Own a piece of Ocean City: Boardwalk signs auctioned as part of replacement project

A couple of years ago, Ocean City decided to replace the dozens of little signs on its boardwalk — the ones that say where you are, warn about rip currents and list the do’s and don’ts of hanging on the beach.

The old signs with their plain blue text on white backgrounds were dated and fading. Officials also wanted to reduce the visual clutter and finger-wagging tone of some of the signs.

The West Ocean City sign firm Plak That won the remove-and-replace gig. As owner Wyatt Harrison and two of his laborers worked their way along the boardwalk, intrigued passersby wanted to know: What are you planning to do with those?

Harrison thought to recycle the aluminum signs, but after hearing that question for weeks, he concluded there was only one equitable solution to parting with the hundreds of retired boardwalk signs: auction them off.

“Frankly, I underestimated how strong those feelings would be for some of these people who have reached out,” he said. “There’s life events that happen in front of, or in the midst of, these signs — like, proposals, weddings, grandkids.”

Even the most mundane signs, such as those marking a designated smoking area, are in surprisingly high demand, Harrison said. He’s been hearing from families who are pooling money to afford a keepsake from their most beloved corner of the boardwalk.

The auction ends at noon Friday and benefits a Catonsville-based charity that brings sick kids and their families to the beach.

Bids for some of the premier lots — 24 unique-numbered boardwalk signs featuring the resort’s iconic white marlin — are reaching the $1,000 mark.

More than 3,000 bids have been placed for about 220 items, Harrison said.

Others up for grabs include the code-of-conduct signs seen at dune crossings, signs that urge visitors to “leave only your footprints” and miscellaneous ones such as bus stop markers and Spanish-language placards.

Last fall, the town of Ocean City bid out the project to remove all the way-finding and informational signs from the boardwalk, fabricate replacements and install them. Plak That’s winning bid was for $435,000.

Visually, the redesign aligns with the resort’s sans serif, smiley-face branding introduced in 2022. The new signs are bright and color-coded — blue and yellow for way-finding, red for prohibited, green for action.

In a frantic four-month push, sometimes working as many as 30 city blocks a day, Harrison and his crew hit the July 4 deadline to install them all.

Plak That’s contract gave the firm the right to keep and sell the old signage. But Harrison said he felt uneasy about profiting from that — because Ocean City nostalgia is deeply meaningful for so many.

So he decided to donate the auction proceeds to the Believe in Tomorrow Children’s Foundation, a charity that hosts families of critically ill children at the beach, and elsewhere, for free one-week stays.

Believe in Tomorrow, based in Catonsville and founded in 1986, also provides housing for families of children receiving treatment at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and it recently broke ground on a facility there to host more families.

The nonprofit holds a special place in Harrison’s heart. He spent his teenage years on the boardwalk working at Malibu’s Surf Shop, a job that involved giving free surf lessons to Believe in Tomorrow clients.

“I thought it would be a cool opportunity to give back,” Harrison said. “They’re focused on the families. At the end of this whole thing, then I get to just write them a big check and that’s it.”

The auction has raised more than $10,000, he said, and that could end up much higher.

The auction offer took Believe in Tomorrow CEO Maryanne Davis by surprise.

“That donation from them means we can continue to provide services to families,” she said.

If he’d recycled the aluminum signs, Harrison said, he’d have gotten about $600.

Ocean City’s tourism director, Tom Perlozzo, who began planning the signage overhaul in 2024, said tourists are warming up to the boardwalk’s new look.

“We have a lot of history here,” Perlozzo said. “Making that change and going a little bit more, I’ll say modern, trying to ease into that, it was difficult. For the most part, the traditionalists wanted to see, you know, weathered wood or something like that.”

Perhaps that’s why some want to take a little nostalgia home.

“Everyone has their street,” Harrison said. “They’re buying memories. They’re buying nostalgia.”