OCEAN CITY, N.J. (AP) — For generations of vacationers heading to Ocean Metropolis, the towering “Big Wheel” was the very first thing they noticed from miles away.

The sight of the 140-foot-tall (42-meter) trip allow them to know they have been getting near the Jersey Shore city that calls itself “America’s Best Household Resort,” with its promise of kid-friendly seashores, seagulls and sea shells, and a bustling boardwalk filled with pizza, ice cream and cotton sweet.

And within the coronary heart of it was Gillian’s Wonderland Pier, an amusement park that was the most recent in practically a century-long line of family-friendly amusement points of interest operated by the household of Ocean Metropolis’s mayor.

However the rides have been to fall silent and nonetheless Sunday evening, because the park run by Ocean Metropolis’s mayor and nurtured by generations of his ancestors, closed down, the sufferer of monetary woes made worse by the lingering aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic and Superstorm Sandy.

Gillian and his household have operated amusement rides and points of interest on the Ocean Metropolis Boardwalk for 94 years. The newest iteration of the park, Wonderland, opened in 1965.

“I attempted my finest to maintain Wonderland for so long as doable, by means of more and more tough challenges every year,” Mayor Jay Gillian wrote in August when he introduced the park would shut. “It’s been my life, my legacy and my household. However it’s now not a viable enterprise.”

Gillian didn’t reply to quite a few requests for remark over the previous week.

Sheryl Gross was on the park for its last day together with her two youngsters and 5 grandchildren, having fun with it one final time.

“I’ve been coming right here perpetually,” she stated. “My daughter is 43 and I’ve been coming right here since she was 2 years outdated in a stroller. Now I’m right here with my grandchildren.”

She remembers many years of bringing her household from Gloucester Township within the southern New Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia to create pleased household recollections at Wonderland.

“Simply the thrill on their faces after they get on the rides,” she stated. “It actually made it really feel family-friendly. Plenty of that’s going to be misplaced now.”

There have been lengthy strains Sunday for the Big Wheel, the log flume and different widespread rides as folks used the final of trip tickets many had purchased earlier within the yr, pondering Wonderland would go on perpetually.

An area non-profit group, Associates of OCNJ Historical past and Tradition, is elevating cash to try to save the amusement park, probably underneath a brand new proprietor who is perhaps extra amenable to purchasing it with some monetary help. Invoice Merritt, one of many non-profit’s leaders, stated the group has raised over $1 million to assist meet what might be a $20-million price ticket for the property.

“Ocean Metropolis will likely be essentially totally different with out this attraction,” he stated. “This city depends on being family-friendly. The park has rides focused at youngsters; it’s referred to as ‘Wonderland’ for a purpose.”

The property’s present proprietor, Icona Resorts, beforehand proposed a $150-million, 325-room luxurious lodge elsewhere on Ocean Metropolis’s boardwalk, however the metropolis rejected these plans.

The corporate’s CEO, Eustace Mita, stated earlier this yr he would take at the very least till the top of the yr to suggest a use for the amusement park property.

He purchased it in 2021 after Gillian’s household was at risk of defaulting on financial institution loans for the property.

At a group assembly final month, Gillian stated Wonderland couldn’t bounce again from Superstorm Sandy in 2012, the pandemic in 2020 and a rise in New Jersey’s minimal wage that doubled his payroll prices, leaving him $4 million in debt.

Mita put up funds to stave off a sheriff’s sale of the property, and gave the mayor three years to show the enterprise round. That deadline expired this yr.

Mita didn’t reply to requests for remark.

Merritt stated he and others can’t think about Ocean Metropolis with out Wonderland.

“You take a look at it along with your coronary heart, and also you say ‘You’re shedding all of the cherished recollections and all of the historical past; how are you going to let that go?’” he stated. “And then you definitely take a look at it along with your head and also you say, ‘They’re the rationale this city is worthwhile; how are you going to let that go?’”

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Observe Wayne Parry on X at www.twitter.com/WayneParryAC