Route 40 (https://rtforty.com/tag/bader-field/)
Under overcast skies as gale-force winds blew across the bay, a group of soccer players from as near to home as Somers Point and as far afield as South America and Europe ran drills and bantered on Atlantic City turf yesterday.
Stockton University is in “preliminary talks” to develop* some or all of Atlantic City’s Bader Field, according to people with knowledge of the matter. If the university were to occupy the site, it would further extend Galloway-based Stockton’s reach in Atlantic City, where it is building a residential campus, parking garage and academic center scheduled to open in 2018. The university is considering using the Bader Field site for a marine sciences and resiliency center, one of the people said. University President Harvey Kesselman discussed the idea as part of wider plans for the university in a presentation to Stockton foundation board members last week. Kesselman has had talks with Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian about buying* some of the site, one other person said.
Atlantic City Austerity
Emergency manager Kevin Lavin released his final report on the state of Atlantic City at five p.m. on Friday, the same day a Reuters story reported his team had cost taxpayers $2.6 million in the past year with little to show for it. Laving recommended the city privatize its fire department and regionalize the police force with neighboring towns, blaming “parochial politics” for hampering progress, though the Howler notes parochial politics didn’t cause the tax base to fall by $13 billion in five years. It also said the city should sell Convention Hall (or Boardwalk Hall), though not Bader Field on the water authority. Read more here. Lavin endorsed a state takeover of the city, saying he supports “legislative efforts underway in Trenton,” Philly.com’s Andrew Seidman reports, saying sales or privatizations of Bader Field and the utilities authority were among the recommendations, as was a sale of Gardner’s Basin.