Atlantic Oceanside Hotel undergoing renovations
Story Location:
Dewey Beach, DE
United States
Dewey’s Atlantic Oceanside Hotel has had renovations in its three decades of existence. Owner Rob Marshall says this time the difference is visibility.
Located on Route 1 at 1700 Coastal Highway, the hotel has been in Dewey for nearly as long as the town has officially been a town. The hotel was built in 1983, just two years after the town was incorporated in 1981.
During a recent tour of the hotel, Marshall, son of Bob Marshall, one of the hotel’s original partners, pointed to staircase renovations in the past decade as examples of not-as-visible, but still important, renovations.
The hotel’s highly visible construction began with removing of an old deck on Route 1 that, “was screaming to be removed,” said Marshall.
The most significant change will be relocating the hotel lobby. Marshall said the new lobby will be in the former Subway restaurant. He said plans to move had been in the works for a couple of years, but he was waiting for the lease to expire on the commercial storefront.
“The goal is to try and improve guest services,” said Marshall.
Marshall said the new lobby will be at least three times the size of the old lobby, featuring a small coffee area, a place for continental breakfast and 12-foot ceilings in the waiting area.
Inside the lobby are a couple of holes that had been jackhammered into the concrete floor to make way infrastructure improvements. The holes reveal an early hotel renovation – teal tiles that lined the top of the hotel’s original pool, fronting on Route 1.
Marshall used to lifeguard at the pool, which had to be moved because it was being used, even when it wasn’t open.
“You can imagine what I mean,” he said.
There had been some discussion about adding more hotel rooms, but Marshall said the property wouldn’t have enough parking spots to meet the town’s requirements.
“Short of building a parking garage, that wasn’t really an option,” he said.
Instead, there will be a gazebo above the new lobby, said Marshall.
“It just seemed like a waste of space to not have something up there,” he said.
In addition to the lobby change, the entire southern side of the three-story hotel will get new siding. Marshall said this was also a season or two in the making, but the project was delayed so both could be done at once.
Marshall said the siding should be finished in the next month; the lobby sometime in July.
Chris Flood has been working for the Cape Gazette since early 2014. He currently covers Rehoboth Beach and Henlopen Acres, but has also covered Dewey Beach and the state government. He covers environmental stories, business stories, random stories on subjects he finds interesting and has a column called ‘Choppin’ Wood’ that runs every other week. Additionally, Chris moonlights as the company’s circulation manager, which primarily means fixing boxes during daylight hours that are jammed with coins, but sometimes means delivering papers in the middle of the night. He’s a graduate of the University of Maine and the Landing School of Boat Building & Design.
