The Windrift Turns 50! If You Build It (and Treat Your Customers Right), They Will Come
You’ve probably been there a million times, maybe for dinner or perhaps to see BLT on a Saturday night.
You’ve likely attended a wedding or some other special function there, possibly a longstanding community event like the Lions Club spaghetti dinner.
If you’ve been coming to Avalon for a long time, you may have competed in the Fourth of July pool races there as a child.
There are so many reasons to spend an enjoyable day or evening at the Windrift Resort Hotel.
But all those times you’ve been there, you probably never realized how far back the Windrift goes.
This Avalon institution has been part of the local landscape for half a century!
You’ve just never noticed its age because the family that built and has operated what would become Avalon’s third motel and resort for all of those 50 years has constantly reinvested in expansions and renovations that allows the Windrift to always appear fresh and new.
Most recently, it’s the multimillion-dollar renovation in 2012 of their spectacular rooftop oceanfront banquet space that offers the most impressive oceanfront views on the Seven Mile Beach.
At the time of its construction in 1967, Avalon’s hospitality scene had been set for decades. It consisted mostly of a series of older wooden structures like the Avalon Hotel, the Princeton Hotel, the Whitebrier Hotel and even the Holiday Hotel.
By the mid-1960s, a more mobile population demanded accommodations that matched their movable lifestyle, and the motel was born. But change was slow to come to the Seven Mile Beach.
Motels might have been all the rage in resorts like the Wildwoods, but not so much in Avalon or Stone Harbor.
Bob Golden made the break first in about 1966 with the Golden Inn. The Buckingham brothers, Russ and Warren, followed shortly after with the Star Stream at 79th Street and Dune Drive.
But they weren’t finished with just the Star Stream. Far from it.
As developers in the Wildwoods, the Buckingham brothers saw firsthand the popularity of this new wave of accommodations.
“We were probably building two to three motels a year for other people in Wildwood,” Russ Buckingham remembers on a recent warm morning looking out over his Avalon Golf Club in Middle Township.
As Russ tells it, his family was lucky enough to have two homes in the 1940s. Their permanent residence was in Folcroft in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Their summer home was in the Wildwoods.
“Dad owned a grocery store and cut meats,” he reminisces. “Then the war came along with rationing, and it became apparent that we couldn’t afford both homes. It came down to a family vote: Which house should we keep and live in?”
Suffice it to say that Russ was enrolled in Wildwood High School for his sophomore year and graduated in 1949.
“I went to work for the Morey Brothers as a foreman for about ten years,” Russ says. He was about 30 when he and his brother Warren, who passed away in 1998, decided to make a go of it on their own.
“I guess it was a bit risky at the time, but we had plenty of work,” he remembers.
A friend, Bill Diller, had already ven-tured north on Ocean Drive and built a house in Avalon. The Buckinghams followed and built a bungalow.
They’d go on to handle the construction of the Golden Inn for Bob Golden. More important, they had the vision to see the potential in Avalon and Stone Harbor.
So they formed a partnership to build the Windrift with Marty Corbett and Bill Diller.
“We each put in $8,000 because we needed to raise $24,000,” Russ explains. “For another $4,000, we could have owned 33 percent! Who knew?”
The group was able to add the purchase of a liquor license because, based on local law at the time, the motel had at least 50 guest rooms. But not everyone saw the need for the license.
Corbett didn’t want the liquor license but the remaining partners prevailed. They would later add another 35 units as part of an expansion and renovation philosophy that would keep the property new and fresh for five decades.
What’s now evolved into a full-service, first-class restaurant and lounge opened in 1967 as a coffee shop operated by Tom Todd, of Stone Harbor.
There’s no record today of the first guests who checked into the Windrift. That’s probably because they were too busy filling rooms and accommodating guests.
“I remember that we did real well that first summer,” Buckingham says.
So now, a half-century later, what does Russ Buckingham think of the growth and evolution of the town?
“It’s nothing short of amazing in my mind,” he says. “We saw the potential, but who could have ever envisioned what Avalon has become today?”
Over 50 years, the Buckingham family – now with a second generation operating the Windrift – has proved that when you provide your customers with comfortable yet sophisticated accommodations and dining options from casual to romantic dinners and spectacular ocean views, they will continue to return year after year – some of them for 50 years!
Given its history and how it looks today, the Windrift will continue to make guests comfortable for years and probably decades to come.
Nothing would make Russ Buckingham happier.