Atlantic County Kids Could Lose Hundreds Of After-School Places

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About 450 children and 27o adults and parents could lose access to federally-funded after-school services provided in Buena, Atlantic City and Pleasantville school districts. The services, offered under the 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program, are among those that would be affected by President Trump’s proposal to end $1.2 billion in grants for after-school and summer programs.

There are three sites in Atlantic County that offer the program, which also provides after-school care for individuals with disabilities. This is a roundup of the local 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program, according to details from New Jersey’s Department of Education:

More about: Education, after-school, Atlantic City, buena, pleasantville

Mapping Atlantic County’s Abandoned Homes

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There are more than 4,600 abandoned homes spread across Atlantic County, with the bulk in Egg Harbor Township, Galloway Township and Atlantic City. Municipalities in the county have been collecting data on empty and foreclosed homes to try and force those responsible for the properties – the banks, or mortgagees – to take responsibility for their upkeep, in an effort to prevent neighborhood blight. We compiled an interactive map of the properties, using data obtained via an open records request from the Atlantic County Improvement Authority (ACIA). The data, obtained earlier this month, is not perfect. Some street addresses listed in the database could not be identified. And some of these properties may have already been sold.

More about: Government

Tourism Rising, Food Waste, Op-Ed – Friday’s Roundup

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Tourism Rising
Tourism in Atlantic County increased last year for the first time in five years, The Press of Atlantic City reports, citing state data that attributed the rise to good weather, lower gas prices and a pickup in casino gaming revenue. “Although we feel like we’ve never recovered from the recession down here, most of the people that come here are coming from areas that are doing much, much better than we are,” Richard Perniciaro, director of the Center for Regional and Business Research at Atlantic Cape Community College, told The Press. The cloud? Well, you can read the report for yourself here, but although tourism sales might have bottomed out in 2015 in Atlantic County, direct tourism sales in 2016 were still below 2014 levels. Food Waste
NJ Spotlight has a neat look at food waste in New Jersey and what can be done about it in a state where there are also a lot of hungry people.

More about: Roundup

Boardwalk Beans: How a Quest for the Perfect Cup of Coffee Turned into a Business

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Damon Germano and Gabrielle Cianfrani just wanted to make a better cup of coffee. Somewhere along the line, their personal mission turned into a business. Now, from a corner of Pleasantville not far from the old Ireland Coffee Company plant, Boardwalk Beans is roasting small batches of carefully-selected coffee for retail and wholesale customers. Germano used to work for Ireland, back when Ireland had a small store in one of the Atlantic City casinos. “I was really into coffee, I had the beret, the turtleneck – the whole thing,” he said.

More about: Business, Route 40 Partners, Atlantic City, coffee, pleasantville

Boardwalk Hall Starbucks To Offer Outdoor Seating

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The new Starbucks set to open at Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall will have outdoor seating, according to a license agreement signed last week. It is not clear exactly when the Starbucks cafe will open. The Casino Reinvestment Development Authority in October agreed to chip in just shy of $600,000 to help refit the space at the entrance to Boardwalk Hall, with Starbucks paying a further $700,000. CRDA is also paying $2 million to rebuild bathrooms in Boardwalk Hall that have been unused for decades, but will presumably be available for Starbucks customers. Route 40 reported last month that attendance at Boardwalk Hall has been declining.

More about: Atlantic City, Business

Margate Dune Work: Scheduled All Summer!

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Work to fill Margate’s beaches and build dunes will begin just before Memorial Day and run through Labor Day, according to a document published on Margate City’s website here. The city and some Margate homeowners went to court to try and prevent the dunes, but a judge in February ruled the project could go ahead. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers last year awarded a contract worth up to $76.1 million to Weeks Marine Inc to repair dunes in Atlantic City and Ventnor and to finish building dunes in Margate and Longport. The Army Corps of Engineers and Weeks Marine will “make efforts to accommodate” Margate’s July 4th fireworks, the city document says. The city will also discuss moving its beach patrol building in front of dunes when the project is complete, the document says.

More about: Atlantic City

Taj Mahal Deal Value Means High Reconstruction Costs

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Hard Rock International and the Morris and Jingoli families will invest more than $300 million to reopen the shuttered Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, with the bulk of that money spent on reconstruction, according to financial documents. The Hard Rock, Jingoli and Morris team have not disclosed the price they paid to purchase the property, but it is not likely to be more than the $86 million combined valuation for both the Taj and Trump Plaza that their owner reported in a quarterly results statement on Wednesday. The Taj Mahal, opened to big fanfare in 1990 by Donald Trump, closed its doors to a trickle of customers in October, capping the end of a lengthy labor dispute with Local 54 UniteHere. Icahn Enterprises, the holding company of billionaire investor Carl Icahn, reported on Wednesday the value of its investment in the Taj and Trump Plaza fell $32 million to just $86 million at the end of December from September last year. The two properties were valued at $206 million just a few months earlier at the end of June.

More about: Atlantic City, Business

A Real-Life Sustainability Experiment At Stockton

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Imagine knowing that when you graduate from college, you have the skills to run your own profitable farming business. All you need to start is a small loan for equipment and a patch of land – as little as an acre would do. It might seem like a fantasy for a lot of today’s undergraduates who feel buried under student loans and job uncertainty. But a project at Stockton University is working toward giving students a real-life, tangible profession. “Land is not hard to get to farm – it’s hard to get to own, but it’s not hard to get to farm,” said Ron Hutchison, an associate professor of sustainability and biology who also helps coordinate Stockton’s Sustainable Farm.”We’d really like to send our students out with a checklist of things that they need: If you can get a loan from the bank for $40,000 and you have access to land, here’s the tools you need, have at it.”

More about: Business, Education

Boardwalk Hall, Convention Biz Falls as Casinos Take More of the Meeting Pie

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Good news: Atlantic City attracted more visitors last year! Bad news: They mostly weren’t going to Boardwalk Hall or the Atlantic City Convention Center. Worse news: They mostly went to casinos in the Marina District! Where they’re isolated from the city! Atlantic City, which is struggling to pay its bills after five casinos closed since 2014, was taken over by the state at the end of last year.

More about: Watchdog Journalism

On A Mission To Save Mom & Pop Restaurants In South Jersey

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McKinnon Erario takes amazing pictures (here and here). A lot of them are of cars, the Pinelands and abandoned buildings. But a couple of weeks ago he started something different, using the hashtag #SaveMomandPop on a picture of Nixon’s General Store. Since then, he’s visited a few more independent food spots. The mission?

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