? If you’re in Atlantic County, you might have noticed a trend. The county lost more than 3,700 people in the last two years, more than 5 a day*, according to the latest estimates published by the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday. The estimates show that the pace of population shrinkage in the county has increased, too. Check out how Atlantic County compares to other shrinking counties in South Jersey (Gloucester county is the only one of the six southernmost counties to show a population increase between 2010 and 2016, according to the Census Bureau estimates):

Last year the Atlantic County population shrunk faster than in any of the seven previous years of Census Bureau estimates, which are based on the 2010 census.

More about: Atlantic City, population, South Jersey