Atlantic City’s First Legal Distillery Nears Opening

By |

Atlantic City will soon boast its first ever legal distillery, thanks to brothers Eric and Mark Ganter. The Little Water Distillery may not be the first to ever produce spirits in the city, but it will be the first to do so with federal and state licenses. The distillery, which began life as a family daydream after Eric and Mark’s dad received a still for his birthday in 2013, will launch an American whisky dubbed WHITECAP around December 15, just in time for those of us who failed to do all our holiday shopping this past weekend. The whisky is the result of a collaboration with a distillery in the Appalachian mountains that the Ganter brothers struck up a friendship with during their multi-year process to launch their Atlantic City site. The name is a play on the white caps of the mountains and the Atlantic ocean, Eric Ganter explained.

More about: Atlantic City, Business, Atlantic City, distillery, little water, small business, tumble inn

Socktober Surprise

By |

Students at Frog Pond Elementary School in Little Egg Harbor donated 821 pairs of socks to Covenant House, a homeless shelter for homeless youth, in Atlantic City earlier this month. The idea to collect the socks came fromKerry Gunn, who teaches fifth grade at the school and showed her students a facebook video by Kid President Robby Novak, who pointed out that socks (according to some metrics) are among the most-needed and least-donated clothing items. Gunn said she presented the idea to her fellow fifth-grade teachers who supported it. “We called this service project, ‘Socktober–Kids Helping Kids,’” she said, in a statement. In response to a series of questions (“Who donated the most socks? Why’d that person have so many socks?

More about: Atlantic City, Education, Voices

Emma

By |

Two weeks ago we went to the “executive sleep out” at Covenant House, where they like to say that the least interesting thing about their kids is the fact that they’re homeless. This is Emma. She ran away from an abusive situation at home and ended up living in her car. That’s the dark place she mentions. She lived in her car for about two and a half months, then came to the shelter, where she’s been going to school and to her (two) jobs in Atlantic City.

More about: Voices

Buzby’s Last Stand

By |

A little before three o’clock last Saturday afternoon, November 19, Albertus V. Pepper Jr., age 72, of Chatsworth and Washington “Wash” Orme, 85, of Tabernacle, walked into Buzby’s General Store in Chatsworth, via the commercial kitchen. They were in a state of high animation, shouting back and forth, over and around the heads of fellow patrons.

More about: Exploring South Jersey, The Pine Barrens, bats, buzby's, chatsworth, John McPhee, marilyn schmidt, Pine Barrens

Kellie

By |

Kellie is a mother, homeowner and casino worker. She’s also lost two young family members to gun violence. One of them was her 13-year-old son, who was murdered in 2012. Her nephew, 17, was killed this year. She has another child, 9, that she worries about.

More about: Homepage Featured, Voices

CRDA Sits On Inlet Development

By |

 

The Casino Reinvestment Development Authority’s highly representative-of-the-community board of directors voted to give themselves more time to think about it before they approved a request for a variance to build a duplex—a duplex—at 206 Vermont Avenue in Atlantic City’s South Inlet. The lot is currently zoned for resort commercial development, a legacy of the casino boom years when people thought someone might build a megaresort or big high-rise on Vermont Avenue (though “Of course we now recognize that won’t happen”). CRDA has zoning authority because the land is in the tourism district. 206 Vermont is currently a little vegetable patch, on an amazingly barren and desolate stretch of land in the shadow of the (formerly $2.4 billion) former Revel casino. Approving a modest, two-family house on such valuable real estate would set a new precedent, board members remarked, after noting they’d all seen presentations from big developers (presumably) for the football-fields worth of vacant lots.

More about: Atlantic City, Homepage Featured

More Election Fallout, Gas Tax Fallout and Happy Veterans Day – Friday’s Roundup

By |

Election Day + 3 and we’re still sifting through the detritus. A excellent piece of data visualization work by NJ.com can show you how your town–and other towns across the state–voted in the presidential race. Spoiler alert but the inner-ring suburbs went red in Atlantic County, which overall went blue. Anyway, it’s kind of fascinating for fans of the North Jersey-South Jersey game too. Maybe the lines are more complicated than we thought. Also, it’s Veterans Day.

More about: Roundup

Ducktown’s Johnny Ex Plans Council Run

By |

John Exadaktilos, proprietor of the Ducktown Tavern on Atlantic and Georgia Avenues in Atlantic City, is considering a bid for city council. Who looks at the Atlantic City council and says, “I want to be part of that party?” we wondered. Johnny Ex had a quick answer. “It’s not a party. It’s a debacle.”

But not one he’s happy to ignore.

More about: Homepage Featured

A House Grows In The Inlet? UPDATE

By |

This is an update of a story from a few weeks ago about developers seeking a variance to build a duplex–exciting!–on a vacant stretch of Atlantic City’s South Inlet that looks like it could have been airlifted from South Dakota and dropped onto the Jersey Shore. When last we tuned in, that story’s protagonist–the developer Bruce Pender–was petitioning the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority for permission to not build a casino at 206 Vermont Avenue (the lot pictured above) because the land is zoned for “resort commercial development” and Pender does not wish to build a resort on this property. He only wants a two-family dwelling. To achieve this dream, Pender requires permission from CRDA because CRDA, for reasons that seem frankly a little less-than-democratic, has zoning authority over the South Inlet. 

The state of New Jersey just yesterday initiated takeover proceedings against Atlantic City, but note for a second this informative photograph of the CRDA Board of Directors, which by my count shows the faces of fourteen white males and one white female. Yet it has zoning authority over large swaths of a city that’s 38% African-American, 30% Latino and 15% Asian. And probably made up of around 50% female persons (I’m just guessing).

More about: Atlantic City

The Sea, The Sea and Some Financial Stuff – Friday’s Roundup

By |

The Press of Atlantic City takes a look at the impact of casino
gambling on small businesses, declaring the effects “both a blessing
and a curse.” “When they brought casinos in, I don’t think that they ever envisioned
that they would be all-encompassing, that they would be closed off to
the city — and to the ocean for that matter,” said Mayor Don Guardian. Oh, Donnie. You are so naive! Meanwhile, the same Atlantic City mayor has been cracking on with his plan to keep the Queen of Resorts out of the state’s clutches, mainly by coming up with a faintly sketched roadmap for paying down debt and reducing interest payments.

More about: Roundup