Sea Isle City moving ahead with new construction projects

Sea Isle City will focus on a series of construction projects in coming months that are planned for the oceanfront Promenade and other areas in town.

For one project, the city is making a change with its previously announced $1.3 million facelift for the Promenade. The city will now add a new handicap-accessible ramp at 47th Street and the Promenade as part of the project.

“We’ve received multiple requests for this; and we have an opportunity to get the work done under the current contract we have in place,” Mayor Leonard Desiderio said in a report to City Council at a meeting Tuesday.

The ramp at 47th Street will be similar to the handicap-accessible ramps constructed at 51st and 53rd streets last year to provide easier access to the Promenade and the beach.

The ramps at 51st and 53rd streets replaced steep steps that were challenging to climb for seniors, people with disabilities and families with young children.

Also on the Promenade, the city is in the process of performing the engineering design for the addition of decorative lighting at the south and north ends. It will match the decorative lighting already in place on the Promenade from 35th to 44th streets, Desiderio said.

Improvements to the Promenade will be done during the winter and spring of 2026 and the following fall. Construction will pause during the busy summer tourism season.

   The new ramp planned at 47th Street will be similar to this one built in 2024 at 53rd Street.   

The Promenade stretches for 1½ miles from 29th Street to 57th Street. The family-friendly walkway effectively serves as Sea Isle’s boardwalk – a hub for sightseeing, shopping, entertainment, recreation and special events.

In recent years, the city has been livening up the Promenade with new decorative lighting, new benches and a new public address system, among other improvements.

City Council awarded a $1.3 million construction contract in August for even more improvements to the Promenade. The city previously announced that it plans to rebuild several areas of the Promenade’s bulkhead and add two new handicap-accessible ramps at 32nd Street and 40th Street.

This round of improvements involving the Promenade’s structure, bulkheads and handicap-accessible ramps will be largely funded by a nearly $2 million grant from the state’s Boardwalk Preservation Fund.

Gov. Phil Murphy announced in 2024 that Sea Isle was one of 18 towns at the Jersey Shore to share in a pool of $100 million from the Boardwalk Preservation Fund. The fund helps to repair and maintain boardwalks and promenades along the coast.

    Sea Isle City homeowners pack the City Council chambers in August to voice their opposition to the pumping station's original drainage design.
  

In an update on another project, Desiderio reported that the city will make a change to the stormwater pumping station that is planned at 46th Street, next to the site of the new $21 million community recreation center.

A roomful of homeowners attended a Council meeting in August to complain about the pumping station’s proposed outfall pump dumping stormwater into a quaint lagoon at 46th Place. Desiderio responded by assuring the homeowners that the outfall pipe would be redesigned to avoid the 46th Place lagoon.

The mayor said the city engineer is working on options to discharge the stormwater somewhere else, but not in the lagoons between 45th Place and 47th Place.

“Once the evaluation is completed, we will have the city engineer attend an upcoming City Council meeting to review the evaluation, along with the recommendation for the outfall location, prior to finalizing the design,” Desiderio said in his report.

Another project in the engineering stage will improve the piers and breakwater at the city’s Municipal Boat Ramp at the bay end of 42nd Place.

Previously, the city had made minor repairs to the boat ramp’s walkways and ladders to make it safe for the summer season.

However, even more extensive repairs are needed to the piers and breakwater, Desiderio said.

Before construction can begin, the project will require a Waterfront Development Permit and the preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement/Compliance Statement.

    The public boat ramp at the bay end of 42nd Place includes a walkway.