Based on a brand new report by the New York Post, gambling alone isn’t most likely to be sufficient to save Atlantic City from its woes. With two new high-profile casino properties set to open this Thursday, offering every thing from hundreds of gaming tables, thousands of slots, up and coming sportsbooks and reside entertainment, Steve Cuozzo for the New York Post argues that all of the internal glitz and glamour will not be enough to save the ailing city.
Suffering from years of high crime and high unemployment, Atlantic City is less Disneyland with a beach and boardwalk and more decaying slum massively dependent on its casino industry to keep the city’s life assistance going.
In Cuozzo’s words, unless Atlantic City rapidly learns from Las Vegas, integrating a host of attractions other than gambling, based on gambling income alone is most likely to become a sure-fire recipe disaster.
While the Atlantic City boardwalk provides up Steel Pier, outside cafes along with a Ferris wheel, beneath the seemingly care free façade there’s just not a great deal going on, writes Cuozzo. In contrast to the vivacity of the Coney Island Boardwalk, the predominantly white visitors to Atlantic City’s seaside attractions appear much more thinking about moving in between casino properties than taking within the local ambiance.
The massive and glimmering new casinos employ a model comparable to particular third world economies, exactly where the uber rich develop palatial estates on hills overlooking seas of slums. In Atlantic City, the windows on the north facing rooms offer a glimpse from the genuine, and very troubled life within the low rises beyond, exactly where violent crime, drugs and prostitution continue to become a blight on the city. The abandoned homes and empty lots that line Pacific Avenue are a strange, if not even eerie testament towards the fact that beyond the casino walls all isn’t hunky dory in today’s Atlantic City.
Because the new Ocean and Hard Rock Casinos are set to open their doors, getting returned hundreds of jobs to those that lost them when the monoliths, formerly the Revel and Trump Taj Mahal, went bust amid mountains of debt, ghosts nonetheless linger.
The Revel, which has now noticed a $175 million face lift, and been rebranded as the Ocean Resort Casino, a Hyatt property, was a colossal failure in its first incarnation, costing $2.four billion and lasting only two years.
The Difficult Rock Hotel and Casino has risen in the ashes of the Trump Taj Mahal, sinking $500 million in an attempt to breathe new life back into a property that saw 17 years of monetary issues and management blunders that ended it bankruptcy in 2016.
On top of the require for Atlantic City to overcome a powerful legacy of failure, today’s current marketplace dynamics have changed significantly, using the younger generation of millennials taking a look at gambling as a side-line activity, not the primary reason to venture to a specific resort location. Millennials, the experts say, require and crave other types of entertainment, making resting on one’s gambling revenue laurels a risky proposition.
Las Vegas currently derives over two-thirds of their revenue from non-gambling associated activities, such as celebrity restaurants, amusement rides, concerts and well being spas, something that Atlantic City, in using a gambling income first model, has turned a blind eye to. Despite the achievement to the Las Vegas model, Atlantic City casinos, within the words of Cuozzo, “resemble Vegas resorts in the pre-Steve Wynn era – giant gambling boxes with guest rooms and mediocre ‘restaurants’.”
The Difficult Rock has brought in a celebrity chef or two but the leading of its fine dining game is centred around Jose Garces, referred to as the Iron Chef, and his Amada restaurant in New York City, recently shuttered due to lagging company. Another fine dinning option is offered up in the type of American Reduce, a steakhouse run by Marc Forgione, that only lately stopped serving lunch in midtown due to insufficient demand.
In the same time, as Atlantic City casinos have noticed their online gambling revenues develop, that merely means much more players are staying house, particularly when the climate is far from ideal, leaving the possible for higher occupancy prices and each casino and city-wide concession revenues in the lurch.
If Atlantic City is to see a brand new hey-day, following the Las Vegas example is mission crucial writes Cuozzo. Turning Atlantic City into a Disney style, all-inclusive family resort, with entertainment taking precedence over gambling is the real key to the city’s revival, writes Cuozzo.
How you can go about this? In Cuzzo’s opinion, tearing down the asbestos ridden Trump Plaza and razing the Atlantic Club to pave the way for entertainment venues may be a great first step.
Billionaire real estate mogul Carl Icahn had planned to take down the Trump Plaza this Autumn, but now these plans have been place on hold as soon as again because the billionaires do some horse trading. Meanwhile the Atlantic Club is in total disrepair with no possible bidders for the property in sight.
At the same time, even following five of Atlantic City’s 12 casinos were shuttered between 2102 and 2014, one casino continues to be thriving. Constructed in the marina district of Renaissance Point, not on the boardwalk, the Borgata has primarily based its business on the Las Vegas model, offering a wide selection of high quality family entertainment and restaurants. To date, the Borgata remains Atlantic City’s most successful venue, pulling down $290 million in profit, and even as other venues happen to be taking a hit in the first two quarters of 2018, nonetheless managed to remain well within the black.
To quote Cuozzo, “Yes, the two new casinos will turn the lights back on in dark empty properties. But Atlantic City must begin thinking outside the “gaming” box if it’s ever going to hit the jackpot again.”