“If Dorothy was a hooker.” I laughed out loud when I received that private message. It was sent from a former resident of Atlantic City in response to my public post on Facebook, with a wonderful picture of Atlantic City, wherein I stated our beloved city is like “Oz on the Ocean”.
It doesn’t matter how much I love AC – the truth is the truth. Our city, to outside eyes is ugly, unsafe, and a place that begs you to be careful.
Drive down Pacific Avenue, and get sick. That really says it all. Decades of planning, development and misspending has left AC with a most unwelcoming look and feel. Further, the little entrepreneur who truly builds cities has been left behind to watch and struggle, or was kicked out.
Do AC, The Queen of Resorts and The World’s Playground, Always Turned On! Great slogans, but they are not filling our town in the winter. Fortunately, we are at the beginnings of a new future, again!
Beyond the obvious ugly, there is also beauty everywhere, including our human resources. So many who truly love Atlantic City work hard to make it happen, only to be thwarted at every turn. Countless Dollars seem to have evaporated into thin air, when our streets truly should be paved with gold instead of the forgotten people populating them. We turn our head to negatives as if they don’t exist, and that formula has not won us new visitors, better neighborhoods, or jobs.
One of the reasons Ed and I moved back to town is for the flavor that truly is Atlantic City. My Inlet neighborhood seemingly has nothing in common with Midtown or Chelsea, yet, that is part of the charm. I only have to cross town to be in a different world.
With all the nationalities living here, we are indeed a small global village wrapped around a big city. We all add up to the carnival that is, or could be and should be, Atlantic City. Our planners forgot that Atlantic City wasn’t built for big box companies and corporate entities, as they continue to design and plan around the same. It was built for people to walk around. The Boardwalk was the carnival midway. The neighborhoods were the side shows. Everywhere you went, there was something to do. And, you could do it all night. We once boasted 500 bars. That figure translated to 500 families eating and all the people they employed too…. same with the small hotels, the independent businesses, and the number runners, gambling on AC as a sure bet before it was legal!
I attended the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) hearing the past Wednesday night on the proposed master plan for Atlantic City. They are finally getting around to some of the ideas I wrote about in 2011 – long before our economic collapse. After the meeting, I was approached by four different attendees, who told me, after listening, “they” still don’t seem to get it. I also had a few phone calls and private messages on Facebook. One attendee called me shortly after the meeting and asked: “So these guys like AC so much?… I wonder how many will leave their fancy cars in the garage, and walk down Arctic Avenue.”
Yesterday, three different involved community people asked me why I bothered to go…. “How many meetings and master plans can we listen to?”
I spoke twice. The second time I suggested they, as an agency, stop telling people what they are going to do, and listen to what the people want. Until we populate the town with more middle and upper class, we remain outwardly a slum. And, until we let the little people build in town, and invest in the town, it’s still going to be run from out of town. It has been estimated that 70 percent of profits stay in town when small, local businesses have interests, whereas only 50 percent stay in town when dollars are shipped to a corporate entity.
AC ‘boasts’ a 38 percent poverty rate from the unemployed, underemployed and indigent. The CRDA presented the statistic that while 72 percent of our lower and moderate income people could in theory afford a home in Atlantic City, 70 percent of our population are renting. That’s not good news. We are in such a bad way the prices have been driven down to virtually nothing, but the eligible people won’t qualify for a mortgage due to bad credit, because it’s tough living check to check without enough money.
Back in 2011 I wrote the following columns for AC Weekly…. that was long before the first casino closed, but the writing of hard times ahead was already on the wall. Many of the things the CRDA is now talking about, the people were talking about years ago.
The parts in this old column have changed, but the essential premises and tenets remain:
http://www.atlanticcityweekly.com/news_and_views/features/geoff-s-page-things-atlantic-city-needs/article_424ce7cb-3390-5e69-be56-6c23adf84145.html
from that story: We need to empower and employ local residents for all of this. You cannot build a town from a corporate office or government authority. It’s time to give the city back to her residents. We [mainly African-Americans] built her originally, and can rebuild her better. The current global U.S. economy is being subsidized by the little guy who keeps bailing out the big guy. Let’s give it back to the little guy to begin with and eliminate the need for trillions in subsidies.
Now, the CRDA wants to carve out an artists’ haven around Dante Hall – yep, wrote about that years ago too!! From that story:
Atlantic City shouldn’t be so ugly. Bring back the original look of a cool, small town where people live because they want to. It’s time to fix up Atlantic Avenue too and all the vacant apartments that already exist. Until we clean up what we have, we will always be looked at as a seaside slum with casinos and a few pockets of nice.
Finally, the land at the foot of expressway has a higher and better use than housing. Keep it open, welcoming and usable as a public park with a public marina. (something the CRDA is proposing in 2017)
There are plenty of movements afoot right now to turn things around, including the most important component planning the city at the moment… the CRDA. Come on guys, you can do it, you can change, and make this town what it wants to be. Show us what you’re made of, and put the past behind. Trade off our positives. Atlantic County is depending on a new start.
I wrote for Route 40 about the plans I currently see that would be good for Atlantic City, if you missed it and are still reading, read this:
P.S. On a personal note, I would like to congratulate my partner, Ed Foresta, pictured with me, who was awarded AC Weekly’s top 40 under 40 last Friday night at Borgata’s event center. There were over 200 nominations for these spots, and many deserving award recipients. These fine folks contribute their thoughts and efforts to the betterment of their communities. Congratulations one and all.