Route 40 (https://rtforty.com/2019/01/page/3/)
The Seagull Classic is this weekend. Who remembers those old ads on Channel 2 with Tom Williams doing the voice work? Mike McGarry at the Press has a cool story about Milt Wagner who put up 52 for Camden in the basketball tourney in 1980.
The new stretch of Atlantic City Boardwalk that opened in the summer will be getting lights and ramps, according to a bid notice this week. Temporary ramp access at the end of the new length of Boardwalk near the Flagship in the Inlet had to be installed after the project opened, without lights or ramps. The boards were added above a new sea wall built by the Army Corps of Engineers as part of a project funded by the federal, state and local governments. The boardwalk was added as part of the sea wall project, but the engineers said the city was responsible for access and lighting. Walters Marine Construction is seeking suppliers and subcontractors for the new project, which will install lights and ramps between Melrose Avenue in the north Inlet and Oriental Avenue in the south Inlet.
State Senator Nicholas Scutari ponders a valuable question: What lessons from gambling legalization in Atlantic City can be applied to marijuana legalization statewide?
Well, anecdotally, we’re 40-years in and we have a 35%+ poverty rate, a ring of angry suburbanites in pickup trucks and there’s a bankrupt casino impresario currently doing standup and setting the Constitution on fire in the White House every night.
Maybe we should try a different model.
The City of Atlantic City Council voted 9-0 to issue a vote of confidence in Police Chief Henry White, following a series of articles from NJ Advance Media based on data that showed the Atlantic City Police Department used force at a higher rate than any other municipality in the state except one (Maplewood).
There are a lot of interesting nuggets in Joe Atmonavage’s story on the Atlantic City Police Dept., whose use-of-force rate is nearly four times the state average, but this one jumped out at me: the ACPD’s total uses of force dropped steadily since 2013–when there was the incident with the K9 outside the Tropicana that resulted in a $3 million settlement–but the force rate stayed pretty much the same (because the number of arrests dropped). I’m no math wizard, but doesn’t that seem odd?
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn appears to be getting ready to sell his remaining Atlantic City property, the Trump Plaza. An Icahn-backed company, IEP AC Plaza, recently paid $3 million for the deed to the long-shuttered casino, according to property documents filed in December. (You can have a look at the docs here and h/t to Reuben Kremer for his ceaseless monitoring of the property records).
Icahn’s conglomerate Icahn Enterprises took control of the Trump Plaza and Trump Taj Mahal when the previous owner, Trump Entertainment Resorts, entered bankruptcy in 2014. Icahn sold the Taj Mahal to a consortium of local investors and Hard Rock International in 2017. But his attempts to sell the Plaza were stymied by the site’s ground lease, which was held by earlier investors and acted as a so-called poison pill to prevent the sale, according to the New York Post.