Post-Sandy, gentrification increases at the Shore

On Point Drive at the tip of Longport, where houses were cracked open two years ago by Hurricane Sandy's waves and wind, their multimillion-dollar vulnerability bared to the sea, all is as it was.

The Hankins finished a total rebuild. The Tuchmans debated selling, but decided to do the repairs and keep their summer home after all. Marvin Ashner, who never left, not even during the storm, still answers his door beneath whimsical Blues Brothers statues.

"Everybody's back," said Steven Hankin, an Atlantic City lawyer who lives on Point Drive, which overlooks the inlet's washing machine currents. "I think everybody's rebuilt."

In nearby Ventnor, however, newly rebuilt houses stick out against a stubborn post-Sandy landscape pockmarked with abandoned, still-gutted houses, works-in-progress, and empty lots where damaged houses were torn down.

Homeowners like former casino chef Jeffrey Getzow are nearing the final lap, having navigated funding and insurance mazes for a rebuild on Somerset Avenue in Ventnor Heights. He awaits house lifting and kitchen and floor installations.

Next door, Si Hanin is back in a new, raised house - after two aggravating years he'd rather not discuss. Up the block, the Hartleys still battle casino layoffs, Sandy aid bureaucracy, and mortgage company pressure.

On the face of it, the post-Sandy contrasts seem stark in the landscapes of affluent Longport and unsettled Ventnor, and in towns like them - Mantoloking, where new cedar-shingled multimillion-dollar compounds dot the beachfront, and Ortley, where ubiquitous new modulars perch atop raised bases.

But these sibling towns from far ends of the Jersey Shore economy - Longport and Ventnor, Mantoloking and Ortley, Holgate and Beach Haven West - also are starting to resemble one another more than drift apart.

Two years after the Oct. 29 storm, the answer to one of the biggest questions haunting residents, summer folks, and particularly Gov. Christie - would the storm imperil the Shore's blue-collar character and its working-class affordability? - is coming into focus.

That answer seems to be yes.

"Sandy is the catalyst that hit the gas and accelerated the gentrification," said Kevin C. Gillen, an economist with the University of Pennsylvania's Fels Institute, who has studied Jersey Shore housing values post-Sandy.

As more new and upgraded larger homes replace older Sandy-damaged homes, Gillen predicts that prices and values will continue to rise in most beach towns. Home prices in Ventnor appreciated 27.8 percent in the last year, he said.

"It's ironic that a storm that would damage your housing stock ends up increasing the value of the your housing stock by promoting more expensive housing stock," he said.

On the beachfront near 24th Avenue in Longport, where waves crashed inside houses, there is little trace of disruption.

"Back, better than ever," said a relative of one owner, lounging this month on an ocean-facing deck (the owners were in Philly). A few feet away, pilings were laid out as part of an $800,000 city-FEMA project of bulkheads from 24th and 27th Avenues.

Insurance and personal savings paid to rebuild multimillion-dollar homes in a town where just 17 households qualified for the state's distribution of Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Elevation and Mitigation aid, which has income limits. FEMA processed 687 flood insurance claims for a payout of $31 million.

"It seemed like it was a very, very quick rebuilding process," Longport Mayor Nicholas Russo said. "That's the nature of the beast here."

In Ventnor, where 212 households qualified for RREM with 85 more on a waiting list ($3 million of $10 million obligated has been disbursed), the pain is still raw, funding gaps still vexing. FEMA statistics show 1,937 claims, including businesses, with a payout of more than $66 million.

"It's been in boxes for a year and a half," said Getzow, referring to ceramic floor tiles, next to boxed custom kitchen cabinets. Work stopped while he waited for grants; with aid flowing faster, he's days away from house lifting. He has to move out again while that happens, yet his insurance balks at loss-of-use compensation.

Still, an upward push in Ventnor prices can be noted in rebuilt homes in the hard-hit Heights. New million-dollar beachfront townhouses sold out; new beach-block construction is brisk, with likely property tax abatements.

"We're seeing permit applications once a week for new construction," Ventnor Mayor Michael Bagnell said.

Sandy, which damaged 1,400 Ventnor homes, followed by casino closings, has taken a toll on the economically vulnerable. School enrollment has fallen by 200 since the storm, he said. Longtime locals gave up, returning as day-trippers.

"A lot of the people that walked away from [damaged] homes were probably having financial difficulties before the storm," Bagnell said. "It really has not been a good environment economically."

Against that backdrop, Gillen still found that the proportion of Jersey Shore sales of houses that were less than 10 years old jumped from around 15 percent in 2012 to between 30 and nearly 40 percent in the post-Sandy years. (In cratering Atlantic City, prices fell 56.4 percent.)

In the second quarter of 2014, 600 houses were sold from Brigantine to Cape May, 43 of them for $1 million or more, the strongest since 2007.

After Sandy, Gillen said, the damage to a large number of houses "led to many of them being torn down and redeveloped into new homes . . . typically larger and much more upscale in their design and finishes." And that, plus storm resiliency, is what new buyers want.

The trend is vivid in the blue-collar enclave of Beach Haven West, where 500-square-foot houses are replaced by houses up to five times larger.

"It took 20 years to build all these homes, and half got knocked down," said Len Ricasoli, a Bordentown contractor. "Now there's going to be brand new beautiful homes."

Ricasoli bought an "as is" property for $150,000 on Lynn-Ann Lane, cleared the lot, then bought a new $400,000 four-bedroom Cape Cod modular on pilings a few doors down. He wants $180,000 for the lot.

Post-Sandy was Ricasoli's shot at a Shore home as old-timers moved on. "The only good thing of Hurricane Sandy, you're going to up with a lot of homes worth more money."

The modular business is booming. Julia Jannetti of Select Modulars says it closes on up to 50 homes a year from Ship Bottom to Wildwood, though, "insurance is a battle every day."

Hankin, of Longport, says beach replenishment in Longport, which the town resisted for years, is now persuading people to stay.

In that way, exclusive towns such as Longport and Mantoloking are becoming more like Ventnor, which years ago opted for the greater good of dunes over the preferences of wealthy, beachfront homeowners.

Only Margate, as a town, remains defiant. Voters decide on Nov. 4 whether to pay for a legal challenge.

Longport obtained easements and persuaded the state to extend replenishment to Point Drive. It will study how to hang onto the sand.

"That's the prayer for the whole southern tip," he said.

On Somerset Avenue in Ventnor Heights, prayers are more basic. Steve Hartley, a Ventnor public works employee, hopes his wife, Cathy, a dealer laid off from Showboat and Trump Plaza, will keep her part-time job at Bally's. He hopes to replace fishing rods, which he used to catch food for his family, stolen out of his gutted house. He hopes his mortgage company leaves him alone now that he has a $150,000 state grant and is poised to move forward.

"They may come and try to take the new home," he said.

Gillen says the transition to a newer, upscale, storm-resistant housing stock could ultimately exclude middle-class families that bought Shore homes for decades. "You can't make money building middle-class homes at the Jersey Shore," he said.

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@amysrosenberg