The approval of casino gambling for Atlantic City in November, 1976, signaled the rebirth of a dying city. Unfortunately, that city reborn may not have any room for the very people who struggled for years to breathe life back into it.
The city that everybody rallied to save is slowly forcing a number of its residents to move elsewhere, including the old, the poor, the minorities and even some of the middle class. The people who bet the most on Atlantic City are getting the short end of the stick. A city on the brink of explosive growth, Atlantic City is starting to see that while casino gambling opens the door to a revitalization of the area, the lure of gambling will bring with it urban problems that may be greater than the ills that it was intended to overcome.
Atlantic City used to be a highly fashionable sea- shore resort years ago. It boasted of magnificent hotels which stood majestically along the famous boardwalk and beach. Visitors from all over the Northeast flocked to Atlantic City every summer just as people now flock to places like the Hamptons. Atlantic City was their home away from the big city which still retained all of the good things the big cities had to offer. It was then that Atlantic City earned its reputation of "Queen of Resorts."
But that glitter faded through the '50s and '60s. Improvements in things like air travel made it easier for people to find vacation spots further south where summer lingered a little longer. At the same time, many of the urban problems that cropped up in every other major city appeared in Atlantic City and frightened some people into finding a safer vacation spot.
Atlantic City became trapped in a vicious circle. As fewer visitors came to the city, hotels and businesses lost more and more money. The quality of the hotel accommodations, for example, dropped. Conventioneers became upset at the poor quality of the accommodations and their conventions went elsewhere. Hotels closed, making it harder to find a good place to stay, so fewer people stayed, fewer dollars came into the city and fewer businesses were able to survive. Some of the ones that did survive did so only by gouging tourists during a 12-week season and then closing up for the winter.
The city's population slipped from a high of nearly 70,000 to its present 42,000. As the people fled, they left behind the old people who had either lived there all their lives or retired there to relive fond memories of a time past. They were either too proud or too poor to desert the city. Many just had nowhere else to go. Their numbers swelled, hotels were converted into senior citizens' housing units, and Atlantic City became second only to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. in its concentration of elderly residents. The elderly lived side by side, and sometimes in fear of, the minorities—the blacks and Puerto Ricans who moved here in search of jobs in the hotels. They ended up unemployed as hotels and other businesses closed down. Overall unemployment figures in the city rose to more than 20 percent, particularly in the winter. The rate for young blacks and Hispanics was more than double that.
As visitors vanished, the small businesses were hurt as much as anyone else, particularly the Boardwalk merchants. They could no longer count on the large tourist trade. Tourists weren't there any more and the local people were finding it cheaper to shop in suburban malls.
Atlantic City has always been dependent on tourism and conventions. When the tourists went elsewhere and the convention trade withered, nearly everyone in the city faced economic strangulation. The city neared death. It was in that atmosphere that the people of Atlantic City turned to the golden calf of casino gambling. After an initial failure in 1974, the city mounted a slick million-dollar campaign urging voters to "Help Rebuild Atlantic City" by legalizing casinos there.
The campaign to legalize casino gambling in Atlantic City, in retrospect, was a bedside vigil for a city which died on election night in 1976. When the voters of New Jersey approved casino gambling, Atlantic City died. In its place is arising a new creature, which outwardly resembles Atlantic City, but is completely removed from the city which people wanted to rebuild. It is a creature which the state, big business and the underworld are struggling to control.
The people who rejoiced at the election results soon found that this new creature, this new Atlantic City, held little respect for the Atlantic City they tried to save. For example, the Bally Manufacturing Co., the largest manufacturer of slot machines in the world, has announced plans to demolish the stately Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel which has stood on the Boardwalk since the turn of the century. Part of the building, which was built under the direction of Thomas Edison to prove that poured concrete could be used for large-scale construction, is on the National Register of Historic Places. But that doesn't matter, for in a few years it will he gone and a brand now, ultra-modern casino hotel complex will he there in its place. Another old hotel, perhaps the finest in the city, is going to remain. But the post-casino Chalfonte-Haddon Hall, now called the Resorts International Hotel, will only resemble its former self. The entire front desk and much of the lobby have been torn out and the rich woodwork from the 1939s has been replaced with a black and red cocktail lounge and something resembling an airline check-in counter for a front desk. They've performed an architectural hysterectomy by tearing out a marble staircase and replacing it with an escalator. By Las Vegas standards the building will be beautiful, but it will be an affront to the Atlantic City that people wanted to preserve and revive. They will be a glaring reminder of the drastic changes in store for Atlantic City.
During the campaign to approve gambling, supporters stressed that it would stimulate the revival of the aging resort. They said it would bring in much needed capital, new construction, jobs, tourists and conventions. At the same time, the tax revenue generated by casinos would be dedicated for the benefit of senior citizens and the handicapped.
In what they said, the campaign organizers were correct. Independent planners have estimated that by 1990, gambling will have created up to 105,800 new jobs in southern New Jersey. In addition, gambling will generate up to $100 million in construction costs alone in that same period. The city will blossom, new hotels and gambling will draw millions to the city with billions of dollars to spend. Big conventions will come back and top name stars will entertain here again in a new, alive Atlantic CRy.
But they never mentioned that people would be forced to move out because of casinos, others would be priced out and that the state would take over all but the most minute decision-making powers in the city, robbing people who remained of their local autonomy.
During the campaign, those who opposed legalization of gambling, backed mostly by various church groups, voiced only tacit opposition, citing morality as their aim. To fight the claims of what a billion-dollar gambling industry could do for the area, the opposition told tales of fathers gambling away money needed to feed hungry children. If only they had known what gambling would really do. No one ever conceived of the havoc that gambling would bring to the social fabric of Atlantic City.
The legalization of casino gambling for Atlantic City has caused property values to skyrocket. In the city's run-down sections, landlords with visions of multi-million-dollar casino complexes on their land have started applying pressure on tenants to move out. They threaten eviction for code violations that went ignored for years and then attempt to shut off utility service if the people don't move out. There have also been a number of very suspicious fires which have left families homeless and given owners a good excuse for leveling their unproductive buildings.
While these pressure tactics are most noticeable in sections of the city scheduled to be rezoned for casino development, they certainly aren't limited to that area. They aren't even limited to poor neighborhoods but have spread through the middle and upper middle class neighborhoods of Atlantic City and neighboring communities. Homeowners have found that gambling has pushed the value of their homes higher while increasing the need for services, which all translate into higher taxes. Instead of offering hope to the people who need it most, the coming of gambling has only made it harder for them to survive. The people who lived there for years, watching the city decline while suffering under increased taxation, are being forced out. They were the people who wagered the most on casino gambling—it was to be the salvation but it has turned into their ruination.
The most visible victims of casino gambling will be the Boardwalk merchants. Rents have been tripled, almost overnight and other merchants have seen the leases canceled entirely. As casinos go up along the Boardwalk, many of the merchants who have been there for years will not be able to return to the city they struggled to keep alive. The huge, faceless conglomerates that plan to remake the face of the Boardwalk hold little respect for the job that they should have performed over the years. Granted, some of the shops along Atlantic City's most famous street are not first-class establishments; they are the cheap souvenir stands, fast food outlets, salt water taffy show and auction houses. Over the years, however, these businesses served as anchors, holding fast the Boardwalk against the creeping tide of urban decay that was washing across large sections of the city.
Atlantic City is in an enviable position in that the problems it faces are problems of growth while many other urban areas are trying to cope with decline. But until Atlantic City resolves those problems, casino gambling will do to residents there the same thing the city has done to visitors for years—soak them for all they are worth and then cast them aside.
