The Changing Face Of Good Luck Point

by Patricia A. Miller

The old Good Luck Point is almost gone. The new Good Luck Point is rising, high into the sky.

This tiny section of Berkeley Township off Bayview Avenue near the tidal marshes was perhaps ground zero in Bayville after Superstorm Sandy. And it’s been a long struggle to regain some sense of normalcy. But it will never be as it was.

There are a number of empty, weed-choked lots where modest ranch homes once stood. The only sign of their existence are the mailboxes that dot Dorrance and Good Luck drives.

The battered ranches that still stand are baking in the hot August sun. Weeds are growing up against the windows of some. Without a doubt, the interiors are fertile ground for dangerous mold. If you look closely, even on the empty lots, there are vestiges of life as it once was. A tiny Matchbox car. A spoon on an empty lot. A spiral staircase that once led up to a second floor of a house now gone.

Some of the middle-class homes that once existed are slowly being replaced by new, more luxurious homes up on massive pilings, some even three stories high. The old Good Luck Point is dying a slow death. It’s the end of a way of life that existed for decades.