Will Mita discard the carousel after the Ferris wheel?
Originally published in Ocean City Sentinel
by Elena Parson
To the Editor:
This past week, Eustace Mita told us that Ocean City’s iconic Ferris wheel cannot be saved. He went so far as to arrange a press tour, showing off the damage and describing the imminent danger.
The spectacle was galling: an owner inviting the press to highlight deterioration on his own property—one he has owned for five years—as evidence of the urgency to move forward with his vanity high-rise project, and if he has his way, with taxpayer subsidies.
Mita previously promised to save both Wonderland’s Ferris wheel and its carousel as part of his sales pitch to sway public opinion. Now he is saying the Ferris wheel has to go—a structure that, for decades, beckoned families to Ocean City, its lights illuminating the north end, and its carriages carrying generations of children into the sky.
Instead of the wheel’s lights, we will see the torches cutting it apart.
And if Mita is willing to discard one promise to preserve an Ocean City icon, we have to wonder: Is the carousel next?
Built by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company, the Ocean City carousel is a historic treasure, and marks its 100th birthday this year.
Think about that. A century spanning wars, economic booms and busts, and extraordinary changes in American life. Since arriving at Wonderland in 1972, it has given generations of Ocean City families something wonderfully uncomplicated: a few minutes of joy.
If its owner were a true “hometown boy,” as he calls himself—someone who cared deeply about the city and its history—the carousel’s centennial would have been a summer-long celebration, a destination for families honoring its hundred years of history.
It need not have been elaborate. Even if the carousel could no longer run, surely there was a way to celebrate: photographs, memories, and, if safe access could be arranged, a chance for families to sit on the horses and take pictures. Maybe a big cake with 100 candles. A simple acknowledgment of a century of joy.
Instead, the milestone passed with the carousel trapped behind a cheap plywood wall.
Mita has kept silent about the carousel throughout his recent press tour, leaving residents to ask: What is Mita’s plan for this iconic piece of Ocean City history? What is the carousel’s condition? Who is protecting it? What assurance do we have that it will not become the next thing the torch touches? Or will it just be disassembled and sold piece by piece, as we’ve seen with other Wonderland artifacts?
If the promise to preserve the carousel still stands, Mita should say so—and explain how he intends to keep it. Without those answers, residents are left wondering whether this is another promise, come and gone.
Mita wants to change the Jersey Shore, apparently to fit his own image of luxury and exclusivity. But owning a prominent property does not entitle one person to decide what an entire community should become. He should be listening to its residents. We should be able to find common ground. But he does not seem interested.
While we know we cannot go back in time, we are still justified in feeling sad and angry about losing Wonderland. Other family-oriented shore towns are investing in their amusements—look at Point Pleasant—while we are being fed the notion that amusements are dead.
We are also sad about the demise of the Ferris wheel. It was part of our beacon. Jay Gillian and Mita extinguished it.
We are tired of watching things we cherish become bargaining chips in a development debate that has become more about vanity than virtue.
Ocean City’s history belongs to all of us; its future is not for one developer to dictate.
Elena Parson
Ocean City and Jamison, Pa.
