Dolle’s Candyland begins construction on highway location

Construction has begun on a new Dolle’s Candyland location on Route 1, outside Milton.

During a February 2020 meeting, Sussex County Planning & Zoning Commission approved a preliminary site plan for a 5,125-square-foot building with 12 parking spaces on a one-acre parcel at 14657 Coastal Highway. The property is just north of, and on the same side of the highway, as Steamboat Landing Road. For many years, the property was home to automotive repair shop Import Professionals.

Rudolph Dolle Sr. founded Dolle’s Candyland in Ocean City, Md., in 1910. A little more than a decade later, in 1926, Dolle and Thomas Pachides opened a Dolle’s in Rehoboth Beach. A year after that, in 1927, Dolle and Pachides moved the candy shop to the corner of Rehoboth Avenue and the Boardwalk, where it remained until the end of 2021.

Current owner Tom Ibach, Pachides’ grandson, took over the business and opened Ibach's By The Sea a few doors down from the Boardwalk in 1984. That storefront is now also home to the Dolle’s in Rehoboth Beach.

Ibach said he expects construction to be complete around November.