Restaurant plans advance at BW Lankford Hotel site

By Mallory Panuska Staff Writer

(March 3, 2023) Planned renovations to the historic Lankford Hotel on the Ocean City Boardwalk have taken a turn, and now include a restaurant and tiki bar in place of an all-retail bottom floor.

At a Board of Zoning Appeals meeting last week, members granted a request to the owner of the property that stretches between Eighth and Ninth streets along Atlantic Avenue to waive parking spaces to change one of the first floor uses from retail to restaurant.

Constructed in the 1920s, the family-run Lankford Hotel operated for decades with both lodging and retail from its oceanfront Boardwalk location. The owners listed the 41,000 square-foot property for sale in 2018 and sold it to a developer who submitted plans in 2020 to raze the orig- inal structure and replace it with a new 76-room, two-suite hotel.

After two years with no construction, those plans expired and were replaced with a new project. The latest plans call for 40 hotel rooms above 2,750 square feet of indoor restaurant and outdoor bar space, as well as retail shops, for a total 7,455 square feet of commercial space.

Zoning Administrator Kay Gordy said the restaurant is set to move into the space currently Salty Yarn shop currently occupies on the Boardwalk. With the change to a restaurant use, Gordy explained that the code requires more parking and that the applicants asked for a waiver of 16 spaces. Staff members recommended waiving 14 of the requested spaces, which members of the BZA unanimously approved.

Danelle Amos, the general man-

See BZA’ Page 12