Route 40 (https://rtforty.com/tag/retail/)
You’d be hard pressed to say it was a thriving Main Street, but the barbershop, Mexican restaurant, pizza place, tobacco store, mini-mart and even the closed-looking gift store are all open on the short span of Atlantic City’s Ventnor Ave, between Harrisburg and Trenton. In an age of dying malls and online shopping, something is working here.
The company that manages the retail outlets at The Walk in Atlantic City is working on bringing in new tenants after occupancy dropped to a more than five-year low earlier this summer.
The Walk, which has received just shy of $60 million* in funding from the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority since 2000, was a keystone of efforts to help diversify the city’s economy.
Essl’s Dugout on the Black Horse Pike has served five generations of families breakfast and lunch. The Dugout’s owner, Bob Essl, has seen the highs and lows of the Atlantic City area and believes the faded resort needs an image change to help it turn around. “For a resort to be as popular as it was and then to lose that….That image has been tarnished. They’ve got to bring that back,” Essl said. The positive news for his business is that weekends have been looking up.