Historic Gardner’s Basin could turn into Atlantic City’s version of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor

Historic Gardner’s Basin could turn into Atlantic City’s version of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, a tourist magnet lined with lively restaurants, hopping bars and busy shops.

As the Bayfront park hits its 40th birthday this year, Josh Levin is betting it can still be both a great draw to its Inlet neighborhood and a key to a long-needed neighborhood upgrade.

Levin runs Levin Commercial Real Estate in Atlantic City and represents the sellers of two long-empty properties just a short clamshell toss across the bay from the park. The land, which recently drew offers from developers, is on an inside secret of a street called Carson Avenue. And the water around it shares a name with the park — historically, that slice of bay is called Gardner’s Basin, too.

“Gardner’s Basin will provide the services and entertainment that buyers are looking for,” says Levin, who has more property for sale around the neighborhood. “It makes it a more amenable area.”

But officials of both the city, which owns the park, and the Atlantic City Historic Waterfront Foundation, which leases and runs it, say they’ve had to scale back their Inner Harbor ambitions. That’s because Historic Gardner’s Basin has been developed, since its founding in pre-casino 1976 Atlantic City, partly with Green Acres funds designed to create open space.

The park has long been home to one or more bars and restaurants, plus a small “Crafter’s Village,” basically sheds where people sell their own art, craftwork or gift-shop-type goods. In 1999, the city also opened the Atlantic City Aquarium, which fed those Inner Harbor dreams and can still fill part of the Gardner’s Basin parking lot with families, even on February weekdays.

So state officials surprised local leaders with the news “the city has gone beyond what would be permitted on Green Acres land,” says Elizabeth Terenik, the city’s planning director since 2014.

Terenik and Chris Seher, the chairman of the foundation’s board, say they learned that after they were approached with the idea of a small rum distillery becoming a start-up in the park. Officials saw that as a perfect fit, since Historic Gardner’s Basin’s own history includes a time during Prohibition when it was a notorious base for rum runners, or smugglers of then-banned booze.

Local officials now accept that the rum dream probably won’t fly, even with part of the business serving as a museum of Atlantic City’s rum-running history. But Seher, the foundation chairman, says he’s optimistic officials can give Gardner’s Basin some upgrades the park needs, which can in turn help upgrade its section of the city.

“I’m confident that we will be grandfathered in for what we’ve got,” says Seher, adding that the park should also get permission for “a reasonable expansion.” That would include rebuilding a long-established restaurant and bar that was flooded out in a historic event, Hurricane Sandy.

The now-demolished Scales (or Flying Cloud before 2011) has only been replaced since by tiki bars and food trucks, and Seher says the new versions may stay seasonal and temporary. But he hopes to see them “expand to very attractive portable units that would allow us to generate significant revenue” to do more work on the park, including needed repairs to the aquarium after 17 years.

“I think we’ve been a good neighbor,” Seher says. “And if we can renovate, when you’re a homeowner and someone in the neighborhood upgrades their property, that upgrades your property, too.”

Across 40 or so yards of bay, Kevin Scarborough of Scarborough Properties says his family has owned land on sleepy Carson Avenue since the 1970s, when his now-late father, Bob, started buying “a lot of little lots” there. All together now, he figures the family owns about 1 1/2 acres, all protected by a new bulkhead and with approvals for 45 boat slips.

Levin’s real-estate associate, Lee Jerome, puts the listing price for the whole property a bit over $1.3 million. Levin says the land also has approvals for single-family homes, but he’s gotten interest from developers interested in smaller, higher-density homes, “not primary residences, maybe more vacation places.”

Scarborough, the owner, says that bit of bay is “probably one of the nicest properties on the East Coast.”

He and others note that the city has many more plans to make the neighborhood a nicer vacation destination. They include an already-underway project to rebuild the long-closed Boardwalk along Absecon Inlet and to extend it to Historic Gardner’s Basin, which will also be part of a planned Inlet bike loop.
“Once the Boardwalk promenade is completed, that in effect connects … Margate to Gardner’s Basin,” .