There’s Something Happening On Pauline’s Prairie

By |

Something is happening down in Atlantic City’s Inlet neighborhood. A machine has appeared and some serious fencing has gone up around two vacant blocks. It’s not quite on the scale of the Gateway Project yet, but it looks like Boraie Development’s plan to build 250 rental units in one of Atlantic City’s most persistently development-starved neighborhoods is getting underway. Better known to some as Pauline’s Prairie or the mother ship of Atlantic City’s vacant lots, the site has been empty for 50 years. The project – dubbed The Beach at South Inlet – is set to include a gym, lounge, pool, parking, restaurants, shops and – yes – a grocery store alongside the housing units, but it has been slow to advance from initial plans laid out in 2013.

More about: Atlantic City, Homepage Featured, Atlantic City, boraie development, CRDA, Inlet, Pauline's Prairie, The Beach at South Inlet

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

Declining Atlantic City Train Draws Loyal Commuter Crowd

By |

More people than you might guess get up every weekday at the crack of dawn and drive, walk or take a bus to the Atlantic City rail terminal to wait for the 6:40 am train to Philadelphia. At the station, they greet fellow commuters and ask them about their weekend plans or chat about what they watched last night. On the train, they welcome kindred commuters who board at Absecon or Egg Harbor City and share their day-in, day-out slog to work and back. Ridership on the Atlantic City-Philadelphia train line – one of the nation’s oldest – has been steadily declining in line with casino closures in Atlantic City that mean fewer visitors are coming to the faded resort town. But passenger numbers on the rail line are not down as much as bus-passenger numbers, according to South Jersey Transportation Authority data, and that may reflect the small but loyal commuter train crowd. Train passenger numbers have fallen 5.1 percent through August this year, compared to a decline of 10.4 percent in bus passengers, according to SJTA’s numbers.

More about: Atlantic City, Transport

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

Activist Group: Casino Tax Breaks “Despicable”

By |

Atlantic City’s patchwork of tax agreements that lets casinos and outlet stores pay lower rates is unconstitutional and should be overturned, according to a Tea-Party-affiliated group that is seeking to bring a lawsuit to challenge the system known as Payment In Lieu of Taxes (PILOT). The Somers Point-based group is working to persuade Atlantic County officials and suburban mayors to join a lawsuit against the PILOT, since it strips the whole county of tax revenue, said the organization’s executive director Seth Grossman. “The plan is to try to persuade the county government and the suburban mayors to join our lawsuit to put an end to this tax abatement and to win allies around the state to support this,” he said, in an interview at his office on Monday. “This problem is affecting every city and state government.” The PILOT program, which Grossman likes to call Peanuts In Lieu of  Taxes, was originally designed to spur development.

More about: Atlantic City, Homepage Featured

There’s Still A Way To Go For Atlantic City Recovery

By |

Someone asked me the other day whether the state will just let Atlantic City get on with things now, since the city somehow on Monday pulled the rabbit out of the hat and produced a recovery plan, as demanded by state officials and ahead of their schedule. Who knows. As Jitney Guy noted on Twitter (see below), it depends in large part on the winds in Trenton, which we know have changed, but you’d need some kind of hyperactive weather vane to have a clue what direction they’re pointing in now. All we know is summed up in this infographic: basically, there are still a few questions. Firstly, as Amy Rosenberg noted on Tuesday, no one knows whether Borgata will come through on its commitment to consider reducing the size of the settlement it is owed from previously overpaid taxes.

More about: Atlantic City

Stockton University Island Campus Progress Report

By |

Maybe you’ve lived through more than one of Atlantic City’s many revival phases. Maybe you’ve seen the big buildings come down as well as go up.  Maybe you’re a foreigner and a bit of a cynic like me. But put aside your reservations for a minute and take a look at the Stockton University Island Campus. Skipping over the mess surrounding the project’s origins, it’s hard not to be at least a little bit lifted up by these massive machines at work.

More about: Atlantic City, Stockton University Island Campus

Lights out at the Taj Mahal

By |

The Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort is officially closed, but the slot machines are still blinking inside. They spin and whir insolently, kind of the way my laptop takes its sweet time powering down after I’ve slammed the lid shut. I don’t know what you call this stage in the life cycle of a defunct megaresort–a liminal phase maybe–but this is the way a casino dies, apparently, in the small hours of an unseasonably cold Monday morning in early October. The Taj, the alleged Eighth Wonder of the World, and one of the many saviors of Atlantic City foretold by the prophets, passed into oblivion at age 26. It had been in poor health for some time.

More about: Atlantic City, Business

Search For Atlantic County Business Leader Turns Up Empty

By |

Atlantic County has failed to hire a director for a planned million-dollar development corporation, a setback for a wider plan to steer the sluggish regional economy away from an unhealthy dependence on low-wage casino industry jobs. Even after a substantial search this spring and summer, no candidates from outside South Jersey could be drawn in to run the development corp. Instead, Max Slusher, the Atlantic County Improvement Authority’s (ACIA) economic development head, will perform double duty in the role for an interim period, the county’s chief of staff Howard Kyle said in an interview Monday. Although the non-profit development corporation, which should have about $1.2 million when it is fully funded, found candidates for the executive director gig, one turned it down for a better-paid alternative, and another withdrew, apparently because they couldn’t quite be persuaded to move to Atlantic County, Kyle said. Low local salaries and difficulties attracting workers to the county were both issues that were highlighted in a report by Austin, Texas-based consultants Angelou Economics that was commissioned by the ACIA and published a year ago.

More about: Atlantic City, Business