| |
|
Courier-Post Staff
Ever since he was a defenseman with the Philadelphia Flyers, Mark Howe has been coming to Long Beach Island.
Now, with his hockey career more than a decade behind him, he continues coming. Whenever possible, he packs up his family and makes the drive from Huntingdon Valley, Pa., to Beach Haven, one of three municipalities in the southern portion of the island. Though he could well afford a home in upscale Loveladies to the north, he chooses to live in Beach Haven - on his boat.
"I'd like to spend every single day down here in the summer if I could," he says while waiting to pick up an order in a pizza shop. "I find it to be an ideal place for the kids, a little more family-oriented than most other places along the Jersey Shore. I just love it down here."
So do a lot of people.
"It's nicer now than ever before," says Emil Stevens of Little Silver, Monmouth County, who bought an oceanfront home in Beach Haven Inlet 23 years ago. "The only trouble is the dunes are getting so high I can't see the girls on the beach anymore."
Unlike most Jersey Shore resorts, the southern portion of LBI has no boardwalk and only one road (Route 72) leading into it. When combined with the northern section, it is the longest of the state's offshore islands.
The first white inhabitants on LBI were whalers who settled along its shores in the mid- to late 1670s. The first house on the southern end of the island was built in Beach Haven in 1815.
The southern tier of Long Beach Island stretches 11 miles, from Ship Bottom to Beach Haven Inlet, and consists of three municipalities: Long Beach Township, Ship Bottom and Beach Haven. It measures only four blocks from east to west, and is flanked by the Atlantic Ocean on one side and Manahawkin and Barnegat bays on the other.
Long Beach Boulevard, the main drag, extends from Ship Bottom to 13th Street in Beach Haven, where it becomes Bay Avenue. Beach badges are required in each of the three communities.
While the slender strip of real estate is filled with typical seaside attractions - miniature golf, ice cream parlors, water rides, pizza parlors, bars, restaurants, bicycle rentals and movie theaters - it is anything but typical.
Its largest municipality, Long Beach Township, is fragmented into four sections. You can't get from Barnegat Light to Harvey Cedars in the north without going through Long Beach Township, and you can't get from Ship Bottom to Beach Haven in the south without going through ... yep, Long Beach Township.
This strange configuration was the result of a conscious effort by the state Legislature in 1899 to simplify things. The politicians felt it would be much easier to name everything on the island Long Beach Township except for Beach Haven and Surf City in the south and Harvey Cedars in the north, which already had incorporated. In the years to come, Ship Bottom and Barnegat Light in the north would break ranks with the township and also incorporate.
Covering 12 miles, or two-thirds of LBI, Long Beach Township consists of 11 small communities, not one of which has any political identity. Its beach is the longest lifeguard-protected beach in the United States, says Tice Ryan, director of training for the township beach patrol.
Ship Bottom, which was incorporated in 1925 and takes its name from a shipwreck that occurred in March 1817, serves as the gateway to LBI - north and south. Its roadways are the most heavily traveled, and it gets a heavy dose of families and day-trippers - most of them from New York, North Jersey and Philadelphia.
An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people can be found in Ship Bottom on any given summer day, with a small number sprawled on its bayside beach.
One of them, Elaine Jelinski of Barnegat, says she enjoys the protected nature of the bay, especially when she's s s accompanied by her children.
"You don't have to worry about waves or the chance of the kids getting dragged out by the undertow," she explains as her kids play inside the fenced-in beach. "We do the ocean too, but come here when we have a lot of kids with us."
Beach Haven, which opened as a resort community in 1874, was incorporated in 1890. Many of its old streets still retain their historic charm. It has the oldest volunteer fire company in Ocean County, a population that swells to 30,000 people on any given summer weekend and, unlike the other municipalities on the island, its own school district.
While the northern section of the 18-mile island is known for its large homes and lack of commercial development, the southern portion is awash in retail establishments - especially Beach Haven. Within its boundaries lie Bay Village and Schooner's Wharf, bustling shopping centers that feature everything from inexpensive sea treasures to upscale clothing; Fantasy Island, an amusement park with a family casino arcade; and Thundering Surf, a popular water slide and miniature golf establishment.
"It's a wild place down here from the Fourth of July to Labor Day," laughs lifelong resident Jill Pharo.
All of the towns on LBI are wet, with bars closing at 2 a. m. Sunday through Friday, and at 3 a.m. on Saturdays. Unlike most other Shore resorts, there are no parking meters on LBI; parking is free.
And when it rains, people don't go into shock. There's plenty to do. Among the many activities: live theater at the Surflight Theater in Beach Haven; three movie theaters ( A.I. opened in one of them on the first day of the film's release); the Long Beach Island Historical Museum, also in Beach Haven; Fantasy Island; and a quiet walk in the rain.
But don't expect to find solitude if you wander into a restaurant for lunch when the heavens open up.
"They're swamped whenever it rains," admits Ellen Dondero Meyer, immediate past president of the Southern Ocean County Chamber of Commerce.
Like most ocean resorts, real estate in southern LBI doesn' t come cheap.
"Every bit of sand on this island is being used," says Philip M. Truxel of Prudential Zack Realtors, one of the largest real estate brokers on the island. "There is no excessive concentration of high- or low-priced homes anywhere from Ship Bottom south.
"The low in homes would be from $150,000 to $200,000, and the high would be $2 million, $3 million or $4 million - in the Webster Lagoon area of Beach Haven. You can get into the millions down there with no problem at all. Rentals from Ship Bottom south range from maybe $800 a week to about $7,500 a week, but don't expect too much for that $ 800."
The island has become so crowded, says Truxel, that communities up and down LBI are trying to lower the density by doubling lot requirements and turning down proposals for new duplexes. This, of course, is leading to higher prices.
People like Len Bradbury, 59, of Brant Beach, however, aren't complaining. He recently sold the three-bedroom, one- story home he paid $11,400 for in 1966 for $300,000.
"The new guy doesn't even want the house," he says, shaking his head in disbelief. "He's just going to mow it down and build something bigger."
Michele DellaValle of Montville, Morris County, has been coming to the southern tier for five years. Each year, she and her family select the Beach Haven Inlet section of Long Beach Township, which is about as far south as you can go before running into a dead-end and the pristine white sands of the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge.
"We go there because it's at the end of the island and has less traffic," she says while shopping one afternoon in Beach Haven. "There are lots of families there, and the kids can walk to the beach."
Like thousands of other people who descend on the southern half of LBI every summer, DellaValle finds the mix of sun and fun just to her liking - just like Mark Howe does.