Ventnor is becoming bougie, but has the Jersey Shore left the middle class behind?

VENTNOR, N.J. — The midday white-pants crowd was brunching outside the Dorset in Ventnor Heights, as the new owners of Florida Cold Cuts & Liquor on Ventnor Avenue were touting just-arrived artisan craft whiskey delivery.

Never mind that the old owners, Vern and Marion Sutley, were still hanging around to teach the art of sandwich-making to the new folks from Steve & Cookie’s while the deal was finalized. For a time, it seemed Marion Sutley might never leave, and nobody wanted to talk too much about “the transition.”

But the real transition story is bigger than what’s behind the counter at Florida Cold Cuts, where the boiled ham will forever go for $3.99 a pound — or so the window sign says. It’s bigger than the confidence of Fishtown entrepreneur Vanessa Wong, of Fishtown Social, in choosing Ventnor Heights for her new Wahine Wine Co. and Fish & Whistle Market.

“We love Ventnor,” said Wong, who moved to Longport full time from Fishtown with her husband, Ryan Slaven, and three children five years ago. “I really like the vibe. It’s such a cool mix. Fishtown was very similar in terms of that mix. The old guard, the new guard, the energy.”

It’s Ventnor itself, and maybe the entire Jersey Shore, that is changing by the day, going bougie, upscale, distancing itself from the old feel of a locals’ town, filled with year-round working-class families with jobs in the casinos.

Ventnor these days is feeling more and more like Longport, Brigantine like Stone Harbor, Stone Harbor like The Hamptons. The extravagant new beachfront construction in Margate is like something out of Selling Sunset.

If you’ve got a foothold, hang on for the ride. But what about the old bread-and-butter working-class Shore goers and year-rounders, now all but priced out of places they grew up living in and going to?

Tim Kreischer, who served as Ventnor’s mayor from 1996 to 2008, says, “That year-round community feeling has been diminished,” but it’s a trade-off for higher ratables and other improvements around town. The 2020 census showed a year-round population of 9,210, down from 2010′s 10,650.

“I grew up in Ventnor and there were a number of empty lots to play Wiffle ball in,” he mused. “Now every bit of land is taken up. I’m kind of old school. I kind of miss the old Ventnor.”

Michael Carr, owner of Jagielky’s, the Shore candy institution that had its start 50 years ago, says Ventnor is going through “growing pains,” as houses are torn down and rebuilt, as year-rounders sell, and as long-standing summer residents get priced out of a market where the median sale price in April was $499,000, up 28.3% over the year before.

But while Carr can be found on the Facebook Ventnor Community Forum making the occasional wry reference to “Bougie Ventnor ... now please pass the Grey Poupon,” he says people missing “the old Ventnor” have plenty to be thankful for.

“If it’s so bad, how come your property’s worth so much?” Carr says.

The Vespa was parked outside Ventnor’s busy new pickleball courts, down Atlantic Avenue from the weekly farmers market, a buzzing success that draws a crowd shopping for hyper-local pickles and organic kohlrabi.

Nearby on the boardwalk, the brand-new $755,000 lifeguard headquarters is almost complete, part of what the current mayor, Beth Holtzman, says is the “eye candy” that represents the ambitions of the town and of her administration. The restored Ventnor Square Theatre and Nucky’s bar and restaurant have been a success.

Holtzman has lived in Ventnor all her life: Her father ran a hair salon next to Sack O’ Subs, in the building that just burned down. In the Heights, where she lives, houses are selling for two and three times their assessed value.

“Realtors told me the last few summers, people say they want Ventnor,” she said. In her job with the county, Holtzman oversaw a grant program after Hurricane Sandy that helped people pay mortgages. She saw firsthand how some people had to walk away.

“The majority of people hung in there,” she said. “I know they’re glad they did.”

Almost every street in the Heights has seen new construction.

Tax assessor Bob Crowther says there are currently 198 properties receiving a five-year tax abatement for new construction, another legacy of 2012′s Sandy, where homes were damaged and flooded, and needed to be raised to meet FEMA standards.

Even with the abatements, Ventnor’s ratables are up to $2.65 billion from $2.17 billion in 2017, he said.

The tax abatement ensured Ventnor would not be left blighted. But the concern then-Gov. Chris Christie expressed that the blue-collar character of the Jersey Shore be preserved, that it remain a place that not-rich people could get a foothold in, seems more and more wishful thinking.

“The Heights have turned around tremendously,” Crowther said, of the areas of Ventnor on the bay side of the Intracoastal Waterway.

“The majority of the town is secondary — this is their second or third home,” he said. “Especially with this last market after the pandemic, I wasn’t sure what would happen. Would it tank? But it just blew up.”

At the Dorset, they were posting about fashion designer Jacqueline City stopping by and posing by their Instragram-ready backdrop wall that reads, “Meet me at the Dorset.”

Chef Joe Tucker, who owns Catch in Longport, says Ventnor was ready.

“Listen, Ventnor Heights — what’s the perfect word I want to use? — is like up-and-coming,” Tucker said. “You know the Shore just grew to where this is the next best thing. It was always like that sleepy, how do you say, that quiet little place. Now everybody is noticing it. You see the way they’re building in the Heights.”

David Weiman, a psychologist from Montgomery County who has spent summers all his life in Ventnor, says he thinks Ventnor can handle both its influx of new residents and its old guard. Echoing Vanessa Wong, he says that eclectic character is its strength.

“It’s a place where regulars care about it, and a place where people who just discovered it love it,” Weiman said. “You have the Dorset opening where Annette’s was, that classic old-school place where people went in and made their own cup of coffee before it opened.”

The newcomers are seeking out the places that have been in Ventnor for decades, he says.

“I was in Jagielky’s, and there was a couple there that I assumed was visiting,” he said. “They looked at one another after they got their order and said, OK, we’re supposed to go to Sack O’s next. These folks might have been bougie, but they hit the local spots.”

Over in the Heights, Wong has the Wahine Wine Co. stocked, bookstore style, with a personally curated selection of organic and natural wines. She says they are the opposite of bougie, meant to be shared and drank, “not collected or coveted.”

The Fish & Whistle Market (named after the John Prine song) will sell a selection of gourmet groceries, including cheese, charcuterie, farm-fresh eggs, plus tins of fish like Matiz Wild Cockles from Galicia, Spain, vegan pastries, and three types of $10 bahn mi and ReAnimator Coffee “right out of Fishtown.”

There will be tables and chairs on the patio out front on the corner of Dorset and Edgewater, but for now, no drinking of any wine you might buy at Wahine. State regulators would not give her the go-ahead, Wong said.

For now, she’s content to limit the hours to “lifeguard hours,” and the patio to the coffee and bahn mi crowd.

Holtzman insists that even with the changing landscape in Ventnor, the infusion of new money and Fishtown energy, the town she grew up in and now serves as mayor will retain its essential character.

“It’s no different than going home to dinner after college and your parents got all new furniture,” she said. “It’s still home.”