The old building had been surrounded by a chain-link fence before it was torn down.
A burned-out hulk that was an eyesore in Sea Isle City ever since a raging fire destroyed the commercial building last August has finally been demolished.
Making quick work of the building, an excavator tore down the last remnants of the charred structure on Park Road on Tuesday.
“We are very happy about the building coming down, and very happy for Sea Isle City,” Mayor Leonard Desiderio said.
Desiderio indicated he is anxious for the property owners to move forward in redeveloping the site, which sits in the heart of Sea Isle’s historic Fish Alley neighborhood of restaurants and commercial fishing boats.
“Now, we’ll work with the owners. Whatever is allowed on the property will be good for Sea Isle. It’s up to the owners to do what they want to do, whatever is allowed,” Desiderio said of the city’s zoning and planning regulations for that area of town.
Neil Byrne, the city’s construction official, said no formal redevelopment plans have been submitted yet by the property owners.
A roaring fire on Aug. 14 destroyed the Casa Taco and Casino Pizza restaurants that leased space in the old building located at 4210 Park Road.
An excavator tears down the last remnants of the old building on Park Road.In the fire’s aftermath, Byrne declared the building an “imminent hazard,” meaning that it would have to be demolished.
Casa Taco was engulfed in flames during the height of the fire. The roof of the building collapsed near the entrance to Casa Taco. Casino Pizza also sustained damage.
City tax records show that the property is owned by AKGG LLC, a Sea Isle-based real estate, rentals and leasing company. AKGG is an acronym for the initials of the owners, sisters Anna Marie Kelly and Gloria Giampietro.
Denise McPhillips, Anna Marie Kelly’s daughter, said in an interview with SeaIsleNews.com last September that she had to work with insurance companies, contractors and utility companies to get final clearance to demolish the structure.
In the interview, McPhillips said some thought had been given to transforming the property into a miniature version of the Washington Street Mall, the nostalgic pedestrian thoroughfare in Cape May lined with retail shops and restaurants. But she emphasized that no formal redevelopment plans had been crafted at that time.
McPhillips said the now-demolished building had been owned by her family for three generations. Her grandparents, Camillo and Antoinette Bufalo, were the original owners when the building functioned as a fish market decades ago.
McPhillips said she believed the building dated to the early 1900s. Part of its colorful history were stories of bootleggers making illegal whiskey on the second floor during Prohibition, she said.
In 2018, the bayside property was put up for sale for $6 million. It was being marketed at that time as a development site for a three-story complex featuring 20 units of multi-family housing on the top two floors. In addition, there would have been 25 parking spots, eight boat slips and 8,745 square feet of commercial space on the first floor.
However, the property didn’t sell at that time, and the redevelopment project wasn’t built.
In the past 15 years or so, the building had housed commercial establishments, McPhillips said. Before Casa Taco and Casino Pizza, it was occupied by the Andrea Trattoria Italiana II restaurant and the Berardi Brothers pizzeria.
