Trump representatives, Atlantic City residents take aim on tunnel plan

Friday, March 14, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

The loudest cries came from Donald Trump, who sent three lawyers and a consultant to make his case at a public hearing held by the state Casino Reinvestment Development Authority. They told CRDA board members it was wrong to give one casino company the power to manage a major road construction project with ramifications for all 13 existing casinos.

"We don't think it's legal, we don't think it's appropriate, we don't think you have enough information," Trump lawyer Joel Sterns said.

The tunnel would be part of a 1.5-mile connector linking the foot of the Atlantic City Expressway with the marina district site, where Mirage and two other Nevada casino companies plan huge casino resorts.

Mirage Chairman Stephen A. Wynn, whose interest in Atlantic City triggered a gold rush by other companies, said Mirage will not build its casino if the tunnel is not constructed.

But the protests by Trump and others pointed up the nagging, difficult public policy questions facing state officials.

Mirage was given the 150-acre site after municipal officials tried for years to sell it and could not. Once Mirage agreed to develop it, the state Legislature passed a bill that would allow developers who clean up former landfills and build on them to get huge rebates.

The planned tunnel, long criticized as a publicly funded private driveway to the Mirage site, would be another giveaway and would go against the stated public purpose of casino gambling in New Jersey, which was to redevelop the Boardwalk area, Sterns said.

"This project ... will effectively shift the economic base from the Boardwalk to the (marina). This dramatic shift in public policy is fundamentally unfair to investors who have spent approximately $5.5 billion in Atlantic City based upon that stated public policy over the last 20 years," Sterns said.

It would save Mirage and the other companies huge amounts of money and allow them to undercut competitors by offering better slot machine payoffs and more generous complimentaries, according to Marvin Roffman, a Philadelphia-based casino analyst and consultant.

"What I oppose is the wholesale giveaways evolving from the state government to the benefit of a sole corporation, and a rich one at that. This is a terrible injustice to taxpayers and to the casinos," said Roffman.

He called the Boardwalk - home to 11 existing casinos - "the Holy Grail of Atlantic City" but said its properties would suffer if the tunnel is built.

"We ask for a level playing field," said Kenneth Oettle, a lawyer for Hilton Hotels Corp., which owns Bally's Park Place and the Atlantic City Hilton.

Lillian Bryant, 53, whose home on Horace J. Bryant Drive is one of nine that would be demolished to make way for the tunnel, told board members Absecon Island won't support a tunnel.

"Forty years from now, we will see the land cave in and the city of Atlantic City will become the city of Atlantis," she said.

Speaking up for the plan were representatives of the city and state chambers of commerce, the Atlantic City Jitney Men's Association, Atlantic Electric and officials from Brigantine, which would get a long-sought Route 30 interchange as part of the project.

They said the tunnel and the marina district casinos would create jobs, add tax revenues and spur further development.

The CRDA board will vote next month on whether to contribute up to $110 million to the tunnel project. If the plan moves ahead, design work will begin this spring and construction would start in the summer of 1998, according to James Crawford, executive director of the South Jersey Transportation Authority.