Former BeachWalk back with new plan

Under the name Oceanside Reserve, new plans to develop the Ocean Bay Mart property in Rehoboth Beach have been submitted to city officials for review. This is the same property previously proposed to be developed as BeachWalk.

Plans for the 7.75-acre property were announced by Rehoboth Planning Commissioner John Dewey during a meeting Nov. 21. At the end of the meeting, in his role as commission secretary, Dewey said he was in the process of completing a review of the application for completeness laid out in city code. It is the responsibility of the planning commission secretary to conduct an inventory of the required materials, and then provide a report based on completeness or lack thereof, he said.

Dewey said the application is considered a major subdivision. As proposed, there would be about 31 single-family home lots. All lots, as currently sketched, will meet or exceed minimum lot requirements of 5,000 square feet and will also contain at least a 4,000-square-foot rectangle, he said.

This is the second time in recent memory that property owner Keith Monigle, under the name Ocean Bay Mart Inc., has proposed to redevelop this property, which is zoned C-1 commercial. The first time he proposed a neighborhood called BeachWalk that called for 58 single-family homes and one building with five units.

Those earlier plans did not call for a subdivision of the property, which was challenged by city commissioners at the time. The group passed an ordinance in 2016 codifying that only one building could be built on a lot.

The city’s enforcement of this ordinance on the BeachWalk project led to a years-long legal process. The developer argued the city wasn’t allowed to apply the ordinance to the project because the city was retroactively enforcing an ordinance that allows only one building on one lot and that this was a case of vested rights. Ultimately, after trips to Chancery Court and the Delaware Supreme Court, the city prevailed.

In September 2023, the Delaware Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that the project did not have vested rights for its development to be considered as a condominium and that the development would have to go through the city’s major subdivision process.

Dewey did not have a timetable for when his review would be complete or when the project will go before the planning commission as a whole for review.

Monigle could not be reached for comment.