Lucy the Elephant to undergo $500K interior makeover

Like many of us, Lucy the Elephant needs a bit of work on her inner self.

The exterior of the Margate landmark has never looked better. A 15-month renovation project, concluded in late 2022, left it with $2.4 million worth of gleaming new metal skin. The insides of the 143-year-old roadside attraction, though, are a different story.

Its heating and air-conditioning system dates to Gerald Ford’s presidency. Its yellow pine floors, which bear the weight of tens of thousands of annual visitors, could stand to be refinished. The plaster walls have been known to spring the occasional leak.

So Lucy’s caretakers were overjoyed Friday, when U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) visited the giant elephant and delivered a $500,000 check to fund the needed internal repairs, which will include the installation of a new fire suppression system and new security alarms.

Booker secured the money through a congressional discretionary spending grant. The Save Lucy Committee, a local nonprofit that has fought to preserve the six-story pachyderm since 1970, first applied for the funding in 2023.

Richard D. Helfant, the committee’s executive director, said he learned just two weeks ago that the nonprofit had been awarded the grant. “It’s been a whirlwind ever since,” he said. “We’re just beyond thrilled.”

The interior renovations likely won’t begin until late 2025, Helfant said, when work on a new, adjacent visitor center is expected to be about 80% complete. (Condenser units for Lucy’s new HVAC system will be planted on the visitor center’s roof.)

A grand opening for the center is being targeted for the 2026 Memorial Day weekend.

Born “Elephant Bazaar” on July 20, 1881, and renamed in 1902, Lucy has withstood hurricanes, lightning strikes, demolition threats, and pandemics, and is considered, by some, to be as intrinsic to the Jersey Shore as the Eiffel Tower is to Paris.

Helfant has served as the committee’s executive director for 25 years, but said his involvement with the landmark began when he was in seventh grade, and Lucy was facing the prospect of being torn down. To help raise money to move the structure to a new location, he sold candy bars.

“We’ve been fortunate that the public has such love for Lucy,” he said. “But there’s never a guarantee.”

No tourist attraction, no matter how beloved, has the promise of immortality.

While Lucy fans celebrated the sudden infusion of federal dollars on Friday, a different Shore landmark — five miles to the south, in Ocean City — met an abrupt end.

Jay Gillian, Ocean City’s mayor, announced that Gillian’s Wonderland Pier, the children’s amusement park, would soon close, after 94 years in operation. Gillian, who doubled as the pier’s operator, wrote in a letter, published online, that the pier was “no longer a viable business.”

“People don’t realize,” Helfant said, “they’re very fragile things.”