Lucy Lost Her Federal Funding for a Minute. Fall Funfest Never Needed Any.

"How do you have a contract, a promise from the government of the United States of America, and they default on it?" Richard Helfant asked that question last spring, standing in front of a half-built visitor center on Atlantic Avenue with $500,000 less than he'd been promised. Helfant runs the Save Lucy Committee, the nonprofit that keeps Margate's six-story wooden elephant standing, and for a few months in 2025 the newest chapter of Lucy's 145-year story looked like it might stall over a canceled federal appropriation.

A few blocks away, on Amherst Avenue, nobody was worrying about federal money at all. The Margate Business Association was finalizing its 25th consecutive Fall Funfest by the Bay, an event that has never once depended on a grant, an earmark, or a line in a government budget to happen. Two of Margate's biggest fall fixtures, running on completely different fuel, both due for their moment this September. Walk past the construction fence at Lucy's plaza and then over to Amherst Avenue on Funfest weekend and you're seeing the same town solve the same problem, staying open for business, in two very different ways.

A Gift Shop Built for 3,000 People Now Serves 150,000

The gift shop that's currently a pile of cleared ground next to Lucy was built in the mid-1980s, back when the elephant drew roughly 3,000 visitors a year. It topped out at 450 square feet. On a busy summer Saturday, more than 50 people would try to squeeze into a space designed to comfortably hold 20. There were no ADA-compliant restrooms on site, which meant a meaningful slice of Lucy's visitors, including school groups and anyone with mobility limitations, couldn't fully use the building at all.

Today Lucy draws more than 150,000 people a year, and in 2023 she booked a record 42,267 guided tours, breaking the previous high set in 2018. The math on that old gift shop stopped working a long time ago, and the Save Lucy Committee has been trying to fix it since 2003.

What's rising in its place is a roughly 2,200-square-foot Visitor Welcome and Interpretive Center, designed by SOSH Architects of Atlantic City with guidance from Margaret Westfield of Westfield Architects and Preservation Consultants. It will include a larger gift shop, ADA-compliant restrooms, exhibit space on Lucy's history, and a virtual tour option for anyone who can't climb her stairs. The building will carry the name of Julia Forrest, a longtime supporter and friend of Helfant's who passed away in 2019 and left Lucy a substantial gift in her will, the same gift that funded both her exterior restoration and this new center. While the fence stays up, the gift shop is running out of the old Ocean City Home Bank building at 9219 Atlantic Avenue, on the corner of Atlantic and Washington, and tour tickets are still sold there every day.

The Contract the Federal Government Defaulted On

The visitor center is one project. A separate, larger effort to restore Lucy's interior, her worn yellow pine floors, water-damaged plaster, and 50-year-old HVAC and sprinkler systems, is another, and that's the one that ran into trouble.

Here's how the money actually moved:

The $800,000 to $1 million interior project is now funded again, thanks to Senator Cory Booker's office resecuring the earmark and the state trust grant covering roughly half the remaining balance. Helfant has said the interior work is now on track for what he called Lucy's "Cinderella moment next summer," meaning the full restoration likely won't wrap until 2027, even as the new building itself has carried completion targets ranging from the second quarter of 2026 to this winter, depending on which update you read. Whatever the exact month, the fence has been part of the Atlantic Avenue streetscape for well over a year now, and it's staying a while longer.

None of that changes what Lucy actually is this year: in August she marked her 145th birthday alongside the 50th anniversary of her designation as a National Historic Landmark and the country's 250th, a trio of milestones that lined up in the same summer almost by accident.

Funfest Turns 25 Without Ever Touching a Grant

Fall Funfest by the Bay started in 1998, the brainchild of Margate Business Association founder Joseph Tozzi, and this year it hits its 25th run on September 26 and 27 along Amherst Avenue and the bayfront promenade. Saturday hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission has always been free, and the event has always been funded by vendor fees and sponsorships rather than a municipal budget line.

The scale is real: more than 110 booths and exhibitors, including 65-plus juried craft artisans selling pottery, wood designs, candles, and fall décor. The main stage near Jefferson Avenue runs live music both days, with a lineup that includes Swing That Cat, Poor Mouth Henry, No Clue Band, and Cole Moore, and country singer Nikki Briar closing the festival Sunday afternoon with two sets. Kids get their own stage and Scott's Dock Wetlands Wonderland, there's a dog show, and the weekend includes two parades featuring Miss New Jersey and costumed characters.

New for 2026, the festival is adding a Shore Axes Mobile axe-throwing trailer on Washington Avenue, a 2026 Lexus on display to sit in, and a raffle tent with prizes including 76ers tickets, iHeart Jingle Ball tickets, Katz JCC gift cards, and a beach cruiser donated by Margate Bike Shop. Raffle winners are drawn Sunday at 3 p.m. and don't need to be present to win.

Twenty-five years of this, and not one of those years required a federal appropriation to survive a change in Washington.

Two Fall Weekends, One Walk Down Atlantic Avenue

If you live in Margate, the practical version of all this is simple. This coming weekend, park away from Amherst Avenue if you can and use the free jitney that runs along Ventnor and Amherst avenues from the Eugene Tighe School lot at 7804 Amherst Ave, trackable through the Jitney Surfer app. It'll save you the search for street parking that Funfest weekend always produces.

Lucy herself is still open for business through all of this. Guided tours run every 45 minutes, the temporary gift shop at 9219 Atlantic Avenue is fully stocked, and the elephant's howdah still offers the same view over the beach and Atlantic City skyline it always has. The construction fence is an inconvenience, not a closure.

What the fence and the festival banner really represent, side by side this month, is two different answers to the same question every small landmark and every small event eventually has to face: who pays when the bill comes due. Lucy's answer runs through a will, a senator's office, and a state historic trust, a chain with more links and more risk of one snapping. Funfest's answer has run through the same merchant association and the same booth fees for a quarter century, and it hasn't needed to change once.

Both are still standing this September. That's worth noticing next time you're walking past either one.

If Margate's the kind of place where a 145-year-old elephant and a 25-year-old street festival both matter enough to fight for, it's worth talking to someone who already knows every block of it. Daniel Rallo has spent his career working these Downbeach streets, and if you're thinking about your next move on the island, get your free home valuation and start the conversation.