Atlantic City Gamble: What happened to A.C. should stay in A.C.

Created on Saturday, 07 August 2010 21:08

Published on Saturday, 07 August 2010 05:00

Written by Randy Garbin

Turns out, our excursion to Atlantic City proved rather timely. Not long after we got back, New Jersey’s Governor Christie turned his attention to the beleaguered town and issued his plans for it.

Recognizing, as I had with this exploration, that all that lucre had done little to revive the city as a whole, the governor has proposed a state takeover of city hall, not too much unlike what Trenton had to do with another festering urban sore, Camden.

The city just recently hosted a “gambling summit,” a term I would more closely associate with a Mafia gathering than a legitimate conference. Held at the Convention Center, Governor Christie further explained his own plans for the city and presided over a hearing for others to voice their own concerns as well.

Finally acknowledging that A.C. is hardly the only game in town anymore, as it were, the governor proposes to dramatically restructure the state’s administration of their gaming business. New Jersey actually subsidizes two horse racing tracks, if you can believe it. Boggles the mind that a gambling facility requires state assistance, but there you go. Here, the Governor wants to sell off or lease the facilities to private interests. Sounds good so far.

However, Christie also wants to deepen the state’s commitment to gambling in Atlantic City, provide assistance to complete at least one project and to shore up the whole district, which includes six bankrupt casinos.

Without going further into the details, it sounds like more good money chasing after bad. Atlantic City didn’t really work when it had no competition. Now Christie wants to dig in the state’s heels and give this dubious concept one more fighting chance. A recent Philadelphia Inquirer article quoted one assemblyman proposing to expand gambling into the Meadowlands “in the shadow of New York,” but the general consensus held that expanding outside of A.C. limits would effectively kill the city’s chances of ever becoming “Las Vegas East.”

From where I stood at any point on the boardwalk, I can say with some certainty that Vegas has little to worry about. Indeed, in this recession, that city has plenty of its own problems, but Atlantic City barely pops up on its radar.

James Howard Kunstler pointed out that humans put cities in prime locations. In other words, we tend to build our centers of commerce and government at points on the landscape that we can access with relative ease, or at places that facilitate the forms of commerce that ultimately justify its existence. You can find strewn throughout America’s relatively short history not a few vanished towns of all sizes, abandoned after they served their useful purposes.

If you can’t make money with gambling, the most ridiculously profitable enterprise ever invented, then just move on. Bigger hotels, longer boardwalks, more betting schemes — not even a monorail — will ever help to bring this city back to anything close to its former glory.

I can’t help but wonder why they even bother to try. All along New Jersey’s 130-​mile shoreline, you will find almost nothing but beautiful beaches dotted with thriving, happy little seaside communities, teaming with residents and visitors alike, with real estate prices in the stratosphere. Along that 130-​mile stretch, you find only a few blemishes that mar this picture.

Given how crazy-​popular destinations such as Ocean City, Long Beach Island, Seaside Heights and others continue to be, and how crowded they get year after year with people hoping to carve out just a little piece of paradise for themselves if only for a single weekend, why not just join the club?

The region no longer needs Atlantic City to be Atlantic City. The alternatives abound everywhere, and if I suddenly come down with an acute case of stupidity and with it a desire to dump my hard-​earned cash into a slot machine or splay it across a craps table, then I may soon be able to do that in my own neighborhood.

Sorry, kids. It’s time to pack up the toys and go home. Save some of the better, older structures. Most of the new hotels erected after 1977 haven’t held up well and display a lack of quality construction in any case. Turn them into hotels and fancy family resorts. Take the rest of the town and just plain start over. Downsize. New Jersey has more pressing needs to tend to anyway. The beach doesn’t need an attraction to draw the people out. The beach is the attraction.