Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Las Vegas rebounds as Atlantic City spirals down

Trump Plaza Closing

Mel Evans / AP

A sign seen early Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2014, announces the closing of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City, N.J.

On a Tuesday morning in September, employees of Atlantic City’s Trump Plaza braced themselves as news of the resort’s closure arrived. The announcement was hardly unexpected, but its sting was acute.

It confirmed a sinister trend for the resort town: One-third of Atlantic City casinos have closed this year, three within the past month.

And the decline is expected to continue. The Trump Taj Mahal is expected to be the fifth of the city’s 12 casinos to go come November.

Meanwhile, Las Vegas continues to bounce back, welcoming the SLS and refurbished Delano in a year marked by revitalization.

The two cities’ challenges have been largely the same. Over the past decade, both have faced increased regional competition from tribal gaming, and both were hit hard by the economic downturn.

So why does Atlantic City continue to struggle while Las Vegas is on the upswing?

As these things go, sometimes taking a gamble pays off.

Public and private investment in dining, nightlife, shopping and infrastructure such as airport terminals, arenas and festival grounds has allowed Las Vegas to tap visitors whose interests extend beyond the casino floor.

“There’s a $7 billion gaming industry in California that wasn’t there in the year 2000,” said David G. Schwartz, director of UNLV’s Center for Gaming Research. “Las Vegas has weathered that because they’ve provided more than just the gambling.”

Atlantic City has taken a more conservative approach. Since its inception, Atlantic City’s leaders have stressed the need to diversify its appeal as a tourist destination with more than just gambling. But the billions of dollars brought in from casinos each year repeatedly sidelined significant reinvestment in other attractions, which at the time was seen as too costly to be worth the risk.

“For too long, it was too easy to rely on regional gamblers for the bulk of visitation and revenue,” Schwartz said. “They were easy to get because there weren’t other places to gamble.”

That began to change in the early 1990s with the arrival of tribal gaming in Connecticut.

Although Atlantic City took measures to help balance the equation, such as enacting 24-hour gambling, the regulatory changes did little to help the city keep pace with casinos expanding into Delaware, New York and Pennsylvania by the mid-2000s.

Atlantic City has seen some investment in massive resorts such as Borgata, which offers spas, nightlife and fine dining, and areas such as the Walk, whose outlet stores draw thick crowds, but the reinvestment hasn’t been consistent or pervasive enough to stave off the city’s decline. Perhaps more difficult, Atlantic City faces the added challenge of differentiating itself from Las Vegas. Nightclubs, which have been a top draw on the Strip, for example, have struggled to take off in Atlantic City.

That doesn’t mean it can’t recover.

“There’s this misplaced secular evangelicalism in the way we talk about whether the city can be ‘saved,’ ” Schwartz said. “The city is going to be there. It’s not going to fall into a pit. The question is: Will it remain a viable tourist attraction and gaming destination?”

In addition to reinvestment, experts say an aggressive marketing strategy, similar to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s efforts over the past decade, will be crucial to combating Atlantic City’s image problems. The city sometimes gets a bad rap as dirty, unfriendly and crime-ridden.

But there’s plenty left for Atlantic City to capitalize on.

Schwartz said revitalization would hinge on civic and business leaders getting creative about their resources. Las Vegas has no way to compete with beachfront bachelor parties or cruise ship casino stops, for example.

Expanding service to Atlantic City’s modest international airport also could open the market to new customers from around the world.

The key, however, will be whether the city is willing to let go of its past to take a chance on what’s next. If not, there might not be much left to hold onto for the future.

Follow Andrea Domanick on Twitter at @AndreaDomanick and fan her on Facebook at Facebook.com/AndreaDomanick.

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