The promise of casinos

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) The ads were titled “Help Yourself, Help Atlantic City, Help New Jersey,” and they made a series of promises, if only voters would pull the “yes” lever to legalize casino gambling.

Having casinos in Atlantic City would “balance taxes, create jobs, boost the economy, and cut down on street crime,” the advertisements assured.

Thirty years after singer Steve Lawrence tossed the first dice onto a green felt table to kick off legalized gambling on Memorial Day 1978, there is no question that casinos have transformed Atlantic City into a $5-billion-a-year powerhouse.

Although most of those promises were kept, many of the problems that the gambling halls and their billions were intended to address remain.

Casinos created tens of thousands of jobs and a flood of money for state coffers, and put New Jersey on the national map for vacation and gambling junkets. But they also created a sharper divide between the haves and have-nots. Before voters approved casino gambling in 1976, Atlantic City was a poor city struggling with crime, drugs and lack of jobs. Today, it has the casinos, but the other problems persist.

“I feel sorry for the people that have been here all their lives and went through 1976, thinking there would be change,” said Merceda Gooding, a 40-year-old Atlantic City resident. “It saddens me to see that. In 1976, they said they were going to do all this stuff to help the needs of the Atlantic City residents, and they’ve fallen short a lot. We don’t even have a grocery store here.”

Tom Carver, executive director of the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, said casinos delivered on their economic promises but were never supposed to be saviors.

“Casinos are not government,” he said. “Casinos are not schools. Casinos are not anything other than [things that] provide jobs and public money, and they did that galore.”

Founded as a health retreat where the salt air was thought to be curative, by 1880 Atlantic City was a full-fledged resort, complete with the nation’s first Boardwalk. It gave the world Miss America, saltwater taffy and the Monopoly board game.

But by the middle of the 20th century, the resort was fading. The grand hotels were decaying, and the advent of air travel put more exotic destinations within reach of tourists who once drove or took the train to Atlantic City.

“You could roll a bowling ball down Pacific Avenue and not hit anybody,” Mr. Carver said. “The town was nothing. It had no hope, no future, no vision, no anything.”

On Nov. 2, 1976, the day President Ford lost to Jimmy Carter, New Jersey voters approved casino gambling by a margin of 200,000 votes out of 2 million cast. Work soon began on the first casino, Resorts Atlantic City, which opened on Memorial Day 1978 with a line of people blocks long, waiting to get in.

Other casinos soon followed: Caesars Atlantic City and Bally’s Atlantic City in 1979, what would become the Atlantic City Hilton Casino Resort and Harrah’s Atlantic City in 1980, the Tropicana Casino and Resort in 1981. By 2003, when the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa opened, there were 12 gambling houses, although the Sands Casino Hotel closed in 2006.

Money flowed, and the city’s skyline grew. Everyone from Donald Trump to Steve Wynn to Merv Griffin wanted a piece of the action.

But just two blocks away from the casinos was a different Atlantic City: a poor population living in substandard housing, feeling cut off and alienated from the glittering wealth just beyond their grasp.

Sheila Thomas, 60, a lifelong resident and former casino cashier supervisor, said the casino boom has passed by the average Atlantic City resident.

“We’re the ones who put up with the drugs and the gunshots and the street crime out here every night,” she said. “I’ve worked here, I’ve paid taxes here, and I helped make this town. Now I feel like they want me to leave.”

Tony Rodio, president of Resorts Atlantic City and the Atlantic City Hilton Casino Resort, said Las Vegas also has neighborhoods that haven’t prospered with the casinos. And he noted that more than 40,000 people have jobs because of Atlantic City’s gambling halls.

“There’s only so much the casino industry can do,” he said. “I don’t think there was a promise that they were going to be able to eradicate poverty and redevelop every single square foot of Atlantic City.”

Worsening the city’s problems has been a culture of corruption in city government dating back to the early 1900s, but which has thrived in recent decades.

When Mayor Robert Levy resigned last fall and pleaded guilty to lying about his Vietnam War service to fatten his veterans benefits check, he became the fourth mayor out of the past eight to be snared on corruption charges. The former City Council president is serving 40 months in federal prison for taking bribes, and two former council colleagues also were convicted.

“We still have some of our worthies being carted off to the hoosegow a couple times a year,” Mr. Carver said. “The quality of government has to improve. We’re trying to entice major, major investors, billions of dollars here, and they’re fearful.”

Mr. Trump, as usual, was blunter.

“I’ve never in my life seen a group like the elected officials in Atlantic City, and it’s been like this for decades. They either leave City Hall like this,” he said, holding his arms out in front of him as if his wrists were handcuffed, “or this,” he concluded, pointing to his temple with his index finger, making circles to indicate craziness.

The city’s problems remain despite a flood of casino money that New Jersey required the gambling houses to cough up. The casinos pay 8 percent of their revenues to a state fund that uses the money, among other things, to help senior citizens afford prescription drugs, and pays for transportation including minibuses that shuttle seniors to and from grocery stores across the state.

In 1984, the state created the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, which required casinos to contribute an additional 1.25 percent of their revenues to economic development projects. So far, it has funded $2 billion worth of projects statewide, $1.5 billion of which are in Atlantic City.

Steven Perskie, a Superior Court judge and former state assemblyman who wrote the law authorizing casino gambling in 1976, said casinos were the only thing that could have saved Atlantic City.

“You only have to ask yourself what this city would be like today without casinos,” he said. “I remember being at a dinner one night with the governor and people from Resorts, and people kept coming up to my wife and asking her to thank all of us for giving them jobs and a way to support their families.”