April 19th 2022

A prime piece of downtown property overlooking Sea Isle City’s Landis Avenue corridor at the corner of 42nd Street has been vacant ever since two stores that once occupied the site were destroyed by fire in 2016.

The property has essentially been serving as an exclusive parking lot since then for a faded old red truck with the words “Sea Isle City” written on the side. The privately owned truck has been there for so long that it has become a local landmark.

There are plans to redevelop the land into a mixed-use project combining commercial space with four residential units.

The empty property once served as the location for the Avalon Coffee Shop and Jamaican Me Crazy clothing store, which were destroyed by a fire that broke out during a powerful winter storm in January 2016.

Speculation has been growing that the commercially zoned property in such a high-profile downtown location along Landis Avenue would eventually be redeveloped.

There is a trend in Sea Isle for new mixed-use developments that combine commercial space such as restaurants and retail shops on the first floor with upscale condominiums on the second and third stories.

In 2019, vacant land across the street at the opposite corner of 42nd and Landis was redeveloped into a three-story complex featuring commercial space on the street level and 12 luxury condos on the top two floors.

That project, known as Beachside Villas, was built on a site formerly occupied by the Creighton’s Trading Post hardware store, which was destroyed by fire in 2005.