Two stretches of North Wildwood's boardwalk have gone dark to foot traffic as the Jersey Shore town pushes ahead with the next phase of a years-long rebuilding campaign. The sections run from 23rd to 24½ Avenues and from 16th to 17½ Avenues, and both have been closed to public access since October 5 while crews tear out and rebuild them from the ground up.
According to the City of North Wildwood, the work includes complete demolition and reconstruction of both sections, with utilities, piles, decking and railings all being replaced. The city says the closures will remain in effect for the duration of construction, with both sections anticipated to be finished by late March 2027.
As 6abc Philadelphia reports, city leaders describe the project as the second phase of an ongoing effort and say the boardwalk will look very different by next summer. That framing lines up with the city's own notice, which places the work squarely within a broader, multi-year rebuilding plan rather than a one-off repair.
A Multi-Year Rebuild, Block by Block
This isn't North Wildwood's first boardwalk closure of the year. Earlier in 2026, the city completed a reconstruction stretch from 24th to 26th Avenues, according to the Cape May County Herald. The paper also reported that an earlier version of the current phase's northern boundary was described as running to 18th Avenue, a detail that differs from the city's more recent notice placing the limit at 17½ Avenues.
The newspaper's reporting frames the project within a much larger financial picture. North Wildwood was awarded $10.3 million in state funding for boardwalk projects in 2024, and the same reporting cited an estimate that the full multi-phase effort could ultimately cost about $34 million. Per the same report, the city has been tackling the work in pieces rather than all at once.
How North Wildwood's Approach Differs
The scale of the rebuild reflects a strategy of replacing the boardwalk from the structure up rather than patching what's already there. Wildwood Video Archive notes that the city plans to rebuild a few blocks at a time over the next several years, a pace that explains why North Wildwood's boardwalk has seen repeated closures section by section rather than a single sweeping shutdown.
That full-rebuild approach stands in contrast to work done in neighboring Wildwood, where crews stripped away the wooden planks, repaired the existing concrete supports, and then rebuilt the decking on top, per Wildwood Video Archive. Wildwood's own project, running from Spicer Avenue to Montgomery Avenue, began in autumn 2024 and continued into 2025, and the town received more than $8 million in the same 2024 state funding round that benefited North Wildwood.
That round also sent $20 million apiece to Atlantic City and Asbury Park for their own boardwalk work, underscoring how widespread shore-town infrastructure spending has become up and down the Jersey coast. For North Wildwood specifically, one more piece of the boardwalk's footprint remains in limbo: the city says the reopening of the North Wildwood Dog Park will be determined in 2027, once this phase of reconstruction wraps up.
For now, both closed sections are off-limits for the winter, with the city targeting late March 2027 to reopen them in time for the following season.
