Notice which town has suffered an outsized amount of demolition?

Dear Ocean City Neighbor,

We all love Ocean City.
The energy, the families…

It’s a place that has meant something to many of us for generations.

But take a walk down almost any residential block today and something feels off. The charming, human-scaled town we grew up loving is being replaced—house by house, street by street—by oversized duplexes, triplexes, and investor mansions built to maximize rental income over neighborly life.

The impact is personal and real

When a towering new build replaces an ordinary family home, the neighbors lose sunlight, street parking becomes a daily battle, and the front porch—if there is one—is little more than a landing. 

No one sits out. 

No one waves. 

No one connects. 

And when the house sits empty ten months a year, whatever was left of community fabric quietly unravels.

We’re not against development

Growth is a sign of a healthy town, but there’s a real difference between responsible progress and overdevelopment that treats every lot as an opportunity to build the biggest thing possible for all the wrong reasons.

And when is big “too big”?

• When a six-bedroom house—designed for six couples—has one functional parking space 

• When a builder gets a variance to encroach on a neighbor just to squeeze in another bedroom suite. 

• When the people writing the checks have never lived here and never will.

That’s why this election matters

Keith Hartzell, who advocates the five bedrooms = five parking spaces policy, is the only mayoral candidate who has actually pushed back against overdevelopment—not against building, but against building that erodes who we are. 

Their opponents? Mayor Jay Gillian has presided over this transformation for years without blinking, with Ocean City leading all Cape May cities in terms of demolitions.

Realtor Pete Madden profits directly from aggressive development—and has made clear he wants more of the same, extolling in a recent Ocean City Local podcast the virtues of smaller homes being replaced with triplexes.

We deserve leaders who see Ocean City as a community first—not a listing. Let’s get this right.

The Our Ocean City Team

To learn more about how we’re advocating for a more balanced approach, visit us at www.ouroceancity.org.