Business at the Delaware beaches is bustling if you manage a restaurant, sell goods in retail or rent a home to vacationers. But the season has seemed flatter to some who manage hotels or make a living building homes within Rehoboth Beach's city limits.
That's the outlook for 2016 at the beach so far, according to economic data and interviews with people in the trenches of the beach resort's main industries: retail and hospitality.
"Every year, we seem to need one or two extra people," said Adam Newman, a partner at Gary's Dewey Beach Grill, a longtime restaurant right on Dewey's main avenue. "The last few weeks have been fantastic. It's crunch time from here on out until Labor Day weekend."
There is, though, some gravel in the sandal. The number of people renting hotel rooms for the weekend in and around Rehoboth, as tracked by the Rehoboth Beach-Dewey Beach Chamber of Commerce, is running lower so far this year compared to 2015.
From January to mid-June in 2015, 58,400 rooms had been rented for weekends, according to the chamber's figures. This year, in that same period, 1 percent fewer weekend bookings were recorded. At the same time, midweek hotel room stays — as measured by how many rooms are taken on a Wednesday each week — are up 3.1 percent this year compared to last year.
"It's been pretty slack for hotel-motel. From slightly up to slack," said Carol Everhart, the chamber's director and a font of institutional memory in the resort. "I think there's a number of things at play. Is it hesitation? No, not when I look at the traffic. Are they choosing different ways to stay, or looking at more availability of places to stay? Probably a little of both." AirBnB listings, Everhart said, are likely a factor.
Sharon Palmer-Stauffer, manager of rental properties for Coldwell Banker Resort Realty, says she's not surprised to see hotel stays on the area's busy weekends are flat, because the volume of homes and cottages to rent has increased quite a bit in recent years.
"The rental season seems to be right on track," Palmer-Stauffer said. "We still have openings, still have inventory, but there's so much more inventory down here than there used to be."
Barbara Fijalkowski, 65, enjoyed a quick break from the heat with some watermelon water ice Saturday in Lewes, saying she loves its small-town, walkable vibes.
Her family, from Pitman, New Jersey, recently purchased a house in Delaware's first town and was looking forward to spending a week by the beach enjoying the restaurants, fishing and sandy dunes.
"It's more reasonable than the Jersey shore," her husband Ron said.
The hotel numbers are the only waffling statistic among a host of indicators that show this year's Delaware beach economy is besting last year's pace. Employment figures for Sussex County's retail trade and hospitality industries — both of which are highly concentrated in Lewes, Rehoboth Beach, Bethany Beach, Ocean View and Fenwick Island — show major gains for May, the early part of the summer season. In fact, more people are employed in those industries now than ever.
Last May, there were 13,700 leisure and hospitality jobs filled in Sussex County, according to data collected by the Delaware Department of Labor. This May, there were 15,400 of those workers in Sussex, an astonishing 12.4 percent increase in the sector from one year to the next. The industry's workforce, which includes jobs at restaurants, hotels, bars and movie theaters, has grown by 44 percent in five years in Sussex County, according to the labor figures; that far outstrips the statewide growth rate of 15 percent for the same five-year stretch.
The county's retail industry, nearly as concentrated in eastern Sussex as its restaurant and hospitality businesses, saw 4 percent growth from one May to the next. While state economists may revise the non-seasonally adjusted figures in coming months, they represent unmistakable year-to-year economic growth.
Palmer-Stauffer says part of the reason for economic growth is eastern Sussex's attractiveness as a place for people to buy a home, not just rent for vacations.
"We had a family that's been renting on the oceanfront for at least 29 years," Palmer-Stauffer said. "They just bought a property out at Coastal Club and now they're vacationing in their own home."
That development is in unincorporated Sussex County, and at least a 15-minute drive from the Rehoboth boardwalk in summer traffic; its residents can pass hundreds of Del. 1 businesses on their way to the resort. Rehoboth is, beyond a doubt, crowded in summertime, and some in town do worry that it is losing business off all kinds to the sprawling development outside it.
he city passed new zoning laws that took immediate effect in July 2015 designed to put a cap on the size of single-family homes. City commissioners acted on the theory, put to them by many residents and visitors, that increasingly massive homes, many built by owners intending to rent them out from the start, were fraying the city's neighborly personality. The city also made it harder to fit an in-ground pool on any given lot.
Other residents, property owners and business owners discouraged the zoning law's passage, saying it would crimp new homebuilding for no good reason. Dave McCarthy, a real estate agent who also owns a home construction company, says it's been obvious that construction has slowed in the city since the law passed.
"There's nowhere near as much building going on in the city, and I think a lot of that has to do with the zoning codes," McCarthy said. "A lot of the growth down here, it's retirees. A lot of them are buying in Sussex County — out of town."
Damalier Molina, Rehoboth Beach's chief building inspector, said the city's building permit fees reflect that same change.
"New construction has subsided," Molina said Thursday. "In 2015, before the ordinance, people got in fast; they filed before the deadline. Now we're still getting applications, but we're not getting them at the rate of before the ordinance."
For most people doing business at the beaches, though, it matters little whether their customer comes from within Rehoboth or outside beach towns, and the far-flung developments all mush together in their minds.
About 10:45 a.m. Saturday, Steve and Martha Cahill and Mike and Michelle Beale were relaxing by the rolling waves at Cape Henlopen State Park. They left New Castle County at 5 a.m. that morning to stake out the first spot on the beach where the surf-fishing area of the park begins and Cape's guarded beach ends.
"We used to come all the time," Steve Cahill, of Wilmington, said, his dog Guinness by his side, but he added that the economy made it tough to take week-long vacations. Instead, they've decided to purchase surf-fishing beach tags so they can take their truck down for the day and vacation when they can.
Typically they will go to restaurants and see some sights around the area, but Steve said that since it's the holiday weekend they will just stay on the beach until about 1 p.m. to beat the crowds and be able to make it home for a graduation party. Even though it's a short stay – it doesn't take away the beauty of the area for the couples.
"I'd like to retire down here," Mike Beale, of Newark, said.
Newman, the Gary's Dewey Beach Grill partner, recently took over Rehoboth Ale House with a partner, Kyle McLaughlin, giving him a glimpse at running a business in each town.
"Lunchtime in Dewey's a little more busy. There's not that boardwalk, where you can get out of the sun for a little bit," he said, so restaurants like his are the refuge tourists choose.
But in each town, he said, business is booming, rain or shine.
"If it rains," he said, "people come off the beach and need a bite to eat and a beer."
Contributing: Jen Rini.
Follow James Fisher on Twitter: @JamesFisherTNJ
