There was not much said about it at this week’s Ocean City Mayor and Council meeting, but the decision to support a state grant application to demolish a rundown property in Ocean City could be a big deal in the future.
As a result of getting the council’s blessing, the Ocean City Development Corporation will submit a $250,000 grant application to Maryland’s Strategic Demolition-Smart Growth Impact Fund to help the existing property owner raze the building at 1st Street and Baltimore Avenue. Once demolition takes place, and there’s no timetable on that, the plan is to construct a new mixed-use building with retail on the first floor and 48 seasonal housing beds spread across the second and third floors.
This is a project worthy of following for several reasons. One, the existing building is deemed “no occupancy” because it’s in such poor condition. Additionally, offering seasonal housing for almost 50 workers is desperately needed in Ocean City, particularly in the downtown area. The grant request indicates a property manager would reside on the fourth floor of the property. That would go a long way toward ensuring there is no overcrowding and there is proper maintenance of the property, which the grant request calls “dormitory-style living accommodations.”
While providing new housing for 50 employees will not solve the city’s current affordable housing crisis, the good news is the OCDC is adept at securing demo funds through this program, as it has secured three previous grants to assist with redevelopment projects.
I feel fairly well versed on the White Marlin Open after covering it for about 25 years at this paper and attending it for even longer. However, one thing I learned from this week’s interview with founder Jim Motsko was how much of a grassroots effort the tournament remains today, despite all the advancements in technology.
After 42 years, it would be wrong to assume the White Marlin Open simply rests on its laurels and waits for hundreds of boats to sign up each year. There is a concerted effort put forth each off-season apparently to keep boats coming to Ocean City and participating in the billfishing tourney.
Each year Motsko said he travels up and down the East Coast and promotes the event the old-fashioned way through personal contact and stopping at various marinas.
“I’m a promoter. I’m on the road a lot when I fish tournaments in this country or other countries, I bring my White Marlin Open brochures, my decals, my shirts. When I’m fishing on a boat with somebody else, it comes up more than once. We start working on it, literally, in October after the tournament is over. We start working on our sponsors. We do our big mail out in January, and I go on the road in South Florida in March and hit every marina and tackle shop from Stuart, Fla. to Key West,” Motsko said. “I also go on the road in June from, literally, Morehead City, N.C. to Staten Island. I go to every marina and tackle shop and everything that looks ‘fishy’ along the coast. Anywhere where there’s boats, I use Google Earth, finding out where marinas are with boats with outriggers, we go to those places and put out brochures and posters and try to talk to the various captains and boat owners. It’s a promotion.”
There are fishing stories, which are almost always entertaining, but then there is the one involving Cheryl McLeskey. What makes her fishing story from last year’s White Marlin Open so different is her spiritual approach to it as well as the historic nature of her victory.
After hearing her version of the account in this week’s story, it’s clear to me there was some sort of divine intervention involved with her catching the winning white marlin — the third largest ever weighed in at the Open. She will be back in Ocean City for next week’s 43rd edition of the White Marlin Open to try her luck but this week we had her relive last year’s special tournament. The story details her spiritual approach to fishing and her views of how there was quite a bit at play that led to her hooking the winner. The biggest takeaway for me was she donated her portion of the $1.1 million winning prize to charities close to her heart.
“I split my winnings with the other people on the boat last year, and I took my portion and donated $100,000 in honor of my late father, who was Spanish, to a charity that focuses on helping underprivileged Hispanic students in Catholic schools in Virginia and the rest to other charities,” she said. “I’ve been very blessed in my life and I like to think part of the reason that I won the White Marlin Open was to really make a difference in other people’s lives.”
That’s a great fishing story.
