You’re a sucker if you’re paying more than $1 for year-round AC parking

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A law firm is paying the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) just $1 a year for 10 sweet parking spaces in the Authority’s swanky gated lot in Atlantic City, according to a document released to Route 40 as part of a freedom-of-information request. The lot abuts Gordon’s Alley, an historic Atlantic City retail lane, where businesses and workers said they’ve been adversely affected by the lack of convenient parking. The agreement between CRDA and the law firm is ridiculous for a few reasons:

The other weekend, I rode the jitney and met people who live and work in Atlantic City (and pay their taxes) and who can’t afford to drive to work because the parking costs* in this crazy city are too high. Apparently, they’re just not working for the right companies. CRDA’s main source of revenue is from parking fees.

More about: Atlantic City, Watchdog Journalism, Atlantic City, casino reinvestment development authority, casinos, CRDA, dla piper, john palmieri

Jitney downbeach: an experiment in public transport

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UPDATED: This story was updated August 25, 2016 to include comments from Ventnor Commissioner Lance Landgraf. To read the original piece, a roundup of live tweeting from a downbeach jitney trip, scroll down. A test-run to expand the Atlantic City jitney service downbeach to Ventnor and Margate earlier this summer was shut down after jitney drivers said there were too few passengers to make the route viable. It is possible, however, that the effort could be revived next year and Ventnor Commissioner Lance Landgraf said he would like to work with the Jitney Association to find ways to help it succeed for residents. “We would welcome it back and we would certainly sit down with them and try and make it better if we could,” Landgraf said in a phone interview.

More about: Atlantic City, Atlantic City, bus, jitney, margate, public transit, public transport, rebuilding atlantic city

A Surreality Tour of Atlantic County

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Living around here can be a surreal experience at times, so we decided to photograph a few of our favorite surreal places in the county. Do you live or visit this area? Do you drive by or live near a bizarre building or abandoned lot? Do you want to know more about it? We’d love to hear from you by email, on Twitter or Instagram – we’d be surprised if we couldn’t add more to this list and we’re up for some local research. We’re pretty sure there are some crazy stories behind these crazy places.

More about: Atlantic City, opinion, Watchdog Journalism, accc, atlantic cape community college, Atlantic City, atlantic county, casino reinvestment development authority

Ratings agency warns Stockton over debt for AC development

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Stockton University will have a “weakened financial position” after issuing new debt to build a parking garage and residence hall in Atlantic City, and it may look to raise tuition fees, according to debt ratings agency Fitch Ratings. Stockton, which gained university status last year, is borrowing $70 million to pay for the Atlantic City development and $211 million to refund outstanding debt and finance $25 million in projects at its main Galloway campus. Since the University’s operating results were in the red last year in spite of healthy enrollment growth, Stockton needs to trim expenses and raise revenue – likely by making tuition “adjustments,” the ratings agency said in a statement on Wednesday. Without those changes, Stockton would not be able to borrow for any further expansion projects without risking a ratings downgrade, which would increase the cost of its borrowing and further worsen its financial position. “Stockton’s operating results have been negative since fiscal 2014,” said Fitch.

More about: Atlantic City, Business, Atlantic City, debt, galloway, gateway development, south jersey industries, Stockton

Kirk Kerkorian’s fund starts selling its MGM stock

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The investment company owned by Kirk Kerkorian, who died last year, has begun to sell its stake in MGM Resorts International, under the terms of Kerkorian’s will. The company, called Tracinda Corp, will sell an initial 20 million shares for about $500 million to reduce its stake in MGM Resorts, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. Tracinda Corp held a total of about 91 million shares, equivalent to a 16 percent stake, in MGM Resorts according to a filing last June. MGM Resorts last month said it would buy out Boyd Gaming’s stake in Atlantic City’s Bogata and take sole ownership of the city’s outperforming casino.  

More about: Business, Homepage Featured, Atlantic City, Borgata, Boyd Gaming, casino, kerkorian, MGM Resorts

In Atlantic City, Kick a Lifeguard, Win a Prize

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Socialism for billionaires, free-enterprise for the average Joe

My old friend the fat-cat retired Atlantic City lifeguard pension profiteer is in the news again in this season of “shared sacrifice” here in our fabled Queen of Resorts, this time in the pages of the New York Times, where he’s presented as a symbol, I perceive, of the outrageous greed and excess at the heart of our dilapidated republic. Novice economists might suppose this greed and excess was  concentrated within our citadels of high finance, or among the titans of industry—in this case the casino gambling industry—who so enriched themselves while leaving a string of empty eyesores atop our most important natural resource (the beach and boardwalk). This would be incorrect. Our problems here in Atlantic City—generations in the making—are not the result of a concentration of political power in the hands of financiers or gambling moguls, but rather to the unrestrained avarice of our municipal working class. John Steinbeck, that great chronicler of the American everyman, once wrote that socialism never took root in our native soils because the American proletariat does not identify as an exploited working class.

More about: Atlantic City, Homepage Featured, opinion, Atlantic City, Bernie Sanders, billionaires, Donald Trump, lifeguard

Atlantic City investment agency fails to publish annual report on time

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The New Jersey agency charged with investing proceeds from Atlantic City’s casino business to create jobs and otherwise benefit the South Jersey region has failed to publish its annual report by its May 1 due date. A spokeswoman for the agency, known as the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA), said its board had not yet approved the annual report. “They are meeting again on 5/17, I’m not sure if it will be on the agenda for that meeting,” spokeswoman Karen Martin added in an email. As a government agency, the CRDA has to publish audited annual financial statements. These help taxpayers see how the agency is being run and how it is spending its money.

More about: Business, Watchdog Journalism, Atlantic City, CRDA

Weatherman: A local rides out the storm

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Sometime before 4 p.m. on January 23, 2016, the day the worst nor’easter in recent memory destroyed his house, Sven Peltonen, an Atlantic City fireman and amateur Facebook weatherman, addressed his home audience via video camera with a bandage above his lip. The dog had bitten him. Sven was speaking, at this point, in Australian-accented English, I want to say (he’s since taken down the video), with occasional outburst of pirate speak. At different times during the preceding 20-plus hours, he’d delivered his regular weather reports in a variety of dialects and accents, including, by my count, Standard Pirate, Eastern European Pirate, Southern Bumpkin, Stoked Aussie and a kind of classic Surfer Speak reminiscent of Fast Times at Ridgemont High’s Jeff Spicoli. Meanwhile the dog—a fuzzy little animal named Cha-Cha (I think), which may have been a little high-strung to begin with—had been visibly unimpressed with its owners at their decision to stay put and ride out the storm from the comfort of their bayside bungalow, rather than retreat to the relative safety of the mainland.

More about: Homepage Featured, Weather, Atlantic City, Brigantine, flooding, Jonas, storm

A Bird of Bad Moral Character and Our Cloverfield Monster Governor, in Today’s Roundup

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The tireless Reuben Kramer (Press of A.C.) reports Caesar’s is looking to hire 330-plus workers, and maybe another 120 temporary workers. Get on it. I’m told it’s a growth industry. Verizon Chronicles
Remember the coalition of 16 South Jersey towns who complained to Verizon about their terrible copper landlines? They (some of them anyway) are offended as hell by Verizon’s response, which came in the form of a letter to the BPU, NJ.com’s Spencer Kent reports.

More about: Roundup, Atlantic City, Pine Barrens, South Jersey