Save up to 50%
or more when you meet in
Connecticut’s
Fairfield County
Book a meeting at a hotel listed
below and receive a complimentary
coffee break daily.
Minimum 25 rooms per night.
Expires March 1, 2009.
Based on availability.
Bridgeport Holiday Inn Hyatt Regency Greenwich
203-334-1234 203-637-1234
Hilton Stamford Hotel Sheraton Stamford
& Executive Meeting Center 203-359-1300
203-967-2222 Stamford Marriott
Holiday Inn Stamford Hotel & Spa
203-358-8400 203-357-9555
Trumbull Marriott
203-378-1400
Fairfield County/CONNECTICUT
Fairfield County Convention and Visitors Bureau
297 West Avenue, Norwalk, CT 06850
(203) 853-7770 • (800) 473-4868
www.fairfieldcountyCTcvb.com
Some of the beautiful
Victorians in Cape May.
distinctive hotels began to fall prey to
demolition teams.
Preservationists realized that the
Wildwoods was in danger of losing its
kitschy coup. Like Cape May—where
dilapidated Victorians were restored
as successful bed-and-breakfasts—the
Wildwood area needed to protect and
promote its identity.
About 100 of the area’s distinctive
hotels had been demolished by 2002,
when preservationists kicked into gear
to save the remaining ones. Their timing
was ideal. The five-mile stretch of the
Wildwoods today boasts the country’s
largest concentration of Doo-Wop roadside architecture, says Bruce Laverty,
who spent his childhoods in Wildwood.
He’s curator of architecture at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, an architecture
research library.
The Doo Wop Preservation League
highlights about 60 structures during
a two-hour tour that departs from a new
Doo-Wop museum, housed in a former
diner. A ’60s-themed weekend each
spring and a Fab ’50s weekend each fall
have become sellout events.
Robert Fattori, who grew up spending summers at the shore, is delighted to
see Wildwood and other seaside Jersey
towns on the rebound. The Philly native
had watched in dismay as familiar haunts
fell into disrepair. He and his family abandoned the shore for a six-hour haul to
Nags Head, N.C.
But the beach isn’t the shore. Four
years ago they got tired of the trek and
returned to the Jersey coast. Fattori, 47,
bought a condo not far from where his
extended family and friends summered
when he was a teen. “It’s two blocks from
the beach and three from the boardwalk,”
he raves. “The kids can get around without getting into the car.”
He’s not surprised to run into many
of his old buddies on the boardwalk.
Air travel has become a costly hassle.
Gasoline prices are skyrocketing. The
dollar is weak internationally. But at the
shore, Mack & Manco’s pizza is always
hot and crisp and a cone of Kohr’s frozen custard yogurt feels as refreshing
as the Atlantic Ocean on an August day.
The Jersey coast, it turns out, remains a
shore thing.
