Lifesaving station needs saving in Ocean City
Roy Wagner, Ocean City Councilman, and Charlie London show the outside of the Ocean City Lifesaving Station at 801 4th St. in Ocean City. Photo by: Anthony Smedile
By MARTIN DEANGELIS, Press of AC Staff Writer | Posted: Sunday, March 7, 2010
OCEAN CITY — Charlie London wants to put you in this house.
Or you. Or you.
Actually London, 51, the president of the Saving Our Station Coalition, would like to see just about anybody move into the house on the northeast corner of Fourth Street and Atlantic Avenue here, because this house isn’t just another house.
It’s the old Ocean City Lifesaving Station, which dates back to the 1880s — and which has been the subject of a series of court battles that started in the 1990s and has dragged on for a long decade since.
The station was built by the United States Lifesaving Service and then became U.S. Coast Guard property when those two agencies were merged. It was sold and became a private home in 1945 and has gone through a series of owners since, including ones who bought it in 1999, planning to demolish the building and replace it with three new duplex condos on the 130-by-100 foot corner lot.
That gave birth to the Saving Our Station Coalition, which started those court fights and tried several other plans for rescuing the building, including getting the city to buy the property for more than $3 million — a move voters rejected in a 2005 referendum. There have also been proposals to move the building and to get the city to trade for it with an unused piece of city land, but so far, nothing has worked to guarantee that the building and its history won’t be destroyed.
In the latest court case, though, the owners agreed with the SOS Coalition and the city on a “preservation price” for the property of $887,500. But that agreement, helped along by a judge, came with a deadline: If there’s no buyer by May 14, the owners can get rid of the building.
And that pressure has turned London and other members of his coalition into committed — but no-commission — real-estate sellers of a sort. They’ve held two open houses already trying to lure the right buyers to the house, and they have two more open houses scheduled this month, on Saturday and then again March 27.
“At this point, we’re planning another two in April, and one more in May, if not two,” said London, 51, who helped lead a visitor on a weekend tour of the 135-year-old building and pointed out some of the details that its fans hope can attract a buyer who would want to live in a historic house.
They include wide-planked hardwood floors all through the home. There’s a working fireplace that dominates a front parlor, a sprawling, open kitchen with an island area topped by a butcher-block counter, four bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms.
“The building is solid,” adds Kim Baker, a retired writer and editor who lives in Egg Harbor Township, and is the SOS Coalition’s historian. “I mean, it was built to last.”
They point to the 180-square-foot greenhouse as they walk by, mention the high ceilings and “a lot of closet space,” says London, strolling down a first-floor hallway lined with closets on one side. For more storage, there’s a detatched garage outside.
London lives in Ventnor and works at Atlantic City International Airport now, but he got involved in the lifesaving station when he lived right next door for a dozen or so years. He leads the way to the upstairs, where the master bedroom — which used to be the crew’s quarters — has a bathroom that’s so big, he sees it being turned into two bathrooms to make the master suite a little more attractive.
Above it all, on the third floor there’s a cupola that the lifesaving crew used as its lookout — and that still has an ocean view, Baker and London promise, even if the windows are boarded up now.
“And this is considered beach-block,” Baker adds — although it is a full, long block to the Boardwalk and ocean, past many homes built on the beach after the lifesaving station went up in what was then a largely empty area of town.
The terms of the historic-preservation agreement say a prospective owner can do just about anything they want inside the house — including convert it into a duplex, the tour guides say. But they warn that buyers have to protect the “historic integrity” of the building, so they’d be strictly limited in what they can do to the outside of the home.
Ocean City Councilman Roy Wagner is still pushing to get the city to do a land-swap for the building and help convert it into a maritime museum, but he’ll be satisfied with any plan that will preserve the lifesaving station.
“The firstest with the mostest gets it,” Wagner said.
London isn’t giving up hope on public preservation plans, and he looks forward to a city meeting planned for this week that could help make that happen at the new price — which is less than a third of what the city planned to buy the place for in 2005.
“We’re going on both paths, full speed ahead,” he said.
So even though the house wasn’t scheduled to be open, when two visitors on a house-hunting mission in Ocean City went to the door on Saturday, London happily let them in and showed them around.
Jim and Kristin Kline are from Sparta, in Sussex County, but they’ve visited Ocean City for years and they’ve always wondered how the lifesaving station was on the inside.
“It looks like a great house,” Kristin said. “Lots of charm and character.”
Her husband agreed — to a point.
“It has the character,” he said, “but it needs work.”
The people making the sales pitch understand that. But London argues that at the court-mandated, non-negotiable purchase price, even if it takes $200,000 worth of renovations, a beach-block house on an oversized lot for less than $1.1 million qualifies as a positive bargain in today’s Ocean City real-estate market.
Oh, and speaking of the size of the lot, near the end of the tour, London pointed out a feature of this property that could make the lifesaving station the dream property for almost anybody in Ocean City — or in any other traffic-clogged local shore town almost any summer day.
“Out back,” he said, leading the way, “you have probably 12 parking spaces.”
