Popular with summer crowds, the Promenade will be made even more inviting in 2025 with new decorative lighting, benches and other upgrades.
Sea Isle City’s new five-year capital plan includes millions of dollars to spruce up the oceanfront Promenade and to build new stormwater pumping stations that will protect the low-lying island from chronic flooding.
Altogether, the city is proposing to spend nearly $50 million from 2025 to 2029 for an array of public improvements, including road reconstruction, flood-mitigation projects, new equipment and upgrades to the water and sewer system.
A makeover for the Promenade, a hub for the summer tourist crowds, will be a major focus of the capital plan. In 2025, the city is looking to spend a total of $3.3 million to add decorative lighting, new benches and structural improvements to the 1½-mile-long walkway that runs along the beach from 29th to 57th streets.
Sea Isle will be helped by a $2 million state grant awarded early this year for the Promenade’s redo. The money comes from the Boardwalk Preservation Fund, a state program for restoration and improvements to boardwalks and promenades in beach towns along the Jersey Shore.
New decorative lighting at the northern and southern ends of the Promenade will add to the walkway’s appeal. The project will fill in areas of the Promenade that don’t already have decorative lighting, City Business Administrator George Savastano explained.
“It’s going to look beautiful,” Savastano said in an interview Tuesday. “There will be decorative lighting along the entire length of the Promenade.”
The capital plan is also dominated by funding for a series of pumping stations throughout town to ease flooding in low-lying neighborhoods. In all, Sea Isle would spend $18 million for pumping stations from 2025 to 2029.
“It’s basically our No. 1 priority. It’s the highest amount of line items in the capital plan,” City Council President William Kehner said of Sea Isle’s spending on projects to alleviate flooding.
Flooding leaves a section of Sea Isle City's Sounds Avenue underwater in late September.City Council still must give its formal approval for the capital plan, something that is expected at the governing body’s Dec. 24 meeting.
“I didn’t have any objections. We think everyone else is on board,” Kehner said of the five-member Council’s support for the plan.
Essentially, the capital plan is a sweeping blueprint for the next five years for citywide improvements. Council would need to adopt funding ordinances in the future to finance the pumping stations and other individual projects in the plan.
Pumping stations intercept floodwater and channel it back into the bay much faster than it would normally take to drain off the streets after a coastal storm. They have proved effective in Ocean City, Avalon and other shore communities vulnerable to flooding.
“They’ll basically help to eliminate what I would call nuisance flooding that makes it difficult to navigate the streets,” Savastano noted of Sea Isle’s pumping stations.
Sea Isle built its first pumping station in 2019 in the flood-prone area at the bay end of 38th Street and Sounds Avenue. It will next shift its focus on sections of Landis Avenue that are hit by stormwater.
For 2025, the city plans to build a pumping station to protect the Landis Avenue corridor between 43rd and 46th streets all the way to the bay. Sea Isle will combine existing funds with $2.5 million proposed in the capital plan for 2025 to complete the pumping station.
The area for the new pumping station will include the site of the city’s new $21 million community recreation center, which is scheduled to open in the autumn of 2025 between Park Road and Central Avenue from 45th to 46th streets.
Sea Isle's community recreation center, shown here in a rendering, will be protected by a new pumping station to ease flooding in the surrounding area. (Courtesy of Ernest Bock & Sons Inc.)Overall, in the longer term as many as eight pumping stations are being considered along the Landis Avenue artery from 30th Street to 57th Street in partnership with Cape May County to share the cost.
According to the capital plan, the city would spend $2.5 million on pumping stations in 2025, $5.5 million in 2026, $3.5 million in 2027, $2.5 million in 2028 and $4 million in 2029 for a total of $18 million.
Savastano said Sea Isle continues to work with the county on plans for more pumping stations. The hope is to secure state and federal grants to help defray the cost of construction, he noted.
Combined with road and drainage improvements, pumping station projects are the centerpiece of the city’s long-term strategy to fight flooding in low-lying neighborhoods.
For road and drainage projects, the capital plan proposes $3 million in spending in 2025, $6 million in 2026, $4 million in 2027, $3 million in 2028 and $5 million in 2029 for a total of $21 million.
