The wall under the decking of Wonderland Pier is caving in and showing signs of collapse, say owner Eustace Mita and Ocean City inspectors.
Ocean City has sent Mita a “Notice of Unsafe Structure,” along with a request for an engineer’s report and a plan of corrective action, city spokesperson Doug Bergen said.
“It’s an emergent condition,” Bergen said. The wall is toward the rear of the structure and is “not anywhere near where the public would walk by,” he said.
“The city’s only involvement is with the cinderblock wall that’s caved in and falling over,” he said.
Mita, meanwhile, was sounding the alarm that the conditions of the pier and the iconic Ferris wheel were dire.
He said Monday that he was consulting engineers and that the Ferris wheel would need to be “literally torched” and cut into pieces to be taken down.
“It’s going to take a long time and a lot of engineering,” he said.
“The original plan was to dismantle the Ferris wheel and reassemble it,” Mita said.
However, the steel company that dismantled the Morey’s Piers Ferris wheel for refurbishing told Mita that would not be possible for the Wonderland Ferris wheel.
Mita said “even the bolts that hold it together” are beyond dismantling, permanently welded in place, “because of the conditions of being oceanfront, and non-operable for so long.”
Mita is negotiating with Ocean City to build a hotel on the site, which was declared “in need of rehabilitation,” in part because of the deterioration of the pier.
While Mita used the condition of the pier to justify a designation that would allow him to build the hotel without zoning changes, community members have contended that, as the owner, Mita was responsible for allowing the pier to deteriorate.
The amusement pier, owned for decades by the family of Mayor Jay Gillian, closed for good in October 2024. Despite community opposition, City Council approved the rehabilitation designation in June, triggering ongoing negotiations over Mita’s project.
His original plan for a seven-story hotel included preserving the Ferris wheel and the historic carousel, in addition to several other kiddie rides. He said Monday he was still trying to save the carousel.
Mita said he would try to “limit the damage as best we can” to the pier.
“We can’t make repairs because it’s imploding,” he said.
Mita told the Ocean City Sentinel last week his latest design proposal called for the hotel to be set back from both the Plaza Place neighborhood at the rear of the property and the boardwalk in front.
He described a hotel that gets higher toward its center, with a public plaza in front, and a building that will be about 23 feet higher at the rear border than the 50-foot high log flume that is currently there. “It will have a beautiful plaza, which will be open to the public and will have firepits and the like,” he told the Sentinel. “That’s really where we’re at.”