As the decade of the 1970s began, Ocean City was still a small seasonal town with most of its business conducted between Memorial Day and Labor Day. This was soon to change.
On April 18, 1970, the Ocean City Convention Hall opened bringing larger conventions to town and extending the season in both the spring and fall. Hotels and restaurants began to open earlier and remain open longer to meet the demands of the lengthening off-season.
The completion of the Route 90 Bridge in 1971 created a new mid-town section and hastened the development of northern Ocean City in the years that followed. By 1973, over a dozen high-rise condos had been built north of 94th Street with with restaurants and shopping centers springing up along Coastal Highway. The Arab Oil Embargo and high interest rates would slow the building boom later that year but the future of a year-round resort was never seriously in doubt.
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