OPINION . Slant

Gambling on Atlantic City

If you're paying $100 for gas, are you splurging on dinner?


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Published: Aug 6, 2008

When I was a kid, the only time I went to Atlantic City was to bowl at the Showboat. My mother didn't like casinos, and she certainly didn't like taking four kids there. But, at the time, the Showboat had the best bowling alley down the shore.

We never went on the boardwalk. She didn't even want us to look out the windows as we drove through town. "It's dirty," she'd say, and double check the locks on the doors of our powder blue Dodge Caravan.

Thirty billion dollars of construction later, Atlantic City isn't the same town. It has new hotels, new restaurants and things for non-gamblers to do. Last weekend marked another indication that Atlantic City is trying to make itself a non-gambler's destination: Curtis Bashaw opened the Chelsea, the first non-gaming boutique to debut in Atlantic City since the 1960s.

Bashaw, who turned Cape May's Congress Hall from a run-down relic into a luxury hotel, is taking a big risk. Atlantic City isn't as dirty as it was in the 1980s, but he's still banking that Atlantic City can continue to attract those non-gamblers, even in this wretched economy and with increased competition.

Casinos make a lot of money on gambling, and Atlantic City's not the only game in town. Revenues have been down since Pennsylvania and New York made slot machines legal, and smokers are being pushed to the fringes of Atlantic City's gaming floors. Yes, smoking's gross, but Atlantic City will lose customers as long as you can light up in Chester.

So they need more than the gambler who rides in on a bus and expects a free room and buffet coupon. They're reaching out to single twenty-, thirty- and fortysomethings with money to burn (and no families to support).

They want the crowd that will pay to fly to Vegas, but they want them to hit the AC Expressway instead.

Atlantic City's seen some success. On July 4, 97,133 cars passed through the Pleasantville toll booth into town, a 14.2 percent increase from the 85,026 cars in 2007. The Beach Boys played a free concert outside the Atlantic City Hilton that same weekend and drew 50,000. The Hilton had expected 10,000.

But that doesn't mean people are spending more — that Beach Boys concert was free, and paying a toll doesn't mean you're dining and gambling and splurging on hotel rooms without worrying about a budget. The dollars are being spent at shops and restaurants at The Walk and the Pier at Caesar's, but June 2008 gaming revenues were still down 11 percent from June 2007.

Pinnacle said in February that they've put their $2 billion new casino on hold until credit markets improve — if they still decide to build at all. Revel Entertainment asked Atlantic City for $56 million in bonds to continue construction on their $2 billion project — again, citing the tight credit market. And if you're suddenly paying $100 for a tank of gas, are you going to splurge on a fancy Atlantic City dinner? Are you going to get in the car at all?

Which brings me back to the Chelsea. Bashaw is relying on that discretionary-income crowd, but is there still a big enough pool to draw from? And is the Chelsea unique enough to pull in who's left? Sure, it offers a slick, 1940s supper-club experience, but the hotel's at the southern end of the boardwalk. You can get Stephen Starr food at the Pier at Caesar's and just about every casino/hotel has a luxury spa. Yes, the Chelsea made its debut to great fanfare last weekend but without any restaurants or the spa open.

Bashaw's gamble is on a question-mark city. Watch the Chelsea as a barometer of Atlantic City's success in attracting the non-gaming crowd. He took a chance on Congress Hall, and it paid off. But will it work in Atlantic City?

A bowling alley might help.

Jen A. Miller is the author of The Jersey Shore: Atlantic City to Cape May (Countryman Press). To respond to her Slant or submit one of your own, e-mail your 650- to 700-word opinion piece to Brian Howard (bhoward@citypaper.net).