The Iconic Windrift: Reflections on the Landmark’s Past as It Becomes the ICONA Windrift
As the sale of another comfortably familiar local establishment begets change, a look back at the Windrift Hotel before looking forward to Icona Windrift is in order.
Warren Buckingham and Russell Buckingham of Buckingham Brothers Builders in Wildwood built the Windrift Hotel at 80th Street and the beach in 1967. They did so in partnership with real estate developers William Diller Jr., and Martin Corbett via Dilbet, Inc.
“The Windrift was Dad’s gig,” Jamie Diller, president and CEO of Diller Fisher Realtors, said of his father’s part in developing one of the town’s gems. “After working a full day in his building and real estate development company, Dad went over to the Windrift and worked as a bellhop” during the hotel’s early days. That Windrift “work ethic” initially came as a shock to Jamie Diller’s system when he took a job there as lifeguard and found himself doing maintenance and more, he says. “The hotel was run well!”
Paige Buckingham and Pauline Buckingham Sohn, Warren Buckingham’s daughters, fondly recall their initiation into the hospitality industry under their dad’s tutelage. Paige remembers peeking down the elevator shaft on the Windrift’s construction site as a 5-year-old and being fascinated by the hotel’s switchboard. That switchboard sat by a small cocktail bar and a coffee shop off of the lobby, says Pauline, who was 7 at the time.
Paige, who worked full-time with her father at the Windrift from 1986 until his death in 1998, recalls her first job picking up trash in the hotel’s parking lot as a 10-year-old. Warren Buckingham presented his daughter with a little yellow bank payment envelope containing 50 cents for her efforts. She would go on to become the Windrift’s president. Her sister began working similar hotel jobs around age 11 at another family-owned property, the Sands Motel in Wildwood Crest.
Both women worked summers at the Windrift during their teens and early 20s.
Pauline began working as a Windrift cocktail waitress at age 18. Her sister handled office work for a bit and kept an eye on swimmers as a lifeguard at the Windrift’s pool during her college years. “Lifeguarding was the best job ever because you got to know the guests,” Paige notes with pleasure. People took longer vacations back then, she adds. Today, the children and grandchildren of some of those congenial guests vacation annually at the Windrift.
Windrift guests are not the only ones keeping family traditions.
Paige’s daughter, stepson and stepdaughter, and Pauline’s two sons have all worked, or continue to work, at the Windrift during the summer. Their children’s grandfather ensured that all family members who worked there started at the bottom, doing cleanup, laundry and more, the sisters say. Their father had a gift for bringing out the best in people. “Even our children had that wish to please their grandfather and to make him proud,” says Pauline.
Not only that, there was no job that their dad asked anyone to do that he had not already done himself, the sisters note. Moreover, Paige remembers how her dad and uncle ate breakfast sandwiches with the cleanup crew every morning, breakfast being the brothers’ treat.
Windrift Hotel staffers, oftentimes long-term, include different generations of family members, too, according to Paige. Even as love is in the air for guests at enchanting Windrift weddings, some staffers who met on the job fell in love and married, Pauline adds.
Much else about the Windrift involves labors of love.
“It was Dad’s, Paige’s and Pauline’s dream to build that second floor on the Windrift,” Jamie Diller notes of the hotel’s Level 2. This magnificent Windrift addition with its ocean view was up and running after extensive renovations in 2012.
William Diller Jr. died in January of that year, so he missed seeing his dream come to completion. Yet, there’s was “irony” in an occurrence at the grand opening celebration in the spring of 2012, Jamie Diller muses. Two birds showed up in the massive dining and reception room. The pair, flying and perching, could not be persuaded to leave the party despite staff efforts. “That’s Bill and Warren” was the metaphoric consensus among guests, Jamie Diller reminisces.
“Having the Windrift was basically the life that we knew,” Paige Buckingham says. In selling the hotel, “it’s not like I’m retiring from work. I’m retiring from the life that I knew.”
After Sohn mentions how much she looks forward to finally spending time on the beach with her sister, who always worked at the Windrift all summer, she sums up Buckingham family feelings on selling the business to the founder and CEO of Icona Resorts, Eustace Mita. The sale was announced March 26.
“The Windrift has always been a treasure to us,” Sohn says of her family’s 54 years on-site at the hotel. “We’re happy that Eustace will approach the Windrift with the same care and that he is keeping the name” as the Icona Windrift, she says. “We’re grateful that Eustace and his family will continue our dad’s and our uncle’s legacy. And, we wish the Mita family the same good memories and success that we had at the Windrift.”
The Buckingham sisters also are pleased that Pete Compare, Paige’s husband and longtime Windrift general manager, will remain as the Icona Windrift GM, especially for the hotel staff’s sake. They also agree that when their beloved Windrift is renovated, it will become even more beautiful in keeping with Icona Resorts’ top-notch style.
With mutual respect, the man behind Icona Resorts plans to deliver.
All Windrift rooms and lobbies will be renovated to the tune of more than $5 million, Mita says. “The Windrift was in good condition,” he adds, noting the major renovations completed there in 2012. A well-kept hotel is upgraded every seven years or so, he explains, to the timing to spruce up the Windrift now is reasonable.
The Windrift Hotel will remain open as usual this summer. Renovations by Icona Resorts’ sister companies, Achristavest Properties and Caritas Construction, will begin during the winter of 2021. Icona Windrift is expected to be ready for guests by the summer of 2022.
On another positive note, Mita applauds Windrift Hotel staffers’ commendable teamwork, which he says is much like Icona’s. Not only that, the new owner is delighted that the Windrift’s general manager will remain on board. “Pete Compare is a great leader,” Mita says. “We’re excited that he’s staying with team Icona at the Windrift.”
As for its décor, Icona Windrift will feature the same nautical blue and white color schemes as Icona Resorts’ other properties: Icona Avalon, Icona Diamond Beach and Icona Cape May. While the Windrift’s Signature Lounge packed with celebrity guest history will be redone, Windrift history will not be forgotten. Like other Icona Resorts hotels, Icona Windrift guest hallways will be lined with black-and-white historical photographs of local interest. The Icona Windrift’s pictures will include elements of Buckingham and Diller family history, Mita says.
There’s Seven Mile hospitality industry history in Mita’s genes, too.
When others were heading to Ocean City in the mid-20th century, his grandfather James Eustace Wolfington went to Avalon, Mita says. Wolfington, who was an innovative and successful car dealer, purchased the Puritan Hotel at 21st Street and the beach in 1948. The Puritan was the only oceanfront hotel in town, Mita notes. Wolfington dubbed his new property the Whitebrier Hotel because of his fondness for West Virginia’s historic hotel, The Greenbrier.
Like grandfather, like grandson.
Mita, who also was a car dealer before diving into the hospitality industry, recalls working as a pool boy at the Whitebrier Hotel as an 11-year-old. All of his aunts and his uncles held various jobs at The Whitebrier as well, he says. Plus, Mita worked for Princeton Hotel proprietor Phil Matalucci, first as a busboy at age 14 and later as a Princeton waiter.
“Now we have every oceanfront [hotel guest] room in Avalon and Stone Harbor,” says the energetic and enthusiastic founder of Icona Resorts.
The former pool boy, busboy, waiter, car dealer and now hospitality entrepreneur sets his sights on making Icona Resorts’ beachfront properties on Seven Mile Beach a top-10 resort in the United States, he says. “Though in some ways we already are!” Mita adds. In fact, Icona Resorts hotels earn notably high rankings from U.S. News & World Report and superior marks from Tripadvisor, “which is most important because it is the voice of the guest,” Mita muses.
Meanwhile, Mita considers the record he set by paying the highest price for a hotel in Cape May County with the purchase of the Windrift. Mum remains the word for that price tag.
“For me,” Mita quips, “it was millions in emotion!”
