Former bank building to become new police department headquarters

Ocean City is scrapping its plans to renovate the antiquated Public Safety Building and will instead buy a landmark building in the heart of downtown to serve as the new headquarters for the police department.

City Council is expected at its meeting Thursday to approve the acquisition of the former Crown Bank building at 801 Asbury Ave., as well as a parking lot directly behind it, for $12.6 million. The funding to make the purchase will come from a bond ordinance up for Council’s consideration on the meeting agenda.

Council President Terry Crowley Jr. said the purchase will save taxpayers a significant amount of money compared to the city’s previous plan to modernize and expand the Public Safety Building, a former school dating to the late 1800s.

He said the estimated cost of renovating the Public Safety Building is around $30 million to $35 million – a figure that could go much higher based on the condition of the old structure if renovations were done.

“Once you get started in the building, you could find other problems,” Crowley said in an interview Monday.

With the city now abandoning plans to save the Public Safety Building, the structure will likely be demolished to create more parking for the downtown shopping district as part of short-term plans for the property, Crowley said.

“We’re going to weigh our options,” he said, adding that longer-term plans might include the city selling the property, located at Eighth Street and Central Avenue.

The fate of the Public Safety Building has generated much discussion for years among the mayor and members of City Council.

    The Public Safety Building is a former school dating to the late 1800s.
  

Mayor Jay Gillian had once flirted with the idea of developing an entirely new public safety building combining the operations of the police and fire departments. He backed off after Council balked at the estimated $42 million price for a new building.

In a surprising turn of events, Gillian announced two weeks ago that the city was exploring the possibility of buying the former Crown Bank building for a new police headquarters, but would first conduct an analysis of the building’s structural integrity.

The six-story former Crown Bank building dates to 1925 and is a landmark structure in the center of Ocean City’s downtown retail district. It consists of five floors and a mezzanine area.

The ground floor functions as a retail complex known as The Shoppes at Asbury, while the upper floors are office space. The building’s current owner, the real estate investment firm Eclat Investments, has its corporate office on the sixth floor.

The city already leases the fourth and fifth floors and part of the second floor of the building to accommodate some of the administrative operations of the police department.

“Police are currently housed there in rented space, and they say the building meets their needs,” Gillian said in statement two weeks while announcing the city’s interest in possibly buying the property.

The mayor could not be immediately reached for comment Monday about the city’s plan to move ahead to buy building.

Crowley said the deal offers the advantages of saving the city money, finding a new use for a historic building and creating more public parking for the downtown district.

“It’s a unique opportunity to save the taxpayers money and give the police what they need,” he said.

    The front entrance of the former Crown Bank building overlooks the corner of Eighth Street and Asbury Avenue
  

Twin brothers Raj and Yogi Khatiwala, who head Eclat Investments, purchased the former Crown Bank building and the adjacent parking lots in 2023 for nearly $6.7 million to save the then-financially troubled property from a bankruptcy auction.

In an interview with OCNJDaily.com last week, Raj Khatiwala confirmed that Eclat Investments was in talks with the city about the building’s possible sale.

He said Eclat has invested a significant amount of money in the building to renovate the interior and exterior and freshen up what had been a tired-looking structure.

“We spent significant capital in the last two years to turn an obsolete structure into a vibrant, fully renovated office building,” he said in the interview.

For the next phase of the building’s renovation, Eclat plans to erect scaffolding within the next 30 days to begin the restoration of the building’s brick exterior to its original appearance.

“The fact is, they can move right into this beautiful building. It’s ready to go. It’s fully renovated,” Khatiwala said of the police department taking over.

If the city completes the purchase of the former Crown Bank building, the deal would also include a parking lot directly behind it that has nearly 50 spaces, Khatiwala said.

Last year, the city spent $3.3 million to buy two parking lots from the Khatiwala brothers that were part of the former Crown Bank building property. The city has been acquiring property on the block of Eighth Street and Central Avenue, just behind City Hall, to create more parking for the downtown.

    Two parking lots behind the former Crown Bank building were acquired by the city last year in a $3.3 million deal.
  

Khatiwala believes that the former Crown Bank building’s prime location on Asbury Avenue would give the city the ability to control a greater swath of the downtown area. He also believes that the city’s expanded presence downtown would provide an economic boost for the surrounding retail shops and restaurants during the slower, off-season months.

Separate from its plans to buy the former Crown Bank building, the city is constructing a new $6.1 million police substation at Eighth Street and the Boardwalk. The substation will give the police department a bigger presence on the Boardwalk when the project is completed this fall.