TURN UP THE A.C.
As two casinos open in Atlantic City, developers, businesses and a university take a chance on the maligned Jersey ‘playground’
T HE welcome sign that hangs over the Atlantic City Expressway, ahead of its oft-photographed skyscraping casinos and neon signs against the ocean, used to read “America’s Favorite Playground.”
The current, somewhat deflated slogan — “Do AC” — hints at the rough years the seaside city of vice suffered after the 2008 recession and the legalization of gaming in Pennsylvania and Delaware.
But Atlantic City is now experiencing something of an upswing, led most obviously by this summer’s opening of the Hard Rock and Ocean Resort casinos in two prime highrises that were recently foreclosed or bankrupt.
Residential developers have come to town, too, with plans for housing and amenities unprecedented in the area. Don’t forget new residents — like lawyer Peter Fu and his fiancée Sarah Dickey — in search of bang for their real estate buck who want to buy in before any boom. Couple that with a local government that supports the small businesses young residents want (from a distillery to a small-batch chocolatier) and the major beachfront campus that Stockton University is about to debut. Add the allure of newly legalized sports betting as well as the city’s enduring appeal to weekend revelers and bachelor partiers, and Atlantic City might soon be back on its winning streak.
The city of 38,000 has many neighborhoods and wards but can be broken down into roughly four sections. In Chelsea, the residential area to the south, large Prohibition-era homes mingle with a few regal apartment towers. Stockton’s new campus, which will open in September, straddles the southern area and the heart of the city. The latter is packed with casinos; lime green Jitney shuttle buses ferry folks up and down the gaming strip of
Pacific Avenue. To the west, aging rowhouses, apartment complexes and single-family homes make up the bulk of the housing stock. Atlantic City’s northern section, though, has the largest concentration of newer homes. It’s here, along the ocean, where the two newest casinos are found.
Bruce Deifik of Denver-based Integrated Properties decided to purchase the former Revel Hotel and Casino building sight unseen earlier this year. He never set foot in Atlantic City himself until his $200 million offer was accepted. (The Revel property was built less than a decade ago for $2.4 billion.) The casino reopened as family-friendly Ocean Resort Casino on June 28, the same day that the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino premiered in the former Trump Taj Mahal.
Since acquiring the property, Deifik has spent time in Atlantic City and says he’s witnessing transformative energy. “I believe that Atlantic City is going through a renaissance,” Deifik says. “There were sellers that were happy to give stuff away, and that’s changing.”
As other shore destinations like Asbury Park transform into vibrant year-round communities, residential developers are also starting to make bets on Atlantic City. New Brunswick, NJ-based Boraie Development is gearing up to launch a 250-rental development a block away from Ocean Resort Casino and just two blocks from the boardwalk and the beach.
The project, known as 600 North Beach, will have some of the first high-end rentals the city has seen in decades, with plush interior finishes like quartz countertops and GE appliances. Amenities include a 20,000-square-foot outdoor pool deck with cabanas and grills.
“If you want a brand-new one-bedroom in Asbury Park or Long Branch, you’re going to pay $2,200 per month,” vice president Wasseem Boraie says. One-bedrooms at 600 North Beach will ask from $1,500 per month when the development starts welcoming tenants in September. Atlantic City’s median rent is about $1,230, according to Zillow. “I don’t think that anywhere else down at the Jersey Shore is going to be able to compete with that,” says Boraie, adding that he thinks 80 percent of renters will be full-time residents.
Developer John Longacre, who’s reinvented entire Philadelphia neighborhoods, is also hard at work. His LPMG Companies is converting the 1901-built Morris Guards Armory building into loft-style apartments. Longacre also wants to bring a food hall to the base of the project.
New apartments won’t solve Atlantic City’s 37 percent poverty rate. But as Mayor Frank Gilliam points out, there are many vacant lots and under-utilized plots to fill before existing affordable housing is threatened by pricier new development. “All of the major real estate is beach and boardwalk,” Gilliam tells The Post, “which we have not redeveloped or taken advantage of yet.”
Per Zillow, Atlantic City’s 2017
median sales price was $166,400. The low six-figure amount reflects the ills and obstacles of the area’s housing market, but also presents an opportunity to the young, upwardly mobile set that Boraie and Longacre hope to attract.
Fu, a 31-year-old lawyer, and Dickey, a 29-year-old public school teacher, purchased a threebedroom townhouse in Ducktown, an ethnically and economically diverse area, for $156,000 in 2014. The couple bypasses the neon draw of the casinos on weekends in favor of a quiet dinner at
Angelo’s Fairmount Tavern, a local staple, or Wingcraft, a gastropub at Tanger Outlets.
“Most people look at Atlantic City and only see casinos, and that’s a fair assessment,” Fu says. “But it’s evolving out of that industry. It’s offering so many other opportunities, whether it’s gourmet dining, or boardwalk attractions, or even just non-casino-type entertainment.”
After a seven-year stint in New York, Bruce Weekes, 31, returned to Atlantic City in 2016. He says he feels hopeful about the future but would like to see “a more vibrant Atlantic City that’s year-round,” noting a lack of jobs to attract people to the area. Putting words into action, Weekes ran for City Council in the 2017 primaries on a platform to improve economic development and quality of life, but came up short in the polls.
Weekes hasn’t decided whether or not he’ll run again, but he does plan on staying put as a project manager in City Hall. He hopes to move into 600 North Beach when units are ready.
Although hospitality and gaming still dominate Atlantic City’s economy, locals and
visitors have more activities to choose from these days. Nestled between two casinos on the Tennessee Avenue beach block uptown, locals and tourists alike can take yoga classes at the Leadership Studio, taste small-batch chocolates at Made and sip artisanal blends at Hayday, the city’s only independent coffee shop.
Nearby, the 2016-opened Little Water Distillery offers tours and tastings of its spirits. Pizzeria Tony Boloney’s, a local startup that has expanded to Hoboken and Jersey City, is a must-visit. Youth-oriented businesses will have a chance to shine when Stockton’s Atlantic City outpost opens. A waterfront dormitory will house 533 students; more than 1,200 additional coeds will frequent the campus for courses from social work to hospitality. The university is also negotiating the purchase of the former Atlantic Club Casino Hotel and its garage, both shuttered since 2014, as well as surrounding lots. If the purchase goes through, the seller, TJM Properties, will demolish part of the casino — originally the Golden Nugget — and pave the way for Stockton to construct new academic, residential and retail spaces. “We are not the panacea, we are part of the solution to the city’s past problems,” says Stockton president Harvey Kesselman. “The city’s on the rise, there’s no question about that.”