The Atlantic City experiment has always been a failure. When gambling was approved for the faltering resort town in the 1970s, it was billed as a panacea for a city in decline. Casinos would draw visitors and businesses, creating jobs and leading to a rebirth.
It never happened.
I’m no expert, but the casinos always seemed far too insular. They were designed to keep people inside even when they took a break from the tables and machines, and in the process created little incentive for non-casino business growth.
As you drive along Delaware and Atlantic avenues into the city, you see empty, boarded-up storefronts, cash-for-gold shops, bail-bondsmen and law offices advertising criminal defense services. Head west and even the closed businesses disappear — older, dilapidated homes, vacant lots, cut-rate motels. And these are not new phenomena, as anyone who has driven through the city over the last three-plus decades can tell you.
Again, I could be reading what I see incorrectly — I’m only an occasional visitor (I hate gambling, so I have little reason to go) and have not researched the city’s economic history. But there appears to be two Atlantic Citys — one constructed for the enjoyment of outsiders, the other left in the shadows to be ignored, except when the shadowy one comes into the light and interferes with the image the city would prefer to project. Then all the stops are pulled out.
Now, with casinos opening elsewhere in the Northeast, we’ve witnessed a new wave of casino closings that have state officials scrambling. An emergency manager is expected to issue a report as early as this week, and residents don’t know what to expect. As NPR reports,
Bankruptcy would give Atlantic City more time to pay its bills and more flexibility to reduce spending, maybe by paying bondholders less and cutting workers’ benefits. It could also make it harder to borrow money and maintain services. Plus, it doesn’t address those broader problems. About 12 percent of residents have graduated from college. The median household income is less than $30,000, and it’s considered one of New Jersey’s most violent cities.
Resident Howard Cure put it this way on NPR:
Being poor and having a high crime rate is something that bankruptcy can’t solve.
One piece of potential good news is the creation of a branch campus for Stockton University in the former Showboat casino. Property tax and casino revenue implications aside, there is a chance it will create a needed diversification of the local economy. As U.S. News reports,
Saatkamp says an off-site commercial area that would include shops and restaurants is also in the works in the Island Campus’s immediate surroundings, adding yet another layer to a changing Atlantic City landscape.
“That adds incentive for businesses to come in and support the university, but also it adds a different type of an atmosphere that’s attractive for companies to move into,” says Saatkamp, referring to the commercial area as part of “University City.” “We are a state university, so our public mission is to work with the communities that we’re in. Not only are we a significant education driver, but we’re a significant economic driver in our communities.”
This would to build on The Walk — the Tanger Outlets — which appears to be doing well, if our Sunday expedition is any indication.
Unfortunately, there are no guarantees. New Brunswick continues to have its problems, despite being home to Rutgers’ main campus — see the closing of the Fresh Grocer after much fanfare about its opening. But Stockton’s commitment and its efforts to drive new kinds of economic development are at least a new direction for the city.
Again, these are just the thoughts of an occasional visitor.
Hank Kalet 