Tennessee Ave, Airports, Women Standing For Local Elections – Friday’s Roundup

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Tennessee Ave
The show-stopper at a development event yesterday in Atlantic City was a plan to bring a walkable, bikeable, eatery-slash-coffee-spot-slash-hipster-hangout to the long-neglected center of town, right off the boardwalk. The guys behind the Tennessee Ave Transformation envision something like New Orleans’s Bourbon Street or Philadelphia’s South Street – a place chock-full of people, with open seating outside of cafes and bars, park-like areas and spots for music and other performances. “We want to infuse the street with a ton of energy and art from the asphalt up. We’re going to make it the home base for high quality markets with great crafts and food,” said Evan Sanchez, originally from Pleasantville, one of the #ThisIsAC gang and a startup advisor. Sanchez is working with Mark Callazzo (The Iron Room, 1 N. Boston) and Zenith Shah (a financial buff who grew up in AC and also recently moved back to the area) on the development, which is set to get under way this spring, Callazzo and Sanchez told delegates at the Urban Land Institute meeting in Atlantic City yesterday.

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Borgata Deal, AC Dispatchers Arrested, Galloway’s Jimmie Leeds Rd – Thursday’s Roundup

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Borgata Deal
Finally, there’s a deal. No, it’s not going to help you get a nice meal or an overnight stay. But it will help Atlantic City’s balance sheet. Borgata, the city’s most successful casino by revenue, accepted $72 million in tax-appeal payouts for 2009-2013, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports here. The MGM-owned property also agreed not to appeal taxes paid from 2013-2015 (another potential liability that had been hanging over the city) and it will start paying its Payment-In-Lieu-of-Taxes (click here if you want to remind yourself of that controversy).

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Trump-Less Taj, EHT Schools, NJ Corruption and Safe Communities – Wednesday’s Roundup

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Trump-Less Taj
The Eighth Wonder of the World, also known as the Trump Taj Mahal, is now just the Taj Mahal, Route 40 reported yesterday. We were on the boardwalk as workers were bringing down the President’s name from that side of the building. Today they are working on the signs next to the property’s parking garage. It’s not clear when the name will come down from the hotel tower, but we were told that the orders are to remove every last vestige of Trump from the property. Billionaire owner Carl Icahn has said he intends to sell the casino.

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It’s No Longer the ‘Trump’ Taj Mahal

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Trump Taj Mahal

Our touchy president’s name (“Trump”) has been removed from Atlantic City’s Taj Mahal Casino, the Eighth Wonder of the World. The casino has been owned by Carl Icahn, who closed it last fall, out of spite (JK!). But Trump had an agreement to keep his name on the classy property. Apparently that’s changed. Here’s a facade of the Taj as it looked in August 2016.

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Rowan v Stockton, Water and Icahn – Tuesday’s Roundup

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Rowan v Stockton
Since we wrote about Stockton’s interest in Atlantic City’s Bader Field site (the Press of Atlantic City has more details on that project here) we’ve heard a lot of people questioning everything from Stockton’s debt load to its tuition fees, so we thought we’d look at the raw numbers and also see how Stockton stacks up against its neighbor, Rowan University. Stockton University is still small, compared to Rowan (which has medical schools), and although its tuition is slightly higher, there’s not much in it. You can see the detailed breakdown here, comparing everything from SAT scores to the number of state-funded personnel. Water
A state legislative committee yesterday proposed a bill that would force water companies to perform audits to see how much water is wasted before reaching customers.  Maybe it seems odd that – as businesses – they don’t already do that, but apparently they’re not required to.

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Comparing Rowan and Stockton Universities

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Two of South Jersey’s universities are in expansion mode and we thought it would be interesting to compare and contrast their vital statistics, side by side, using data from the state budget. You can see that enrollment is up at both universities (so are fees) and state-funded positions are also up at Rowan University. It will be interesting to see whether the chatter around Rowan’s plans to expand in Atlantic City comes to anything, since Stockton University is rolling out ever-bigger plans for the city. On the one hand, expansion could bring more jobs and investment to the area, but on the other hand these institutions don’t pay property taxes. Since we wrote about Stockton’s plans to further expand in Atlantic City, we’ve also heard more people questioning the university’s debt load and its tuition costs, so we looked at the numbers. The amount of state support that Rowan receives is much greater – my guess is that this is tied to Rowan’s medical programs, but it’s not clear. And Stockton is slightly more expensive than Rowan, by these measures.

More about: Education, debt, rowan university, state budget, Stockton University, tuition fees

Naloxone, Solar, Stockton – Monday’s Roundup

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Naloxone
A pharmacy in Egg Harbor Township is giving out brands of the so-called overdose-antidote drug naloxone for free, to help more people get access to the life-saving medication. “This is our way of helping get naloxone to patients. It’s our civil duty at this point,” Andrew Lyle, director of business development at Curexa in EHT, told the Press of Atlantic City here. Solar
The solar industry nationwide is booming – but in New Jersey, it’s not. Solar industry employment last year fell 14 percent in the garden state – you can read more at NJ Spotlight and also listen to an interview the reporter did with WNYC (link on the same page).

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Stockton In Talks For Atlantic City’s Bader Field

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Stockton University is in “preliminary talks” to develop* some or all of Atlantic City’s Bader Field, according to people with knowledge of the matter. If the university were to occupy the site, it would further extend Galloway-based Stockton’s reach in Atlantic City, where it is building a residential campus, parking garage and academic center scheduled to open in 2018. The university is considering using the Bader Field site for a marine sciences and resiliency center, one of the people said. University President Harvey Kesselman discussed the idea as part of wider plans for the university in a presentation to Stockton foundation board members last week. Kesselman has had talks with Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian about buying* some of the site, one other person said.

More about: Atlantic City, Atlantic City, Bader Field, CRDA, Stockton

AC Firefighters, Healthcare, Obituaries – Friday’s Roundup

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AC Firefighters
Atlantic City’s firefighters’ union – so far the only organization to challenge the state’s takeover of the casino resort town – on Thursday filed a brief in federal court, where a judge has the task of deciding whether to hear the case or send it back to a state court. The state’s move to have the case heard in federal court could draw out the litigation and increase expenses for both sides. The union urged the federal judge not to allow the state to “abuse the court system in order to frustrate plaintiffs’ ability to challenge the defendants’ unlawful actions.” Reporting by Amy Rosenberg of the Philadelphia Inquirer here. Healthcare
Two healthcare stories today, both via NJ Spotlight.

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Property Prices, Lawyers, PILOT – Thursday’s Roundup

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Property Prices
There’s a chasm between the top and bottom of New Jersey’s property market, according to Cat Country 107.3 in a story that – on closer inspection – turned out to be a rehash of a piece originally reported by NJ.com last week (for those charting the decline of the media, this is a practice known as ‘churnalism’). It’s worth revisiting the original report, though, because it gets at something that we’ve talked about – and lots of people talk about – often around here. Absecon Island is home to Longport, where property sales recently reached the highest median price for the greater Philadelphia region, and Atlantic City, at most eight miles away, and where property prices have been sluggish at best for a decade. It’s also worth revisiting this map from NJSpotlight, which shows another factor in the property-price mix. Longport has one of the lowest tax rates in the state, but one of the highest average tax bills per household, while Atlantic City has one of the highest tax rates in the state, but a still-low average tax bill per household.

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