Route 40 (https://rtforty.com/author/elinor-comlay/)
As developers from Asbury Park and closer to home are piling into long-neglected beach blocks in Atlantic City’s downturn, one Tennessee Avenue lot-owner has decided now is the time to sell. The Church of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints has put up for sale a Pacific Avenue-fronting lot directly across from St Nicholas of Tolentine Church.
There’s a Democrat Governor in New Jersey and Dems control the state Senate and Assembly – but the Democrats are divided and that’s a problem when it comes to things like, you know, budgets. The Inquirer’s Andrew Seidman has a long read with insight into what’s happening behind the closed doors. Another budget-fight shutdown could loom in the run up to the July 4 holiday.
An Atlantic City beach block between St James Place and Tennessee Avenue should see a third development begin this summer from long-time city businessmen Abraham and Robert Schiff. The brothers are planning to open an on-land extension to their Schiff’s Central Pier, taking inspiration from other redevelopment on the Boardwalk, according to their lawyer. The new plan is to convert a Boardwalk-fronting site that previously housed aging trailers into something like the Boardwalk Biergarten, which has been buzzing since it opened in March. The Schiffs, criticized in the past for owning various Boardwalk eyesores, recently visited the landscaped Biergarten and were impressed by the crowds it draws, their lawyer said. The incumbent Mr Steak’s trailer and tired-looking ice cream and pizza vendors have already been moved off of the site, to make way for a concrete platform that will form the base of a restaurant and bar area that will be next door – but separated from – an area with family games and rides. “Both the city and the applicants have all called this, unfortunately, the dead area,” the Schiffs’ lawyer, George Miller, told a planning hearing at the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority earlier this spring.
South Jersey towns have more teachers, police and other government employees as a percent of the total working population than municipalities in the north of the state. In towns like Woodbine, more than one third of the working residents has a local, state or federal government job.
Our corner of South Jersey, also known as the 2nd congressional district, has garnered some national attention since it flipped Republican and voted for President Donald Trump in 2016, after previously voting for President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.
If you’ve been reading our pieces about New Jersey’s segregated schools, or shrinking South Jersey enrollment, you might not be surprised to learn that there are people who have Serious Questions about Camden’s enrollment system that lets parents “choose” their kid’s school. You should read this Maddie Hanna piece for the Inquirer.
AC may have been demoted from the World’s Playground to the Entertainment Capital of the Jersey Shore, but people still recognize the Atlantic City brand! Important people from abroad, in fact!
Atlantic City has a musical heritage that is less well-remembered than it should be. Once, AC played host to jazz greats including Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. It was where Eunice Waymon became Nina Simone and it was the long-time host city to crooners such as Frank Sinatra. Now, the big-buck beach concerts make headlines as often as not for storm evacuations and parking-lot gouging as they do for drawing big name performers. But behind the scenes, there are efforts to revive Kentucky Avenue as a destination for jazz clubs, to keep the Chicken Bone Beach Jazz concerts going and to support new music.
New Jersey’s housing and education policy has created some of the most segregated schools in one of the most diverse states in the country, according to state education data and a lawsuit filed last week that seeks to end the practice of mandating students attend their municipal school.
Atlantic City’s real estate market has had a relatively busy spring so far. A shell company earlier this month spent $510,000 on an Atlantic City building that includes a Pacific Ave storefront and apartments, the Best Western has a new mortgage and a Stockton donor has acquired two beach-block lots from the Atlantic Club.